Split Cherry Tree is a 1982 short film directed by Andrei Konchalovsky. A father learns the importance of education and gains an understanding of his son and an insight into his dreams and ambitions. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film.
The brothers of Children In The Wind deal with declining family fortunes: they must work when the father becomes sick, and eventually live with their grandfather, which means making new friends and struggling with a different environment.
A story of siblings building a tree house together over the course of a year. We experience the beauty and brutality of the seasons, as we follow them through their struggles and moments of joy.
A delicate stroll through the Russian wilderness at different times of the year.
A poor girl was given an impossible task by her stepmother: to gather snowdrops in a winter forest. Suddenly she stumbled across twelve brothers who happened to be the twelve months.
Stick Man lives in the family tree with his Stick Lady Love and their stick children three, and he's heading on an epic adventure across the seasons. Will he get back to his family in time for Christmas?
Farrebique, the first feature-length effort of French documentary filmmaker Georges Rouqier, is widely regarded as his finest film. Rouqier concentrates on a single French farm family, following them through the four seasons. As in the works of Robert Flaherty, the human characters and the land surrounding them are "one", and Rouqier never misses an opportunity to parallel their lives with the eons-old phases of nature. The final symbolic images of Spring, achieved through time-lapse photography, are almost unbearably beautiful. The winner of several festival awards, Farrebique nonetheless did not immediately result in an outpouring of financing for Rouqier's follow-up films (this was a common problem in the financially strapped French film industry of the 1940s). Perhaps as a result, Rouqier did not make his sequel, Biquefarre (filmed in the same region, with some of the same "actors"), until 1983.
The last collaboration of Artavazd Peleshian and cinematographer Mikhail Vartanov is a film-essay about Armenia's shepherds, about the contradiction and the harmony between man and nature, scored to Vivaldi's Four Seasons.
A house uproots itself from its suburban foundations and sets off on an epic journey.
Complex, short animation film that divides the screen into eight small windows. To the music of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and with appropriate colours, seasonal stories are told in the small frames. Every now and then, the isolated events cross their borders and the scenes start interacting.
In this Traveltalk short, the symbolic role of cherry blossoms in Japanese culture is explored as well as the traditional Japanese religions of Shintoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism.
A portrait of free diver Kathryn Nevatt, former World Champion and current New Zealand record holder in all three disciplines.
La Révolution de la Terre
As a young woman journeys to a new country, the promise and possibility of her life spills out like the petals of a flower, unfurling into full and glorious bloom. Julia Kwan’s film Blossom captures a woman's experience, mirrored and reflected in the natural world. As summer opens into spring, mother and daughter build a life together. The taste and texture of each season, whether the ice-cream smell of summer, the crisp birch air of autumn, or the warmth of winter dumplings -- are lovingly rendered in animation, sound and image. Throughout the passage of time, the persistence of love endures, as resolute and unchanging as the cycle of the season.
In four corners of the globe, in each of the four seasons, four outstanding violinists guide us on an extraordinary journey through their four distinct homelands. From the springtime blossoms of Japan, into the blistering heat and thunderstorms of an Australian summer; from a joyful autumn in New York, to the unforgiving cold and human warmth of a Finnish winter. The resonant and much-loved music of Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and the timeless stories they tell, form the backbone to this bold and engaging celebration of friendship, homeland and the cycles of life.
An animated film about forest dwellers based on the stories of Vitaliy Bianki.
Forest Light
The Australian Chamber Orchestra has always forged its own path. With Artistic Director and violinist Richard Tognetti at the helm, the ACO has been producing films for over a decade, from their award-winning collaborations with BAFTA-nominated director Jennifer Peedom (‘Mountain’, ‘River’) to their acclaimed series of cinematic music films, ‘ACO StudioCasts’. Directed by Matisse Ruby, ‘The Four Seasons’ film release is the latest from this ground-breaking, world-renowned ensemble. Arguably the most popular and recognisable piece of classical music ever written, this performance directed by Richard Tognetti, highlights the profound symbiosis between Vivaldi’s Venice and the Middle East. Interspersing Vivaldi’s masterpiece with music by Australian-Egyptian composer and Oud virtuoso Joseph Tawardros, the film honours Vivaldi’s classic while giving it new life. A must-see for music lovers and cinephiles alike.
Nima Yooshij (Iranian poet) for his son’s 1st birthday. He says: “my son, by now, you have seen a spring, a summer, an autumn and a winter. From this point on, everything is simply a repetition except kindness.”