La remise des décorations

Educational short film about the solar eclipse

Film historians, and survivors from the nearly 30-year struggle to bring sound to motion pictures take the audience from the early failed attempts by scientists and inventors, to the triumph of the talkies.

A documentary from Erkki Karu, one of the earliest pioneers of Finnish cinema: This government-produced propaganda film introduces the nature, sports, military, agriculture and capital of Finland.

On 18th of December 2017, the Filarmonica Teatro Regio Torino, directed by Timothy Brock, presented "The Gold Rush" by Charles Chaplin, with live performance of the soundtrack. But let's go back a few days: this short film takes us in the backstage of the concert!

Documentary by Portuguese Silvino Santos, about the Amazon, its flora, fauna, its inhabitants and among other wonderful images from the beginning of the 20th century with alternating close-up shots of caimans, jaguars and tropical flora with footage of Indigenous rituals--including some of the earliest known moving images of the Indigenous Witoto people--and longer sequences showcasing the region’s extractive industries: rubber, the Brazil nut, timber, fishing, even the egret feathers that were a staple of women’s fashion at the time.

"[Hutton’s] latest urban film, New York Portrait, Chapter III, takes on a unique tone in relation to Hutton’s ongoing exploration of rural landscape. The very fact that Hutton is dealing with older footage, with archives of memory more than immediacy, gives it a different texture than his earlier New York films. Hutton always found the presence of nature in the city, not only in his many shots of sky and vegetation, but also in the geometry and texture of the city itself, which seemed to project an independence from the human." (Tom Gunning)

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

Charles Dekeukeleire, then a questioning Catholic, was spurred into making this documentary on a pilgrimage with the Catholic Young Workers’ Movement. The director’s approach is one of critical reflection; A film emotional and fervent, even acerbic.

Chapter Two represents a continuation of daily observations from the environment of Manhattan compiled over a period from 1980-1981. This is the second part of an extended life's portrait of New York.

Most movie fans know that the first filmmakers liked to shoot trains entering stations. This example by Sussex film pioneer George Albert Smith illustrates why. The train's rush towards the audience brings movement and visual drama. The flurry of human activity offers plenty for the audience to engage with - who are these people and where are they going? And the time pressure exerted by the fact that the train must soon depart adds narrative tension - will everyone get on and off in time?

Silent film showcasing hypnosis and its effects.

In the 1968 movement in Paris, Jean-Luc Godard made a 16mm, 3-minute long film, Film-tract No.1968, Le Rouge, in collaboration with French artist Gérard Fromanger. Starting with the shot identifying its title written in red paint on the Le Monde for 31 July 1968, the film shows the process of making Fromanger’s poster image, which is thick red paint flows over a tri-color French flag. —Hye Young Min

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

This non-narrative short film examines one of the great American icons: the Louisville Slugger baseball bat. The film was conceived by its co-directors, Marlon Johnson and Dennis Scholl, along with the Louisville Orchestra's conductor, Teddy Abrams, to be screened set to a live performance by the orchestra of Claude Debussy's "Jeux".

Sheep bound through a narrow opening, followed by a panoramic vista of the flock running through a meadow.

George Albert Smith and Charles Urban snaffled the plum job of travelling to Italy to take a series of views of Italy for the Warwick Trading Company, including this one. The long panning shots of Pompeii linger respectfully, as a tourist would, before the camera finally raises its eye to the mighty volcano looming in the distance beyond.

Surfing at Waikiki Beach, Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. Most surfers are human, one is a dog. The educational documentary is part of the Bruce Scenic Novelties series.

Rhythmic composition of moving photographs of cyclists in Amsterdam, ‘set’ to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

An appreciative, uncritical look at silent film comedies and thrillers from early in the century through the 1920s.

The Dangers of the Fly is an educational film made by Ernesto Gunche and Eduardo Martínez de la Pera, also responsible for Gaucho Nobility (1915), the biggest blockbuster of Argentinean silent cinema. De la Pera was a talented photographer, always willing to try new gadgets and techniques. This film experiments with microphotography in the style of Jean Comandon's films for Pathé and it is part of a series which included a film about mosquitoes and paludism and another one about cancer, which are considered lost. Flies were a popular subject of silent films and there are more than a dozen titles featuring them in the teens and early twenties.