An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time. (Silent short, voiced in 1937 and 1996.)
Third installment in Stefan Nadelman's ongoing short doc series about his father and the infamous Terminal bar in NYC.
Fourth short film in Stefan Nadelman's look at the time his father spent at The Terminal Bar in NYC. This time Nadelman shows the pictures he took of the garbage can directly outside which serves as yet another portal into the streets at that time.
Psychedelic animated short capturing the spirit of surfing
Trains travel through the night without stopping. The clatter of the carriages quickly disappears, along with the wail of the locomotive. The people at the station are all asleep. But why are they so exhausted ? And what are they waiting for? Set inside an isolated train depot, The Train Station is one of Sergei Loznitsa's most haunting films. It is also one of his most pointed social critiques. In this film, we are brought to a remote train station deep in the Russian woods. It's nighttime. In the distance, we hear the clatter of locomotives. The station, a small wooden building, sits silently, surrounded only by snow and train tracks.
Working men and women leave through the main gate of the Lumière factory in Lyon, France. Filmed on 22 March 1895, it is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made, although Louis Le Prince's 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene pre-dated it by seven years. Three separate versions of this film exist, which differ from one another in numerous ways. The first version features a carriage drawn by one horse, while in the second version the carriage is drawn by two horses, and there is no carriage at all in the third version. The clothing style is also different between the three versions, demonstrating the different seasons in which each was filmed. This film was made in the 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and at a speed of 16 frames per second. At that rate, the 17 meters of film length provided a duration of 46 seconds, holding a total of 800 frames.
Obāchan is Japanese. She left her native archipelago in 1941 to marry one of her compatriots, 17 years older, settled in Mexico. Through fragments of family films, manga and sequences that she has shot, Nicolasa Ruiz sculpts a complex and delicate memory landscape between the two shores of the Pacific.
Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.
Safety film from the late 70s/early 80s about the (then) new hobby of skateboarding. Produced by Sid Davis.
Actor Bela Lugosi discusses his career, his social life, and his feelings about his most famous role, Count Dracula.
Short film in the Hermitage Museum looking at da Vinci's Madonna Litta.
Spring 2017, in between the two rounds of the French presidential election. Pierre, a 25-year-old scholarship holder studying in a big Parisian school, lives with 75-year-old Francine, who is disabled and wheelchair-bound. Politically and socially opposed, they are perplexed and disoriented as they witness the unfolding electoral spectacle. While waiting for the results, they engage with each other, as Pierre tries to take care of Francine’s body and she attempts to heal his voiceless resentment.
Several fragments of one day in Leningrad in the autumn of 1989, refracted in the imagination of the artist.
Likely in June 1897, a group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.
The High Holy Brothers is a documentary on a mysterious Messianic cult formed by peasants who fled the violence of the forties/fifties in Colombia and are admitted to live in the mountains of southern Tolima. Its members dress in sacks, they have their own dialect and regard everything as “Blessed”, minus the right side of the body, which castrated covering it with the “holy coat”. This group rejects all elements of the consumer society, established institutions, the state, church and political parties.
Sicily, Granitola, 1955. At the first light of dawn, the fishermen set out in their boats for open water, timing the rhythm of their oars to murmured chants. They set their nets in the sea, regulate the cords, organize the boats in a square. The men’s work becomes increasingly harder as the tuna are hoisted onto the boats, wriggling, beating their tails until death arrives and the water is tinged with blood.
Kidlat Tahimik, a director and performer, sought to recreate relations between the body and filmed image seen through "Asian eyes." This groundbreaking project took the form of a documentary which Mr. Tahimik directed and in which he performed himself in order to show his own thinking about the different views of the body held by the "East" and the "West."
The manifestation and fireworks on the 1st of May, one of the ritual celebrations of Soviet times, as a gathering of tired participants of a mass scene falling into pieces without the director's orders and without any aims.
The simple actions of a young boy on the beach provide visual metaphors for the normally unseen world. The camera adds a profound dimension to what the boy has seen, giving us a deeper understanding of visual awareness.
In 1946 ethnographic researcher Rouch had attempted to film a "Bangaoui," a hippopotamus hunt along the river Niger, but the results were unsatisfactory.Five years later, he returns and makes the extra effort to get it right this time.