Bruce Brown's The Endless Summer is one of the first and most influential surf movies of all time. The film documents American surfers Mike Hynson and Robert August as they travel the world during California’s winter (which, back in 1965 was off-season for surfing) in search of the perfect wave and ultimately, an endless summer.
An unconventional, tone-shifting travelogue that stitches together nations of the former Yugoslavia through chance encounters, 1970s rock music, architecture, and inventive editing, Ryan Ferko’s Hrvoji, Look at You From the Tower locates traces of the past in an increasingly fractured present.
"The Karma Killings," is a modern-day crime thriller mixed in with Indian mythology and class warfare. The documentary delves into India's most infamous serial killings and its impact on a nation. Told through the people directly involved, the film unravels the complexities of the case and goes beyond the sensational headlines to present a suspenseful and scary mystery. And has a huge twist - one of the killers maybe innocent?
A silent 35mm film produced by Ambrosio. It opens with a sweeping view of the Gulf of Santa Margherita, then tours towns in the Tigullio area: Santa Margherita with its hotels and villas, Rapallo and its castle, San Michele di Pagana, and Portofino, still a working-class village with laundry on façades. Scenes include locals, passers-by, children, fishermen, horse-drawn carriages, and notably, women making bobbin lace in Portofino.
When Tomoko finds some messages for a 'Mr Smith' on a lost mobile phone, she finds herself on an 'Alice in Wonderland' journey through Tokyo's boulevards and back alleys. From the tyranny of symmetry in soaring office blocks - to buildings that look like space-ships, this creative documentary shows us the city's soul.
A collection of amateur films made by photographer Roderic Vickers and friends.
As part of the 2017 UK-India Year of Culture, the British Council and British Film Institute share a unique collection of films documenting the sights and culture of a bygone India. Filmed between 1899-1947, and preserved in the BFI National Archive since then, these rare films capture many glimpses of life in India, from dances and markets, to hunts and pageantry.
The Unreserved is an inquiry into the lives of passengers who use the Unreserved Compartment, the cheapest way to travel across India on the Indian Railways system. The film portrays the passengers’ aspirations, efforts and opinions through conversations and personal stories.
Original archive catalogue record indicates "maybe be taken from the 1909 film From Portofino to Nervi" but the festival notes indicate the Pasquali & Co intertitles so date unknown. Fragmentary footage of the Ligurian coast between Nervi and Portofino, beginning with two women on a terrace and moving through sites on the Riviera di Levante. A sequence shows Recco, devastated by WWII bombing, with a clear view of the railway viaduct. In Nervi, we see the port, Anita Garibaldi promenade, and Gropallo Tower, followed by nitrate-damaged scenes including Bogliasco bridge, a painter on the cliffs, and farmers loading hay. The film ends with a sunset over the sea. Produced by Pasquali & Co. this print features English intertitles and was part of the Dawson City nitrate find in 1978. A duplicate negative and this print were made in 1980.
Jaw-dropping pomp and pageantry at the 1911 Delhi Durbar
"Fascinating India" spreads an impressive panorama of India’s historical and contemporary world. The film presents the most important cities, royal residences and temple precincts. It follows the trail of different religious denominations, which have influenced India up to the present day. Simon Busch and Alexander Sass travelled for months through the north of the Indian subcontinent to discover what is hidden under India’s exotic and enigmatic surface, and to show what is rarely revealed to foreigners. The film deals with daily life in India. In Varanasi, people burn their dead to ashes. At the Kumbh Mela, the biggest religious gathering of the world, 35 million pilgrims bathe in holy River Ganges. This is the first time India is presented in such an alluring and engaging fashion on screen.
Le Beurre : Du bonheur en motte ?
Military occasions around India and Pakistan, featuring the Khyber Pass, Srinagar, Rawalpindi and Peshawar.
Made by an English family living in north India during the heyday of the Raj, this amateur film reveals the grandeur in which middle-class English colonials lived.
Rumer Godden the 88 year old author is taken back to India, where she lived from 1908-1945 to revisit her unconventional life there and to share with her daughter the experiences which inform all her writing.
Indian elephants in action as working animals and in hunting.
Rare stencil-coloured images of early 20th century Delhi during a Muslim festival.
Fireworks, illuminations and traditional dance all feature in a stunningly opulent royal wedding at Kundla, Gujarat.
Jugaad is a Hindi word that can be translated as "innovative or effective solution that bends the rules". It refers to the extreme capacity developed by Mumbai's inhabitants to adapt and get around any type of constraint or obstacle posed by the city's urban structure. In a relatively small piece of land where 21 million people live today, the inhabitants of Mumbai demonstrate great creativity when it comes to managing the spaces (for sale, for prayer, for traffic) and the flows that cross them every day. Without using language, Hong Kong artist Chak Hin Leung brings together in this video a dozen unique situations in which people, animals, vehicles and natural elements intermingle and brush up against each other, without ever colliding.
From the arrival of a new viceroy to street markets, this amateur film captures the diversity of life in colonial India.