Unser Hindenburg

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.

"[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)

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

Los 5 Faust de F. W. Murnau

Documentary about the making of Buster Keaton's silent comedy classic, Sherlock Jr. (1924).

A documentary about some of the comedians of the silent era featuring clips from their films and biographical information.

La remise des décorations

Life on the breadline in the 1930s was hard enough, but times were desperate when you fell beneath it. Hunger marches organised by the National Unemployed Workers' Movement drew attention to the cause, but this left-wing collective picked up a cine-camera. The fictional story at the heart of the film is somewhat melodramatic, but the authentic surroundings give its message realism and weight.

One of Joseph Cornell’s funniest films, Thimble Theater is structured like a vaudeville variety show about nature.

Finland’s first nature documentary. The filmmakers’ expedition leads them all the way to the Åland Islands and the Karelian Isthmus.

Wunder der Schöpfung is an extraordinary, fascinating Kulturfilm trying to explain the whole human knowledge of the 1920s about the world and the universe. 15 special effects experts and 9 cameramen were involved in the production of this film which combines documentary scenes, historical documents, fiction elements, animation scenes and educational impact. It its beautifully colored, using tinting and toning in a very elaborated way. Some visual ideas in the sequences with a space shuttle visiting different planets in the universe seem to have to be the inspiration for Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Three friends are playing cards in a beer garden. One of them orders drinks. The waitress comes back with a bottle of wine and three glasses on a tray. The man serves his friends. They clink glasses and drink. Then the man asks for a newspaper. He reads a funny story in it and the three friends burst out laughing while the waitress merely smiles.

Divers go to work on a wrecked ship (the battleship Maine that was blown up in Havana harbour during the Spanish-American War), surrounded by curiously disproportionate fish.

Short animal exploitation film with images of snakes having unsuspecting rabbits placed in their cage. The rabbits are hopping around and sniffing at them until they are grabbed and strangled.

Lost film from 1902, directed by Louis Lumière and starring King Edward VII.

With the cameraman atop a moving train car the viewer is given a one minute glimpse of a French urban area.

Lost film from 1888, directed by William Friese-Greene.

Experimental film fragment made with the Edison-Dickson-Heise experimental horizontal-feed kinetograph camera and viewer, using 3/4-inch wide film.

Early Edison short showing two men fencing.

William K.L. Dickson and William Heise shake hands in this early experimental film.