A 60-minute salute to American International Pictures. Entertainment lawyer Samuel Z. Arkoff founded AIP (then called American Releasing Corporation) on a $3000 loan in 1954 with his partner, James H. Nicholson, a former West Coast exhibitor and distributor. The company made its mark by targeting teenagers with quickly produced films that exploited subjects mainstream films were reluctant to tackle.
A retrospective documentary about the groundbreaking horror series, Friday the 13th, featuring interviews with cast and crew from the twelve films spanning 3 decades.
A collection of amateur films made by photographer Roderic Vickers and friends.
The history of the Yakuza Eiga at the TOEI studio is roughly outlined. Real Yakuza and also their connections to the movie business are discussed, and many important actors and directors of the genres are interviewed. Former real yakuza boss turned actor Noboru Ando, Takashi Miike, Sonny Chiba and many more get a chance to speak.
Documentary about WWII propaganda cartoons.
Short featurette about the inspiration behind Pixar's "Cars".
After reading I Am the Sultan of the Law of Existence by Youssef Idris, a five-day journey through Egypt’s Western Desert, traveling from north to south., covering 2,800 km and shooting for 35 hours, the expedition became both physical and existential. The desert’s vastness and silence echo the text’s meditation on the relationship between man, nature and the universe, transforming the landscape into an active force that reshapes perception and confronts the nature of existence.
Twenty-Five miles from town, a million miles from mainstream society, a loose-knit community of eco-pioneers, teenage runaways, war veterans and drop-outs, live on the fringe and off the grid, struggling to survive with little food, less water and no electricity, as they cling to their unique vision of the American dream.
Cameramen and women discuss the craft and art of cinematography and of the "DP" (the director of photography), illustrating their points with clips from 100 films, from Birth of a Nation to Do the Right Thing. Themes: the DP tells people where to look; changes in movies (the arrival of sound, color, and wide screens) required creative responses from DPs; and, these artisans constantly invent new equipment and try new things, with wonderful results. The narration takes us through the identifiable studio styles of the 30s, the emergence of noir, the New York look, and the impact of Europeans. Citizen Kane, The Conformist, and Gordon Willis get special attention.
The intricate history of UFA, a film production company founded in 1917 that has survived the Weimar Republic, the Nazi regime, the Adenauer era and the many and tumultuous events of contemporary Germany, and has always been the epicenter of the German film industry.
Explore the 1928 collapse of the St. Francis Dam, the second deadliest disaster in California history. A colossal engineering and human failure, the dam was built by William Mulholland, a self-taught engineer who ensured the growth of Los Angeles by bringing the city water via aqueduct. The catastrophe killed more than 400 people and destroyed millions of dollars of property.
An ethnographic documentary following four Ju/’hoansi (!Kung) men during a multi-day giraffe hunt in the Kalahari Desert, filmed during the Smithsonian–Harvard Peabody expedition of 1952–53.
Structured as a labyrinth-like game and inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, Aleph is a travelogue of experience, a dreamer's journey through the lives, experiences, stories and musings of protagonists spanning ten countries and five continents.
A documentary about the rise and fall of the Cannon Film Group, the legendary independent film company helmed by Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.
When most people think about Australia, they picture massive sandy beaches, singlet-clad locals drinking beer, and kangaroos bounding through the dusty red outback. Saris, musical numbers, and masala are the furthest from anyone's mind - unless of course, you're one of the millions of Bollywood fans from around the world.
Secrets and mysteries lose power when they are spread too widely. This is what the villagers discover when they invade an old man's vision-inspired shrine to the namelessly holy.
A documentary film about the work of stuntmen and camera operators in Soviet cinema, using the film "White Sun of the Desert" as an example.
"Children of 'Giant'" is a documentary film that unearths deeply wrought emotions in the small West Texas town of Marfa, before, during and after the month-long production of George Stevens' 1956 feature film, "Giant." Based on the controversial Edna Ferber novel of the same name, the film, "Giant" did not shy from strong social-issue themes experienced throughout post-WWII America. George Stevens, its producer and director, purposely gravitated to the drought-ridden community of Marfa for most all of the exterior scenes.
This video essay, featuring film scholar Leonard Leff, addresses the 1938 Alfred Hitchcock film The Lady Vanishes' British context and political underpinnings and the details and techniques that undeniably make it a 'Hitchcock picture.'
How the cinema industry does not respect the author's work as it was conceived, how manipulates the motion pictures in order to make them easier to watch by an undemanding audience or even how mutilates them to adapt the original formats and runtimes to the restrictive frame of the television screen and the abusive requirements of advertising. (Followed by “Filmmakers in Action.”)