A secret culture of foragers hunt the Matsutake, a coveted Japanese mushroom worth up to $1,000 a pound—although its true value lies underground as a brilliant networker and healer of ruined landscapes. The Matsutake might just be our last, best hope for an American forest system run amok.
In England banger racing isn't just a sport, but a way of life. This film follows 11 year olds Finn and Harley through a cold winter race day in Birmingham.
The first film made by Markopoulos after moving to Europe, Bliss was shot over the course of two days using only available light to create a lyrical study of the interior of the Church of St. John on the island of Hydra.
Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording "Daybreak Express", this is a five-minute short of the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated subway station in New York City.
Various amphibious pond dwellers, including grass frogs, tree frogs, common toads and other amphibians are shown moving around, feeding, mating, fertilizing and evolving. Also on display are natterjack and midwife toads, yellow-bellied toads and water frogs.
The biodiversity of a pond, which is already endangered in many places, is shown. The individual specimens are introduced over the course of an early summer's day. The highlight is the frog concert at night.
It adroitly tells the story of a "counter culture" young man who when his grandfather dies, packs the body in dry ice, and stores him in a Tuff Shed, waiting for the time when advances in modern medicine can bring him back to life. I am not making this up. Then our young men gets deported back to Norway on unrelated charges. Then, quite a while later, people look up and take notice ... "Hey ... there appears to be a frozen dead guy in that shed over there."
Set in New Brunswick, "Éloge du chiac" takes the form of an open discussion between a young French-language teacher and her students in Moncton. Through their exchanges, Michel Brault examines the challenges of preserving French in a bilingual region where English predominates, and explores the contested status of Chiac, a local French dialect shaped by centuries of linguistic contact.
102 Years in the Heart of Europe: A Portrait of Ernst Jünger (Swedish: 102 år i hjärtat av Europa) is a Swedish documentary film from 1998 directed by Jesper Wachtmeister. It consists of an interview by the journalist Björn Cederberg with the German writer, philosopher and war veteran Ernst Jünger (1895-1998). Jünger talks about his life, his authorship, his interests and ideas. The actor Mikael Persbrandt reads passages from some of Jünger's works, such as Storm of Steel, The Worker, On the Marble Cliffs and The Glass Bees.
Czech Photographer Josef Koudelka grew up behind the Iron Curtain and always wanted to know "what was on the other side". Forty years after capturing the iconic images of the Soviet invasion of Prague in 1968, the legendary Magnum photographer arrives in Israel and Palestine. On first seeing the nine-meter-high wall built by Israel in the West Bank, Koudelka is deeply shaken and embarks on a four-year project in the region which will confront him once again with the harsh reality of violence and conflict. Director Gilad Baram, Koudelka's assistant at the time, follows him on his journey through the Holy Land from one enigmatic and visually spectacular location to another.
Short docudrama exploring the history of sex in the homosexual community from the 1970s to the present day, and how the internet has changed the way gay men meet forever.
Documentary on industrial lubrification.
The film is a fragmented representation of an artist's experience at an art gallery where Wolfgang Lehmann, as a part of his masterclass, shows 2 of his films and in-between, a film by Kurt Kren.
A short documentary about a homeless couple who face the ban on being on the street during 2020 quarantine. Just through their eyes, the two protagonists show us a different Milan, silent and suspended.
Documentary short showcasing the genius of jazz greats Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Cozy Cole, and Milt Hinton, among others.
During the last forty years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed the major events of our recent history: international conflicts, starvations and exodus… He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of the wild fauna and flora, of grandiose landscapes: a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet's beauty. Salgado's life and work are revealed to us by his son, Juliano, who went with him during his last journeys, and by Wim Wenders, a photographer himself.
A documentary that follows the life of photographer Daido Moriyama in the present, which has never been revealed before. Even though his charismatic presence has reigned over the world of photography since the late 60’s, his true persona had been hidden behind a veil of mystery, since he had refused any major appearances in front of any media in the past. Follow the charismatic photographer Daido Moriyama as he takes his first digital photos and observe his style of quick snapshots without looking in the finder. His stark and contrasting black and white images symbolize his fervent lifestyle.
Zinal
In 1983, film student Rich Murray was handed $20,000 in a brown paper bag by a mobster. The money was for directing his first music video for a virtually unknown Philly rocker named Alan Mann. Mann's song "Christmas on the Block" became a Philly radio staple and Murray's music video, against the odds, became the first indie video to play on MTV. This experience, tainted by Mann's tragic passing, remained with Murray through the years. With "Fear of Heights," Murray travels back to that time to answer some nagging questions and to illuminate the dark, mysterious life and music of Alan Mann.
Paleo is a video clip shoot at the famous homonymous music festival in the French canton of Vaud in Switzerland, where many hippie-techno-pagans gather every summer since 1977. The editing style is a tribute to the reworking of psychedelic theories and the New Age proliferation within rave culture in the early 90s from the perspective of the late second decade of the new millennium. In the footage, the ritual ingestion of psychedelics is symbolically replaced by a liberating dance through a powerful fast montage that epitomizes the frenzy of intoxication achieved through psychedelic plants. A revival of a revival of a revival.