Codelli is a feature-length docudrama about a little-known film project by Slovenian inventor Baron Anton Codelli. Together with filmmaker and adventurer Hans Schomburgk he filmed in Togo in 1914 the first live-action film in Africa, which possibly inspired James Rice Burroughs for his novel on Tarzan. In the company of three Codelli’s descendants and actor Primož Bezjak, we traced the fate of Codelli’s film, brought the remains from Togo and Berlin to Ljubljana and used the Green Screen technology to bring to life 15 live-action scenes based on 600 Codelli’s museum photographs.
The documentary follows seven stories from the set of deadly sins and virtues. The concepts have been interpreted through the ambiguity, associations and meanings triggered by various social contexts. Using phenomena from our recent history, the story focuses on justice, prudence, sloth, greed, gluttony, temperance, pride. With regard to each phenomenon, i.e. each sin or/and virtue, there is the question of the duality of borders. If virtue is a desire subdued, and sin a desire that goes too far and crosses the border, this necessarily implies an area of ambiguity, of borders and questions about what is right and what isn’t.
Andy Warhol directs a single 35-minute shot of a man's face to capture his facial expressions as he receives the sexual act depicted in the title.
A unique hybrid of documentary, silent film, drama and dance, 'Breaking Plates' puts revolutionary women of the past on the screen with present day filmmakers. Contemporary women talk to characters from 100 years ago, reanimate their antics and emulate their mayhem moves. As early 21st century performers step into the clothes of their early 20th century counterparts, battling their haywire machines, exploding gags, and eruptive bodies, they learn to wield humour as a weapon against the structures that contain them today.
Photo sequence of the rare transit of Venus over the face of the Sun, one of the first chronophotographic sequences. In 1873, P.J.C. Janssen, or Pierre Jules César Janssen, invented the Photographic Revolver, which captured a series of images in a row. The device, automatic, produced images in a row without human intervention, being used to serve as photographic evidence of the passage of Venus before the Sun, in 1874.
Grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath: Benjamin Christensen's legendary film uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle Ages suffered the same hysteria as turn-of-the-century psychiatric patients. But the film itself is far from serious-- instead it's a witches' brew of the scary, gross, and darkly humorous.
The Tsar visits the Russian embassy
Early short film
A poetic documentary tribute to the famous Eiffel tower, built for the 1889 World Fair and intended to have been destroyed 20 years later. A vocal subset of Parisians (among which, one may surmise, Clair would've been counted) insisted the Tower remain above the River Seine, a continued display of French engineering excellence. Clair makes strategic use of double exposures and dissolves, capturing the mechanical exuberance of the Tower; The great swooping steel latticework edifice a bounding symbol of the modern age.
The epic story of the Russian Civil War (1918-21): the White Terror, the counterrevolutionary uprisings, the guerrilla war, the Kolchak front, the Wrangel front and the Kronstadt rebellion. Chaos and violence, devastation and death.
Short dramatised documentary showing the ups and downs of daily life on a circus farm. “The only light comes from the flames of the funeral pyre that consumes a dead circus elephant shortly after its corpse has been unceremoniously dragged across a field by 50 carthorses.” (BFI)
A retrospective about the world of the mineral, following different narrative lines, centered on housing, labor, transport, recreation among others. Original copy is lost, only 14 minutes are available.
Short silent film.
Several young and cheerful children share at Cavancha Beach, while a couple begins to dance a cueca.
A group of people perform local dances and prepare to have lunch outdoors in Playa Ancha.
A reporter travelling in the Balkans is trying to gain a deeper understanding of the region, which is a melting pot of cultures, languages and religions.
Showing the entire catastrophe resulting from the attempt of Mr. Gorham to ride around the loop the loop on a bicycle. While the enormous crowd watches him he comes down the slide with the speed of the wind, circles the loop, but as he nears the bottom his wheel swerves from the path and the rider crashes into the framework of the structure. Attendants rush up and carry away the injured man. (Biograph Catalog)
Under the warm rays of the sun, the protagonists become living still lifes, resting on benches, chairs, and deckchairs. In the quiet embrace of nature, they wait, reflect, and remember. This cinematic group portrait delves into the legacy and creative spirit of Vilko Filač, the Slovenian master of film photography, celebrating the enduring mark he left on the world of cinema.
Documentary focusing on the film careers F.W. Murnau, Frank Borzage and William Fox and their impact on the history of cinema.
Members of the photographic convention carrying tripods and cameras file past a waiting room on the deck of the Clyde steamer “Lady Rowena”. Members of party include Craig Annan, Mr. Harold Baker, Mrs. W. Baker and Mrs. Ralph Robinson.