Hollywood Without Make-Up

Few amateur films with sound were produced in the 1930s and fewer remain extant. A charming artifact that demonstrates the expressive possibilities and technical limitations of amateur talkies, "The Spider and the Fly" includes a backyard Labor Day gathering, a trip to the Riverview Amusement Park, and a homemade Halloween parade of witches and ghouls.

SONG 5: A childbirth song (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).

An atypical portrait of singer, songwriter, poet Georges Brassens.

In 1948, French singer Charles Aznavour (1924-2018) receives a Paillard Bolex, his first camera. Until 1982, he will shoot hours of footage, his filmed diary. Wherever he goes, he carries his camera with him. He films his life and lives as he films: places, moments, friends, loves, misfortunes.

December 31, 2015. The Valencian bookstore Valdeska closed its doors permanently after forty years of activity. The result of four years of monitoring and filming, these 31 minuts of run time are part of a book unread, unknown and undiscovered. "Me voy. Me voy" it's not the story of a bookstore, not the portrait of an exceptional bookseller, it's a will to attach the things in the filmed image, to make something lasting showing the moment of its disappearence.

A love letter to Mar del Plata made of images, times and a road trip. "The Happy Ones" is an experimental short documentary composed of past and present family footage. It portrays a place in the summer, the city of Mar del Plata, with a span of 20 years between past and present images (January 2000 and 2020). Despite the time that passed by, it's beaches, essence and people remain, always willing to keep dancing.

A film exploring the life of “Weird Paul.” After 30 years, 2000 videos, 800 songs, & 42 albums, he’s still not giving up on his dream.

A dream walk through the United States of America; a meditation on the thoughts and ideals of its inhabitants, as they are exposed in their silent but eloquent home movies.

On a winter's day, a woman stretches near a window then sits in a bathtub of water. She's happy. Her lover is nearby; there are close ups of her face, her pregnant belly, and his hands caressing her. She gives birth: we see the crowning of the baby's head, then the birth itself; we watch a pair of hands tie off and cut the umbilical cord. With the help of the attending hands, the mother expels the placenta. The infant, a baby girl, nurses. We return from time to time to the bath scene. By the end, dad's excited; mother and daughter rest.

David Lloyd George tours Germany, escorted by Nazi government officials, while his chauffeurs lark about with an SS Officer. Lloyd George was pro-German from the mid-1920s, and met Adolf Hitler in 1936. However, by 1938 he had become a leading opponent of appeasement with Germany. This film is believed to have been shot by George Ryder, Lloyd George's chauffeur.

Filmmaker Jan Oxenberg narrates her own home videos, commenting on how her views towards lesbianism and femininity have evolved over time.

Through the footage from his family's Handycam, the director creates a portrait of his family that is falling apart.

La petite maison toujours dans la prairie

Memory is a collaboration with musician Noah Lennox (Panda Bear), exploring the relationship between a musician and filmmaker and their personal reflection on memories. From Super 8 home movies and entirely handmade, this film explores familiar memories, the present moment combined with past experiences and how it all seems to evade from our present memory.

In this home movie collection of gay men, memory serves as an act of hope, power, and above all, resilience.

For over 40 years Val Kilmer, one of Hollywood’s most mercurial and/or misunderstood actors has been documenting his own life and craft through film and video. He has amassed thousands of hours of footage, from 16mm home movies made with his brothers, to time spent in iconic roles for blockbuster movies like Top Gun, The Doors, Tombstone, and Batman Forever. This raw, wildly original and unflinching documentary reveals a life lived to extremes and a heart-filled, sometimes hilarious look at what it means to be an artist and a complex man.

This documentary is a record of moments with family, friends, travels, outings, and a passion that Carla inherited from her father. The need to encapsulate time led her to film her daily life with Bahian friends in Barcelona, a city where she lived the best of her youth for eight years. When she decided to return to Brazil, everything took on new significance. It was then that she began the project of making a documentary to immortalize that period. The casual recordings turned into an obsession, and her friends were interviewed, totaling more than 50 hours of filmed memories and a year of editing in Brazil. This process was a painful stagnation in the past, an effort to make sense of material that fed a difficult feeling to overcome: longing. The result is a delicate film that reflects on exile, memory, time, family, change, and life.

A childhood story is narrated while home movie footage is displayed. The narrator recounts her assimilation experience: moving to America, learning English, giving up your culture and a part of yourself.

The diaspora of Filipinos around the globe is driven mostly by the economics of supply and demand. The yearning for something better, stability, and self-validation leads a handful of sojourners from the provinces of the Philippines into the arms of one of its former colonial masters — the USA. But what happens when they finally get what they want? And how? Filmmaker Dennis Empalmado explores the musings of Filipino expatriates and hopeful immigrants in "Naglalakbay" (Travelers).

While attempting to record life as it was, Arthur unintentionally documents his family’s unraveling.