A youngster writes a letter to his grandmother about his last trip to Donosti (Spain). This city inspires him to ponder about the language of cinema, time, cities, and sharing memories with our loved ones.
In 1829 the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt attempted a russian-siberian expedition. Humboldt travelled to obtain a clear view of nature, people and life in this immense country. 2019 naturalists and humanists attempted a transdisciplinary expedition on the trails of Humboldt. To capture the events various cameras were taken along. A non-chronological narration.
A provocative and poetic exploration of how the British people have seen their own land through more than a century of cinema. A hallucinated journey of immense beauty and brutality. A kaleidoscopic essay on how magic and madness have linked human beings to nature since the beginning of time.
Chris Elliot plays FDR in his live "One Man Show" about the life and times of the president, however, he looks and sounds nothing like the man and he re-enacts events from Roosevelt's life that never happened.
If cinema is the art of time, Linklater is one of its most thoughtful and engaged directors. Unlike other filmmakers identified as auteurs, Linklater’s distinction is not found on the surface of his films, in a visual style or signature shot, but rather in their DNA, as ongoing conversations with cinema, which is to say, with time itself. A visual essay produced by Sight and Sound.
It has been a lifelong dream of Kyrgyz director Melis Ubukeyev to create an elaborate film version of the Kyrgyz national epic 'Manas'. He spent years working with the National Academy of Sciences of Kyrgyzstan to gather material for this film project, which would ultimately remain a dream. However, the director's efforts were not in vain: Not only did he make films in 1962 and 1988 about Manasçı – the revered oral storytellers who have preserved the epic for generations through melodic recitation –, but in 1995, to mark the 1,000th anniversary of 'Manas', he also created a beguiling essay film that not only recounts the epic’s sweeping narrative through a mix of breathtaking imagery and opulent costumes, but also weaves it into a semi-documentary exploration of Kyrgyz history and identity. Once almost impossible to find, the film has recently been restored by the film studio Kyrgyzfilm and uploaded to YouTube in 4K.
Commissioned by French television, this is a short documentary on the neo-classical statues found throughout Paris, predominantly on the walls of buildings, holding up windows, roofs etc.
The Weight of Sight is a playful and very personal essay where director Truls Krane Meby, through a massive archive of his own material - anything from DV-tapes to 35mm - explores the last 20 years of digital development - how it’s influenced the images we make, and our bodies. What kind of images do we get of the world now that everyone is a photographer, and what does it do with how we unfold our identities? How has the internet both captured and freed us? And will Truls even dare to show this film?
This film essay about mushrooms and their connections to other living things tries to use the structure of mushrooms to explain nature, science, and civilization, all the while searching for various analogies, such as the similarities between mycorrhiza and other structures.
Belfast-born actor Stephen Rea explores the impact of Brexit and the uncertainty of the future of the Irish border in a short film written by Clare Dwyer Hogg.
Three people become connected through mysterious circumstances involving electronic devices which spontaneously appeared in their world.
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.
Documents the lives of infamous fakers Elmyr de Hory and Clifford Irving. De Hory, who later committed suicide to avoid more prison time, made his name by selling forged works of art by painters like Picasso and Matisse. Irving was infamous for writing a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. Welles moves between documentary and fiction as he examines the fundamental elements of fraud and the people who commit fraud at the expense of others.
A meditative essay.
A fictional biography of Hollywood actors Martin Kosleck and Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, both of whom fled Hitler-era Germany to live a long-lasting relationship.
Weeping Rocks follows Art, an entomologist nearing the end of his life, who has spent over five decades walking the same ten trails, meticulously counting every butterfly he sees and witnessing the slow erosion of the world. His eccentric, patient research has uncovered patterns of decline that went unnoticed for years, revealing the deep environmental impact of detrimental human activities. As time reshapes the landscape and species fade, Art’s journey becomes a meditation on mortality, change, and the beauty of what remains.
Tommy sets out to document walking. He meets a colorful cast of characters, attaches microphones to his feet, and contends with what it means to capture movement on film.
KWAIDAN
Lies are just another way of telling the truth. The desire to believe is the hand of the man hanging from a cliff and clinging to the only stone that would seem to save him. But he always ends up falling because the stone is a mirage, just as the cliff is. Death is awakening from this dream in which the essential can be said and in which the continuous and infinite has a beginning, an end and a meaning.
Four filmmakers working in the region of Galicia (in the northwest of Spain) follow and portray on the screen Galician artists working in disciplines of different nature. The result is four pieces around the creative process of these artists. Lois Patiño film their parents working on their paintings in their studio in Vigo, Jaione Camborda films dancer Janet Novás rehearsing for one of her pieces, Xisela Franco follows film director Margarita Ledo revisiting the location of her latest film Nation and Alfonso Zarauza reflects on the relationship between actress-director by putting together the work of Melania Cruz in two of their collaborations.