A study of death scenes and endings, under the Hays code era of Hollywood (1934-1968) and beyond.
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The people behind it
In this sprawling 33-part epic, Dianetics therapy and the effects it has on human minds are explored.
An audiovisual essay constructed from Super 8 footage filmed during camera tests for the short film ‘La Trampa’. Through gestures, light, and silences, it reflects on what the image reveals and what it leaves unsaid.
Director Philip Haas and artist David Hockney invite you to join them on a magical journey through China via a marvelous 72-foot long 17th-century Chinese scroll entitled The Kangxi Emperor's Southern Inspection Tour (1691-1698), scroll seven . As Hockney unrolls the beautiful and minutely detailed work of art, he traces the Emperor Kangxi’s second tour of his southern empire in 1689.
Six million tons, suspended by the slightest gesture. Mother of the World presents a series of brief vignettes of Cairo just prior to the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. These fragmented scenes choreograph class structure and foreign influence into an intimate, poetic view of a nation about to change.
GIRI CHIT tells a tale of the subtle trace of irreconcilable worlds. A worker driving a mobile sweeper in hypnotic circles across an already immaculate surface. The high drama of cosplay aficionados clamoring to be seen. A cast of thousands toiling hundreds of feet above the street. Giri translates as ‘duty’ in Japanese, but the concept is in fact far more complicated. Giri is a sort of interpersonal political capital that informs careers, family relations, and much more. Its presence and flow is palpable in Japan, where this film was shot. A “giri chit” then may be a hypothetical voucher for this intangible flow (with a tip of the cap to Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland”). Selected Screenings and Awards: DaVinci Film Festival (Best Experimental Film), Chicago Underground Film Festival, Athens International Film and Video Festival, Dallas Videofest, ICDOCS Film Festival, NewFilmmakers at Anthology Film Archives, Oxford Film Festival, Director’s Lounge Berlin
A documentary about the sea and memory. Its movement is its form. Its strength.
Commissioned to prepare Allied troops for the liberation of Europe, the film uses a blend of staged narratives and historical footage to promote solidarity and dispel the myth that France was a nation of willing collaborators.
Two friends await in the airport for a third friend to arrive. As the passangers come by, pictures not taken accompany a conversation between the two friends.
OBAIDA, a short film by Matthew Cassel, explores a Palestinian child’s experience of Israeli military arrest. Each year, some 700 Palestinian children undergo military detention in a system where ill-treatment is widespread and institutionalized. For these young detainees, few rights are guaranteed, even on paper. After release, the experience of detention continues to shape and mark former child prisoners’ path forward.
The documentary tells two very different human fates in the 1920s Soviet Union. Nikolai Vavilov was a botanical genius, Trofim Lyssenko was an agronomist who made great promises and fake inventions. Each of them tried to solve the country's nutritional problem, but only one succeeded.
On November 13, 2015, the attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis, carried out by three Islamist commandos and claimed by ISIS, were the deadliest in France since the end of World War II. In the months that followed, the November 13 Program was launched by the CNRS and Inserm to study the construction of individual and collective memory around an event that profoundly marked French society. Today, the testimonies of 27 volunteers—among some 1,000 people—who participated in the study form a mosaic of experiences that shows how trauma extends beyond the immediate circle to permeate the national collective memory.
An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time.
An experiment in video and sound collage by John Ledingham and Liam McCarrell. Inspired by the novel "Libra" by Don DeLillo.
Dream and deficiency, a letter without recipient.
A disturbing chapter in Russian history is explored in this documentary. In 1933, Joseph Stalin sent 6000 "unwanted" citizens of Moscow and Leningrad to a desolate Siberian island - with no food or clothes to speak of. Decades later this documentary returns to the island.
Standing near the reptile section in a zoo we can learn a lot about the animals on both sides of the separating glass.
Valentine and Jean-Claude start a new life in Kigali with their newborn baby, Justice. Their country, already battered by racial propaganda and brutality, finally seems ready for peace and justice.
A ritual of grids, reflections and chasms; a complete state of entropy; a space that devours itself; a vertigo that destroys the gravity of the Earth; a trap that captures us inside the voids of the screen of light: «That blank arena wherein converge at once the hundred spaces» (Hollis Frampton).
"Meat Joy is an erotic rite — excessive, indulgent, a celebration of flesh as material: raw fish, chicken, sausages, wet paint, transparent plastic, ropes, brushes, paper scrap. Its propulsion is towards the ecstatic — shifting and turning among tenderness, wildness, precision, abandon; qualities that could at any moment be sensual, comic, joyous, repellent. Physical equivalences are enacted as a psychic imagistic stream, in which the layered elements mesh and gain intensity by the energy complement of the audience. The original performances became notorious and introduced a vision of the 'sacred erotic.' This video was converted from original film footage of three 1964 performances of Meat Joy at its first staged performance at the Festival de la Libre Expression, Paris, Dennison Hall, London, and Judson Church, New York City."
Jan receives the group patch at the campfire, Herkules brews up some tea in the workshop and Sidney gets a mohawk haircut done by his father. The film shows fragments from an Oberhausen subculture in which symbols and practices of the outlaw motorbiker scene are transferred to cycling.
A subjective documentary that explores various theories about hidden meanings in Stanley Kubrick's classic film The Shining. Five very different points of view are illuminated through voice over, film clips, animation and dramatic reenactments.
An atmospheric essay, which is an alternative version of Count Dracula, a film directed by Jess Franco in 1970; a ghostly narration between fiction and reality.
Bruce Conner’s most celebrated film for a reason: it takes historical moments that were replayed over and over on television—chilling repetition of Kennedy assassination coverage—and repurposes them into a meditation on how the media tries to exert authority and apply a sense of order to the anarchic. And though it may sound perverse to say so, the film is also—not incidentally—a thrill to watch. -- The A.V. Club
The definitive documentary on the history of nudity in feature films from the early silent days to the present, studying the changes in morality that led to the use of nudity in films while emphasizing the political, sociological and artistic changes that shaped that history. Skin will also study the gender inequality in presenting nude images in motion pictures and will follow the revolution that has created nude gender equality in feature films today.
In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
This revealing documentary honors the legendary Sidney Poitier—iconic actor, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Featuring interviews with Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Halle Berry, and more.
A journey into the labyrinthine heart of ideology, which shapes and justifies both collective and personal beliefs and practices: with an infectious zeal and voracious appetite for popular culture, Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek analyzes several of the most important films in the history of cinema to explain how cinematic narrative helps to reinforce prevailing ethics and political ideas.
The story lives forever in this feature-length documentary that charts the making of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Kirby Dick's provocative documentary investigates the secretive and inconsistent process by which the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rates films, revealing the organization's underhanded efforts to control culture. Dick questions whether certain studios get preferential treatment and exposes the discrepancies in how the MPAA views sex and violence.
Alexander McQueen's rags-to-riches story is a modern-day fairy tale, laced with the gothic. Mirroring the savage beauty, boldness and vivacity of his design, this documentary is an intimate revelation of McQueen's own world, both tortured and inspired, which celebrates a radical and mesmerizing genius of profound influence.
A purely observational non-fiction film that takes viewers into the ethically murky world of end-of-life decision making in a public hospital.
A night of drunken chaos rocks a quiet Dutch town in this shocking documentary about a teen's birthday invite that accidentally went viral on Facebook.
A look at the origins, history and conspiracies behind the "Majestic 12", a clandestine group of military and corporate figureheads charged with reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology.
The history of cinematic sound, told by legendary sound designers and visionary filmmakers.
Al Pacino's deeply-felt rumination on Shakespeare's significance and relevance to the modern world through interviews and an in-depth analysis of "Richard III."
Just two years away from turning 30, participants in Michael Apted's documentary series are facing serious questions of identity and purpose, wondering whether they've found their place in the world.
An experimental documentary that explores Saudi Arabia's relationship with the U.S. and the role this has played in the war in Afghanistan.
The evolution of adult cinema through the most influential films in history, a journey that begins in the 1970s and ends nowadays. An in-depth analysis of the success of the most prestigious erotic films, their impact on industry and society, and their influence on cinema and contemporary culture.
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.