Documentary

  • Vittorio De Seta – Pasqua in Sicilia AKA Easter in Sicily (1955)

    1951-1960DocumentaryItalyShort FilmVittorio De Seta

    Quote:
    Vittorio De Seta captures the music and pageantry of an Easter celebration in Sicily.Read More »

  • Harutyun Khachatryan – Vaveragrogh AKA Documentarist (2003)

    2001-2010ArmeniaDocumentaryExperimentalHarutyun Khachatryan

    Originally, Documentarist was intended as a traditional documentary about a country that has to face challenging problems such as war, unemployment, extreme poverty, mass emigration, alcoholism and crime. Unfortunately, Harutyun Khachatryan did not raise enough state money in order to make the film he wanted to and therefore had to settle for a different project. Thus, he decided on a very unorthodox narrative strategy. By weaving together different styles, such as documentarist observation and docu-drama approach, he shed a new light on the complexities and challenges a director has to face in order to present a multifaceted picture of reality. Read More »

  • Lynne Margulies & Joe Orr – I’m from Hollywood [+commentary] (1989)

    1981-1990ComedyDocumentaryJoe OrrLynne MarguliesUSA

    Quote:
    Performance footage and interviews combine to offer a hilarious look at controversial comedian Andy Kauffman’s surreal journey into the world of professional wrestling. He had kept Americans in stitches as a featured player on the hit television sitcom Taxi, but Kaufman would single-handedly destroy his small-screen career when he went on television to taunt Memphis-based professional wrestler Jerry “The King” Lawler”, and challenged females to fight him in the ring. As Kaufman put every ounce of his energy into taunting Lawler, his abrasive form of comedic performance art alienated the fan-base that had so ardently supported him during his days as lovable, squeaky-voiced cabbie Latka Gravas on the series that propelled him to stardom. In this documentary, fans are offered a rare glimpse into the genius of a comic who was so effective at duping the audience that many assumed his diagnoses with terminal cancer was just another warped gag.Read More »

  • Jinchuan Duan – Barkhor nan jie 16 hao (1996)

    1991-2000ChinaDocumentaryJinchuan Duan

    No.16, Barkhor Street is an old courtyard in the heart of Lhasa and the site of the office of the Barkhor Neighborhood Committee. This masterful cinema verité documentary, the landmark work in the history of independent documentaries about Tibet, provides is a photographic study of rich insight into the basic workings of government in Tibet as it that follows the local Party Secretary, Deputy Director, Director for Women’s Affairs, and Community Policeman, among others, as they implement official policies and manage neighborhood affairs.
    – Maysles Documentary CenterRead More »

  • David Perlov – Yoman Meudkan 1990-1999 AKA Updated Diary 1990-1999 (2001) (DVD)

    2001-2010David PerlovDocumentaryIsrael

    In the 1990s David Perlov returned to the format of the filmed diaries he produced between 1973 and 1983, organized in a different way, closer to the cinematographic essay, and divided into three thematic chapters, “Sheltered Childhood”, “Routine and Rituals” and “Back to Brazil”. In the first, we follow the childhood of his grandchildren; in the second, the political routine of Israel, the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the rise of Benjamin Netanyahu and various rituals that make up the country’s daily life; in the third, Perlov returns to Brazil, remaking, for the last time, his trips to Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Belo Horizonte.Read More »

  • Harutyun Khachatryan – Poeti veradardze AKA Return of the Poet (2005)

    1981-1990ArmeniaDocumentaryPierre Pradinas

    Quote:
    Armenia’s leading living filmmaker, Harutyun Khachatryan, chose his nation’s 19th century poet, Ashugh Jivani, as his new film’s central spirit. This is hardly accidental, for nothing here is prosaic. Here is a dazzling, alternative vision of a cinema that is essentially poetic, metaphorical and allusive. A work of tactile sensuality, it nominally depicts the step-by-step creation of a monumental statue of the poet that ends up traveling on the back of a truck through the Armenian countryside. From this Khachatryan conjures a transcendental cinematic experience, employing a sublime fusion of sound, image and music to evoke the soul of the director’s beloved country and its people.Read More »

  • Max Kestner – Drømme i København AKA Dreams in Copenhagen (2009)

    2001-2010DenmarkDocumentaryMax Kestner

    Dreams in Copenhagen is director Max Kestner’s documentary film portrait of Denmark’s capital. COPENHAGEN DREAMS is a film about the physical surroundings that are part of shaping our lives. About the buildings we wake up in, the front doors we walk out of, the streets we traverse. It is also a film about how the way we live our lives affects our physical surroundings. About the places we dream of and the walls onto which we scratch the names of our loved ones, before it’s too late.Read More »

  • Godfrey Reggio – Naqoyqatsi (2002)

    2001-2010ArchitectureDocumentaryExperimentalGodfrey Reggio

    Naqoyqatsi, also known as Naqoyqatsi: Life as War, is a 2002 documentary film directed by Godfrey Reggio and edited by Jon Kane, with music composed by Philip Glass. It is the third and final film in the Qatsi trilogy.

    Naqoyqatsi is a Hopi word meaning “life as war”. In the film’s closing credits, Naqoyqatsi is also translated as “civilized violence” and “a life of killing each other”. While Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi examine modern life in industrial countries and the conflict between encroaching industrialization and traditional ways of life, using slow motion and time-lapse footage of cities and natural landscapes, about eighty percent of Naqoyqatsi uses archive footage and stock images manipulated and processed digitally on non-linear editing (non-sequential) workstations and intercut with specially-produced computer generated imagery to demonstrate society’s transition from a natural environment to a technology-based one. Reggio described the process as “virtual cinema”.Read More »

  • Robert Kramer – Starting Place/Point de départ (1994)

    1991-2000DocumentaryFranceRobert Kramer

    Quote:
    We are on the continent of Robert Kramer’s essay-films. What country is this, what year, what time? There are no establishing shots, no introductions to ease us in. Everything is in medias res. Kramer never gives us a superimposed title telling us we are watching ‘Vietnam’ or ‘Paris’ or ‘USA’; he never includes the identifying names of people, typewritten on screen, the first time we see them (and indeed, if we ever do learn this, it is often indirectly, by accident); he rarely introduces a radically different piece of footage into the montage with a reassuring title saying ‘ten years ago’, or a voice-off saying ‘I remember …’.Read More »

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