Documentary

  • Ulrich Seidl – Einsvierzig (1980)

    1971-1980AustriaDocumentaryUlrich Seidl

    Quote:
    The subject is a 50-year-old dwarf who stopped growing at 1 meter 40. He is fat and plays the piano strangely but the point Seidl makes is that he is like others, and you should judge him according to the same criteria you would judge them.Read More »

  • Ulrich Seidl – Bilder einer Ausstellung (1996)

    1991-2000AustriaDocumentaryUlrich Seidl

    Quote:
    Seidl takes his camera to an abstract-art exhibition and asks the public to comment on what they see. Some analyse the work from a strictly Freudian angle as they nibble their canapés; others can only see penises. In reality, the paintings are simply an excuse for Seidl to unmask the anguishes, fears, suspicions and sexual taboos of gathered together there.Read More »

  • Ulrich Seidl – Spass ohne Grenzen AKA Fun without Limits (1998)

    1991-2000AustriaDocumentaryUlrich Seidl

    Quote:
    Whether in the countryside or on the edge of the city, amusement parks or fun fairs are hot across Europe. Their names, amusement parks and fun fairs, say it all: People want to be amused, they want to have fun. For example, at the Europark in southern Germany a dummy with a contorted face sits in an electric chair. Smoke comes out of him and a light flickers off and on from out of the roasted “brain” of the dummy, which shudders and cries in pain. A film on the culture of amusement in today’s “leisure” society.Read More »

  • Kazuo Hara – Nippon Asbest Village AKA Sennan Asbestos Disaster (2016)

    2011-2020DocumentaryJapanKazuo Hara

    Ten years in the making, Kazuo Hara’s three-and-a-half-hour-long epic is a longitudinal study of asbestos victims demanding reparations from a heartless state. Hara records the eight-year struggle of the plaintiffs and their lawyers. A dogged and dramatic depiction of their intense battle.Read More »

  • Ulrich Seidl – Die letzten Männer AKA The Last Real Men [Uncut Version] (1994)

    1991-2000AustriaDocumentaryUlrich Seidl

    Quote:
    The Last Real Men (Die letzten Männer) is an hour-long piece following the Viennese teacher Karl S. on his search for a wife who doesn’t question traditional gender roles and “doesn’t talk back”. In so doing, Seidl probes the motives that make Austrian men look for wives in Thailand and the Philippines.Read More »

  • Ulrich Seidl – Der Busenfreund AKA The Bosom Friend (1997)

    1991-2000AustriaDocumentaryUlrich Seidl

    A 1997 TV film. Two descriptions:

    “Main character of this movie is Rene Rupnik, a former math teacher. He is forty years old and lives together with his mother in a desolate block of flats. Ever since his early youth women with big breasts have fascinated him, because they symbolise a kind of earth mother to him. He has never had an especially close relationship with his own mother; she was too ‘bony’ for him. Object of Rene’s fantasy is the actress Senta Berger, to him everything a woman should be. Standing by the blackboard and explaining the mathematical laws of sine and cosine (‘sinus’ is bosom in Latin), Rene sings the praises of the female curves and those of Santa Berger in particular. Filmmaker Ulrich Seidl let the former teacher speak freely about his obsessions and desires, intercutting his monologues with scenes from the protagonist’s day-to-day life.”Read More »

  • João Pedro Rodrigues – Turdus merula Linnaeus, 1758 (2020)

    2011-2020DocumentaryJoão Pedro RodriguesPortugal

    From 7 to 25 April, 18 days of confinement during which a male blackbird takes care and guarantees the safety of its young, until they release the nest.Read More »

  • Michael Blackwood – Louis Kahn: Silence and Light (1995)

    1991-2000ArchitectureDocumentaryMichael BlackwoodUSA

    With the participation of William Jordy, Jonas Salk, Aldo Rossi, Arata Isozaki, Tadao Ando, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott-Brown, Brendan Gill, and others. Narration by Kenneth Frampton.

    As an architect, educator, and philosopher, Louis Kahn played a prominent role in the history of 20th century architecture. An examination of six of his most significant buildings gives insight to his unique vision: The Salk Institute in La Jolla; the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth; the Center for British Art in New Haven; the library at Philips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire; the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad and the Parliament Buildings of Bangladesh in Dhaka.Read More »

  • Hartmut Bitomsky – Reichsautobahn aka Highways to the Reich (1986)

    1981-1990ArchitectureDocumentaryGermanyHartmut Bitomsky

    “We shall make sure that this work will not be separated from those who built it.” (Adolf Hitler)

    Legend has it that Hitler came up with the idea of the autobahn while he was in prison in the twenties, and for this reason it was also called “Adolf Hitler’s road”. But neither Hitler nor any other Nazi invented the autobahn – the industry had already worked out the plans before 1933. What the Nazis, however, did invent was the “aesthetic of the autobahn”: it was supposed to be a cultural monument – “not the shortest but the noblest connection between two points”. The autobahn was planned as an artistic work of construction and was elevated to an object of art.Read More »

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