Documentary

  • Jean-Daniel Pollet – L’ordre (1973)

    1971-1980DocumentaryFranceJean-Daniel Pollet

    Quote:
    The most beautiful imprecation I know of : a “dead man” speaking to the living ones, questioning, inverting the notions of health and sanity, life and death.
    (Not) strangely enough 12 years before Shoah is finished, some parallels ways are found to give the floor to the dead through the places they lived in, the places that saw them suffering from the “order”.Read More »

  • Jacques Perrin & Jacques Cluzaud & Michel Debats – Le Peuple migrateur AKA Winged Migration (2001)

    2001-2010DocumentaryFranceJacques CluzaudJacques PerrinMichel Debats

    Quote:
    This documentary follows several species of migratory birds over a four year filming period. These birds travel several hundreds if not thousands of miles toward the equator in the autumn, and make the return journey to their higher latitude summer homes in the spring, always taking the same route, using the natural compasses of the universe, the stars, to find their way. Some species, like the arctic tern, even fly from pole to pole. These long and often torturous treks are a matter of survival, to live in a hospitable climate and find sources of food. With the exception of migratory penguins, travel over oceans is especially difficult as the birds have little refuge unless there is something floating on the water, such as a ship, on which to land. Read More »

  • Makoto Satô – Aga no kioku AKA Memories of Agano (2005)

    2001-2010DocumentaryEthnographic CinemaExperimentalJapanMakoto Satô

    Satō Makoto discovered documentary film when he visited Minamata (well known as the former site of an environmental disaster) as a student, and worked on Katori Naotaka’s The Innocent Sea. While touring Japan with the film, he met people who lived by the polluted Agano River in Niigata and decided to make a film about them. Living there with seven crew members for three years, Living on the River Agano was completed in 1992 and showed people who live with the river and work in agriculture and fishing, quietly probing the cruelty of nature destroyed. Ten years later, and after attending several funerals of people who appeared in the first feature, the team returned to the area. The resulting film Memories of Agano is a ghostly poem on people, fields, stories, songs and buildings receding into absence, the power of images and the strength of sound to revive the past.Read More »

  • Shinsuke Ogawa – Nippon-koku Furuyashiki-mura AKA Furuyashiki: A Japanese Village (1984)

    1981-1990DocumentaryJapanShinsuke Ogawa

    Quote:
    This is Ogawa Productions’ first major film from their Yamagata period. They had already started photography on Magino Village: A Tale but they were drawn to this village deep in the high country above Magino when a particularly cold bout of weather threatened crops. Inevitably, their attention strayed from the impact of weather and geography on the harvest to the “life history” of Furuyashiki Village. On the one hand, Ogawa returns to his roots by playing with the conventions of the science film. At the same time, he discovers a local, peripheral space in which to think about the nation and the state of village Japan. From this “distant perspective” in the very heart of the Japanese mountains, Ogawa discovers a village still dealing with the trauma of global warfare and struggling for survival as their children flee for the cities.Read More »

  • Ebrahim Golestan – Tappe-haye Marlik AKA The Hills of Marlik (1963)

    1961-1970DocumentaryEbrahim GolestanIranShort Film

    The Hills of Marlik (1963, 15 min.) beautifully and suggestively documents archaeological excavations.

    Directed and narrated by Ebrahim Golestan.Read More »

  • Gualtiero Jacopetti & Franco Prosperi – Addio Zio Tom AKA Goodbye Uncle Tom [Italian cut] (1971)

    1971-1980CultDocumentaryFranco ProsperiGualtiero JacopettiItalyThe Cannon Group

    Synopsis:
    Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco E. Prosperi, best-known for the groundbreaking shockumentary Mondo Cane, directed this bizarre and shocking look at slavery in America. Set in the deep South prior to the Civil War, Zio Tom finds Jacopetti and Prosperi travelling back in time aboard a helicopter to investigate the nuts and bolts of slavery as it happened in the United States prior to abolition. Along the way, the filmmakers go aboard a slave ship as frightened Africans are brought to America under inhuman conditions; they witness the dangerous and degrading process by which slaves were made ready for market; and they visit a “breeding farm” for slaves after laws prohibit the importation of slaves from abroad. Read More »

  • Luciano Emmer – Parole dipinte. Il cinema sull’arte di Luciano Emmer [+Extras] (1946-1966; 2000-2009)

    ArthouseDocumentaryItalyLuciano Emmer

    The art film by Luciano Emmer: the camera explores the figurative worlds of Giotto, Bosch, Carpaccio, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Picasso. First edition on DVD of a valuable asset for art history and Italian cinema.
    This two-DVD boxset presents, collected for the first time, a wide selection of art films made by Luciano Emmer (1918-2009). Emmer, screenwriter and director, is the author of films that told with delicacy and humor about Italy in the Fifties (Domenica d’agosto, Terza liceo) and one of the inventors of TV commercials; especially personal and meaningful is his work on art documentaries, awarded all over the world.Read More »

  • Paolo Cavara & Gualtiero Jacopetti & Franco Prosperi – Mondo cane (1962)

    Documentary1961-1970CultFranco ProsperiGualtiero JacopettiItalyPaolo Cavara

    Synopsis:
    A documentary that shocked many viewers at the time of its release, this film presents scenes from across the globe that feature strange rituals. Animal slaughter and bizarre religious ceremonies are among the many events in the movie, which also exhibits cuisine that is highly unconventional to the Western palate. The collage-like production covers a lot of ground, both literally and figuratively, in depicting unusual cultural practices from around the world.Read More »

  • Peter Neal & Nicolas Roeg – Glastonbury Fayre (1972)

    1971-1980DocumentaryMusicalNicolas RoegPeter NealUnited Kingdom

    Synopsis:
    In the Summer of 1971 the Glastonbury legend was born when the organisers decided to try and create a festival that would be a forerunner for an ‘alternative and utopian society’. The festival encompassed Midsummer’s Day, and in true medieval tradition, the area of Worthy Farm, Pilton was given over to music, dance, poetry, theatre, spontaneous entertainment and nudity.Read More »

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