Portrait of Costa da Morte (coast region in Galicia, Spain) from an ethnographic and landscape level, exploring also the collective imagination associated with the area. A region marked by strong oceanic feeling dominated by the historical conception of world's end and with tragic shipwrecks. Fragmentary film that approaches to the anthropological from its protagonists: sailors, shellfish, loggers, farmers ... A selection of characters representative of the traditional work carried out in the countryside in the region, allowing us to reflect on the influence of the environment on people.
A year ago, 36-year-old Jonny Kennedy died. He had a terrible genetic condition called Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB) - which meant that his skin literally fell off at the slightest touch, leaving his body covered in agonizing sores and leading to a final fight against skin cancer. In his last months Jonny decided to work with filmmaker Patrick Collerton to document his life and death, and the result was a film, first broadcast in March, that was an uplifting, confounding and provocatively humorous story of a singular man. Not shying away from the grim reality of EB, the film was also a celebration of a life lived to the full.
Joaquim Pinto has been living with HIV and VHC for almost twenty years. “What now? Remind Me” is the notebook of a year of clinical studies with toxic, mind altering drugs as yet unapproved. An open and eclectic reflection on time and memory, on epidemics and globalization, on survival beyond all expectations, on dissent and absolute love. In a to-and-fro between present and past memories, the film is also a tribute to friends departed and those who remain.
Heddy Honigmann returns to her birthplace of Lima, Peru to reacquaint herself with a place and people dear to her heart. It is about a forgotten city, a forgotten history and a forgotten people. With irony as their loved weapon for survival, they have to forget as well, in order not to give way to cynicism, hatred and grief. It is about remembering the old days when life - despite class differences, corruption and violence - was still good: waiters, bartenders and shopkeepers who are fighting a losing battle and have lost everything. It is also about the children who manage to survive by mastering the art of street life and who reveal the country in it's true colours. Just like the dogs they share the streets with, they have no good memories to forget.
Breer's extraordinary autobiographical film combines personal and family photos with intense colors, textures and geometric abstractions. Originally presented as part of Karlheinz Sotckhausen's 1964 premiere of Originale. - Harvard Film Archive
Andy Warhol is a lyrical exploration of Warhol's creative process by filmmaker, painter, and actress Marie Menken. Using a hand-held camera, Menken captures Warhol and his assistants, including Gerard Malanga, as they work at the Factory. The result is an intimate portrait of the artist in the process of creating some of his most famous works, including the Brillo boxes, the Jackie series, and the Flowers silkscreens.
Featuring the stories and music of seminal Cajun musicians "Bois Sec" Ardoin and Canray Fontenot, Dry Wood is a short, vibrant documentary portrait of life, food, music and festivity in the Louisiana Delta from the singular Les Blank. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 1999.
"I was interested by the fact that some old guy, after the Parthenon’s glamour, devoted himself in a much smaller temple, where there was no white marble, no nothing. All Greek temples are dedicated to Apollo etc, and this particular one was not dedicated to anyone and is in a place where there never was a city nearby, in a kind of wasteland, in a ditch. But, just by going up a bit –you are in the centre of Peloponissos- on a clear day, you can see the sea on both your left and right. I went back there, at least six, seven or eight times, as if I wanted to think or find myself. So, at the temple in Bassae, I made a short 10 minute film and I was lucky enough to encounter two days of clouds and mist between the columns." —ecofilms.gr (Jean-Daniel Pollet, Tours d’horizons, Editions de l’oeil 2005)
Over three very personal films, Sir David Attenborough looks back at the unparalleled changes in natural history that he has witnessed during his 60-year career.
This short follows a day of work for an Everglades wildlife trapper catching animals for zoos around America. In this film, his assignment is to go out into the swamp with his Indian assistant and find a bobcat, 2 black bear cubs and six rattlesnakes.
Homo Sapiens 1900 is a 1998 documentary directed by Peter Cohen, about various eugenics methods that were in practice in Europe during the first part of the 20th century. Eugenics is to be the scientific credo of the 20th century. The man credited with its invention, Francis Galton, says it is based on the concept that the evolution of man is crippled by the ill-conceived - those unfit to breed. The study of eugenics thus would concern itself with distinguishing the weed from the good flowers.
A voyage into the far west of Brazil leads us to a monumental structure - petrified at the centre of the savannah. Inspired by the epic construction of the city of Brasília, the film uses this history to imagine it otherwise. "I look at Brasília the way I look at Rome : Brasília began with a final simplification of ruins". Through the geological traces that lead us to this fictive monument, the film unearths a history of exploration, prophecy and myth.
A Trip Down Memory Lane is a 1965 experimental collage film by Arthur Lipsett, created by editing together images and sound clips from over fifty years of newsreel footage. The film combines footage from a beauty contest, religious procession, failed airflight, automotive and science experiments, animal experimentation, skyscraper construction, military paraphernalia, John D. Rockefeller and scenes of leisure, Richard Nixon and scenes of war, blimps and hot air balloons, and a sword swallower. Lipsett envisioned his film as a kind of cinematic time capsule for future generations.
'The Economics of Happiness' features a chorus of voices from six continents calling for systemic economic change. The documentary describes a world moving simultaneously in two opposing directions. On the one hand, government and big business continue to promote globalization and the consolidation of corporate power. At the same time, all around the world people are resisting those policies, demanding a re-regulation of trade and finance - and, far from the old institutions of power, they're starting to forge a very different future. Communities are coming together to re-build more human scale, ecological economies based on a new paradigm - an economics of localization.
In the eyes of a foreigner practically any street of Mexico City’s Centro Histórico holds potential for a film. Life on the street deserves more than just the natural condition of observer anyone could have, it demands an extra attention. In a 100-meter radius, the sociological exuberance of the events going on is simply impossible to ignore. The street is a mise en scène in itself.
By showing a series of different-coloured objects, the film aims to familiarize very young children with the various colours, and ends with a shot of a blackboard, a symbol of learning.