1950s Soho beats with far more energy than its 21st century counterpart in this vivid time capsule.
Social & External
An Austrian director followed five successful African music and dance artists with his camera and followed their lives for a year. The artists, from villages in Ghana, Gambia and Congo, were the subjects of Africa! Africa! touring across Europe, but they have unbreakable roots to their homeland and their families. Schmiderer lovingly portrays his heroes, who tell their stories about themselves, their art and what it means to them to be African with captivating honesty. The interviews are interwoven with dance scenes and colourful vignettes set to authentic music.
A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.
Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording "Daybreak Express", this is a five-minute short of the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated subway station in New York City.
This documentary visits the towns and villages of the Alsace region of France at Christmastime. See the charmingly decorated storybook towns and learn of the unique holiday traditions and celebrations. The Alsatian landscape is covered with medieval towns, castle ruins and vineyards, and the communities of the region create a season of enchantment in their celebration of Christmas.
A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.
Growing up in poverty as a child, Dylan dreamt of travelling the world on a motorcycle. Many years later he broke the shackles of a normal life and took to the road. After journeying 200,000km across four continents, the road from Panama to Colombia comes to an end, swallowed up by an impenetrable jungle. Dylan has no choice but to take to the sea, building a raft powered by his motorcycle engine in the hope of reaching Colombia's road network 700km away. He must brave strong ocean currents and storm batterings in his journey from Central to South America.—Journeyman Pictures
A music documentary made with Sun Ra.
Bruce Brown's The Endless Summer is one of the first and most influential surf movies of all time. The film documents American surfers Mike Hynson and Robert August as they travel the world during California’s winter (which, back in 1965 was off-season for surfing) in search of the perfect wave and ultimately, an endless summer.
Ducks are true originals. There are more than 120 different species of ducks in all, a fantastical group of complex characters. Ducks have a talent for survival, and life stories filled with personality and charm. Each bird is more fun than the last, and will leave you wanting more.
A young student filmmaker in an attempt to shoot a documentary gets lost in New Orleans. Out of fear of making a mistake, he ends up making hundreds of mistakes.
In this nostalgic documentary, restaurant critic Giles Coren challenges Heston Blumenthal to take his restaurant The Fat Duck back to 2001 for a magical feast.
Made on a wind-up Bolex camera, The Sound of Seeing announced the arrival of 21-year-old filmmaker Tony Williams. Based around a painter and a composer wandering the city (and beyond), the film meshes music and imagery to show the duo taking inspiration from their surroundings.
Renowned journalist and jazz critic Nat Hentoff tells the story of his longtime colleague, pioneering TV writer/director/producer, Robert Herridge. Herridge, working closely with Hentoff, was the key force behind the making of some of the most important music productions in American television history, from "The Sound of Jazz" (1957), featuring Billie Holiday, Thelonius Monk, Lester Young, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge, to "The Sound of Miles Davis" (1959), with Davis, John Coltrane and Gil Evans ... to a pair of folk and blues shows, featuring Joan Baez's first national TV appearances (1960), which Bob Dylan says enticed the then 19-year-old Minnesotan to move to New York City and begin his extraordinary career. "The Jazz Television of Robert Herridge" offers Nat Hentoff's video-rich celebration of one of the great musical collaborations of the 20th century.
Since the renewed Intifada began in 2000, there have been over 75 Palestinian suicide bombings. This is the story of 0ne-the bombing of bus 32 in Jerusalem in June 2002. The film connects the stories of a group of ordinary Israelis-Jews and Arabs. Each of them holds a clue to someone who died that day.
David Lloyd George tours Germany, escorted by Nazi government officials, while his chauffeurs lark about with an SS Officer. Lloyd George was pro-German from the mid-1920s, and met Adolf Hitler in 1936. However, by 1938 he had become a leading opponent of appeasement with Germany. This film is believed to have been shot by George Ryder, Lloyd George's chauffeur.
Tucked away in northern Indiana, the city of Peru, Indiana is the circus capitol of the world. Thousands of visitors and townspeople come to this town for two weeks to see the annual amateur circus. Performed by only the local kids, fueled with the rich history and culture of the circus in Peru, this show is anything but amateur.
When Tomoko finds some messages for a 'Mr Smith' on a lost mobile phone, she finds herself on an 'Alice in Wonderland' journey through Tokyo's boulevards and back alleys. From the tyranny of symmetry in soaring office blocks - to buildings that look like space-ships, this creative documentary shows us the city's soul.
In the late 1990s, iconic photographer Bruce Weber barely managed to convince legendary actor Robert Mitchum (1917-97) to let himself be filmed simply hanging out with friends, telling anecdotes from his life and recording jazz standards.
"It must schwing!" was the motto of Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, two German Jewish immigrants who in 1939 set up Blue Note Records, the jazz label that was home to such greats as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon and Sonny Rollins. Blue Note, the most successful movie ever made about jazz, is a testimony to the passion and vision of these two men and certainly swings like the propulsive sounds that made their label so famous.
