Banned by the BBC in 1971, director Tony Palmer’s profile of the late Peter Sellers was, in the words of the film’s subject himself, “the only portrait which really understood me.” Sellers was an icon of comedy and a true innovator, but a look inside reveals a tragic figure. How could one of the world’s most beloved comic talents have such a morbidly distorted opinion of himself? In this documentary, interviews with such friends, fans, and colleagues as Raquel Welch, Yul Brenner, Spike Milligan, Laurence Harvey, and others reveal the true personality behind the man who was loved by everyone, but still viewed himself as entirely alone.
Category: Documentary
An insightful illumination of author Paul Bowles’ original and lesser-known career as an avant-garde composer, Owsley Brown’s Night Waltz is an elegant and soulful document of discovery. Interviewed in Morocco during the last months of his life, Bowles journeys back to his early years as a contemporary and occasional collaborator of other such iconic figures as Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and Orson Welles. Bowles’ uncut compositions–performed by the Eos Orchestra–are punctuated with stunning visual essays by filmmakers Nathaniel Dorsky and Rudy Burckhardt. Long after retiring from his more well-known profession, Bowles kept music as a vital part of his life, tapping out fresh rhythms on his Tangier table tops until the end of his days.
Ultimately stunning in its revelations, Lutz Dammbeck’s The Net explores the incredibly complex backstory of Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber. This exquisitely crafted inquiry into the rationale of this mythic figure situates him within a late 20th Century web of technology—a system that he grew to oppose. A marvelously subversive approach to the history of the Internet, this insightful documentary combines speculative travelogue and investigative journalism to trace contrasting countercultural responses to the cybernetic revolution.
In this extraordinary six-part series, film historian and critic Noel Burch uses clips of rare archival silent film treasures to take us on a riveting journey of discovery. How did silent film reach such incredible heights in a mere 30 years? Why did film in the United States so quickly become such a popular art form?
This 30-minute Soviet biographical documentary shows the selfless work of Anna Ivanovna Zelenova, the director of the Pavlovsky Palace Museum, who devoted her entire life to the palace and survived with it years of occupation and rebirth from the ashes.
Lena Horne’s famous song “Now!”, which was banned in the U.S. in the 1960s, was an angry call for struggle against racism. This film uses Horne’s song as the vehicle for a montage of film and photographic images from the U.S. civil rights movement. These images of racial struggle and oppression in the United States convey the heroism and pathos of the black protagonists of the Civil Rights movement, and the brutality of white police and Klansmen and the system they represent. Santiago Alvarez responds to the song’s escalating rhythm by moving between images to evoke the violence with which American society was being torn apart by white supremacy, and the intensity of the African-American struggle to right these injustices.
Jane Fonda rehearses for the stage play Fun Couple, which is her first starring role on Broadway. As the daughter of the famous Henry Fonda, Jane strives to prove her acting chops in live theater; for her, the real measure of success. The film follows Jane through demanding rehearsals, testing the play for live audiences and, finally, opening night in New York. Though her show opens to devastating reviews, Jane’s love of acting, her determination and her resilience shine through the biting criticism. Takes viewers backstage and behind the scences with a surprisingly endearing young actress. Jane captures the earliest stirrings of the star Jane Fonda would become.
Along a railroad in the south of the former Zaire UN troups discover a few thousand refugees from Rwanda. The camps for the survivors are being massacred a little later on April 25th 1997 by the so-called liberating rebel army of the new “Democratic Republic” of Kongo – and nobody has seen this in the evening news.