Several well-known and pioneering abstract filmmakers discuss the history of non-objective cinema, the works of those that came before them and their own experiments in the field of visionary filmmaking.
Category: Documentary
This compilation documentary was produced for HBO with the association of the American Film Institute as part of the worldwide salute to the 100th anniversary of motion pictures. The film uses extensive historical and new interviews, from D.W. Griffith and Lillian Gish to important actors and directors of today, and hundreds of clips from well-known films to effectively tell the story of the American film.
A documentary film which captures the zeitgeist of the Ulster punk scene in the late 70s during The Troubles. Featuring live performances from bands, such as The Undertones and Stiff Little Fingers and interviews with fans.
This informative program looks at the conflicts that arise when a black man replaces a white chief warden in Uganda.
This film features interviews with a number of hearing-impaired women (no men), often in their homes, where they discuss their use of sign language.
A peek into the life of motorcycle riders and racers of the era.The film covers speedway, desert racing, road racing, hill climb, grass track, drag racing, trials, sidecars, dirt track and motocross in the 1970s.
In 1963, 22-year-old Bertrand Blier invited 11 of his peers to come to a film studio and talk about their lives. The record of what was said, Hitler? Connais pas!, is a discussion of values that remains relevant and fascinating today. The footage was shot just five years prior to May 1968, and the atmosphere of that time is clearly discernible: these young people may not yet be revolutionaries, but there is clearly a ferment in the air.
In 1978, Ruiz was commissioned to make a television documentary about the French elections from the viewpoint of a Chilean exile in the 11th arrondissement. But, contrary to the producers’ expectation, the Left lost. Ruiz seized on this anti-climax to make a documentary about nothing except itself – a film whose central subject is forever lost in digression and ‘dispersal’, harking back to his Chilean experiments of the ’60s. It is the best, and certainly the funniest, of self-reflexive deconstructions of the documentary form. Ruiz drolly exaggerates every hare-brained convention of TV reportage, from shot/reverse shot ‘suture’ and talking-head experts to establishing shots and vox pops (narrator’s note to himself: “Include street interviews ad absurdum”.)