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Once Upon a Time was filmed entirely in different spaces in and around John Berger’s house in the Haute Savoie in France. It’s a moving and unusual meditation on our experience of time, as revealed through a careful selection of contrasting and thought-provoking time-centred ‘stories’, both old and new. And whether written by himself or others, all were read by John and beautifully edited, using only the filmed images of things found inside the house in books or on the walls, or outside in the surrounding countryside and nearest town.
Category: Television
Director Gaspard Bazin is working on a new feature film. For now, he’s still looking at the fundraising and casting stage of the process. He calls upon Jean Almereyda, a once-fashionable producer who is now going through a bad patch, finding it increasingly difficult to raise the capital he needs for his ventures. His wife Eurydice dreams of being a movie star. A perverse game between the two men ensues, with Almereyda wanting to please his wife, but reluctant to demand a role for Eurydice because of Bazin’s reputation as an incorrigible seducer.
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.
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?
Before The Naked Venus, Edgar G. Ulmer shot a 30-minute pilot for a TV series based on The Swiss Family Robinson, that no networks ever picked up. The inexpressive acting of the children caused the wreckage of this short feature, despite the efforts of their coach, Adrianna Ulmer. But the director took advantage of the Mexican location to sketch the theme of Nature as a beautiful prison – an idea he would brilliantly develop in The Cavern (1965). In fact, Ulmer started working on the production of The Cavern in 1957, and this work influenced this fascinating TV oddity.
Documentary about the influential comedy team of Mike Nichols and Elaine May. Includes highlights of the team’s many television appearances, featuring recently discovered kinescopes of live performances not seen since their original television broadcasts in the late 1950s and 60s. Four of their radio sketches have been re-created with new animation created especially for the program. Featuring interviews with Steve Allen, Tom Brokaw, Steve Martin, Arthur Penn, Robin Williams, and others.
Director Robert Altman’s 1996 film, Kansas City – a jazz-tinged melodrama about a corrupt politician and a determined gangster – was notable if only for some remarkable 1930s music as arranged by the innovative John Cale. This documentary is the offspring of that movie, featuring sessions recorded on the set of the earlier film. With Jazz ’34‘s pumping, grinding blues all set to elevate the spirits.
A documentary on film director William Wyler (1902-1981), this feature was conceived by his daughter, Catherine, as a loving tribute to him. Utilizing a wealth of film clips, many in black and white, the movie features interviews with Bette Davis, Lillian Hellman, Audrey Hepburn, Charleton Heston, John Huston, Laurence Olivier, Gregory Peck, Ralph Richardson, Barbra Streisand, Billy Wilder, Talli (the former Margaret Tallichet) Wyler, and the director himself. Some of the best of the Hollywood commentary comes from Wyler himself, interviewed only a few days before he died in 1981.