Rock Hudson narrates a compilation of clips from Marilyn Monroe’s 20th Century-Fox movies. The documentary traces Monroe’s early studio beginnings as a bit player in “A Ticket to Tomahawk” to her final screen moments in the unfinished “Something’s Got to Give.”
Category: Documentary
This insightful documentary features some of the major and most beautiful actresses to grace the silver screen. It shows how the movie industry changed its depiction of sex and actresses’ portrayal of sex from the silent-movie era to the present. Classic scenes are shown from the silent movie “True Heart Susie,” starring Lillian Gish, to “Love Me Tonight” (1932), blending sex and sophistication, starring Jeanette MacDonald (pre-Nelson Eddy) and to Elizabeth Taylor in “A Place in the Sun” (1951), plus many, many more.
Growing Up Female is the very first film of the modern women’s movement. Produced in 1971, it caused controversy and exhilaration. It was widely used by consciousness-raising groups to generate interest and help explain feminism to a skeptical society. The film looks at female socialization through a personal look into the lives of six women, age 4 to 35, and the forces that shape them–teachers, counselors, advertising, music and the institution of marriage. It offers us a chance to see how much has changed–and how much remains the same.
The first film of Latvian cinema’s “new era”, that of the Riga School of Poetic Documentary Cinema. The story of a little girl in a white dress wandering the streets of Riga in search of the flowers she has seen in a shop window was originally conceived and shot as a short film, but its documentary character is so abundant and artistically valuable that this little film became a turning point in cinema history and the beginning of a new era.
In Macedonia, former Yugoslavia, two Sheikhs squabble for power in a Dervish brotherhood. In this fragile, unsteady society, far from God and traditional Sufism, their petty quarrel focuses on the issue of which group will pierce themselves at the Nevruz ceremony. Through the rivalry between these two characters, who correspond to two opposing archetypes of religious leaders, the documentary offers a living glimpse of spiritual experience at a popular level which, despite the humorous situations and extraordinary images, may shock our sensitivity.
Ya Zamene Ahu is a quiet documentary about the visitors of the shrine of Imam Reza, the eighth Shiite Imam, in the city of Mashhad in the North East of Iran. Nicknamed the “Guardian of Deer,” it is said that Imam Reza once protected a deer chased by a hunter.
KASTÉLYOK LAKÓI shows the clash between old structures and Hungary’s socialist present. “In 1966, I made the documentary KASTÉLYOK LAKÓI about five castles in Gödöllő that used to be the Habsburgs’ royal residence. When I filmed there, parts of the building had been repurposed, converted into an old people’s home and a Russian barrack. Everything was in a very run-down state. Dilapidated palaces in which old, confused people lived who still had their own opinions about the world and fateful stories to tell. And behind them, one can still see the baroque facades and snow-white fireplaces in the film.” – Judit Elek.
Documentary about some people afflicted with congenital deformities of an extreme nature. Their ability to live with their aberrations while remaining socially involved and upbeat is truly inspirational. While their predecessors were often seen in so called “freak shows” that were part of various exhibitions from Coney Island to traveling circuses, these performers were actually the more fortunate ones in an era of little tolerance for those who were different from the accepted norm.