Looks at the work of Brazilian photojournalist Sebastiao Salgado (b.1944). In his monumental photo-essay, Workers, Salgado’s dominant theme is the displacement of manual labor by technological advances. He documents the effects of this new industrial revolution on laborers in Eastern Europe, Cuba, Gdansk, Brazil, India, Sicily, and Bangladesh. Includes archival footage of Salgado’s life and commentary by artists, photographers, critics, and writers such as Jorge Armado, Robert Delpire, Jimmy Fox, and Arthur Miller.
Category: Documentary
Cinema arrives “for the first time” in the mountains… This Cuban documentary short film gathers the experience of a rural community in the mountains of the east of the island, where the cinema arrives for the first time, thanks to the mobile cinemas created for this purpose by the Revolution. The spectator receives the different emotions that an audience of men, women and children from the countryside provokes when they see the first film of their lives: “Modern Times”, by Charles Chaplin.
In Six O’Clock News, Ross McElwee pursues murder, mayhem and catastrophe the same way he pursued southern women in Sherman’s March. Made after McElwee becomes a father and finds himself at home watching a lot more TV, he becomes obsessed with the nightly tales of calamity reported on by the local news. This fascination soon turns into another cross country journey to unearth the full stories of those affected. As McElwee pursues this project he also finds himself in Hollywood preparing to direct a feature based on a fictional character much like himself.
An emotional and visually attractive portrait of timeless moments in human life. 235 000 000 was made on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the 1917 Revolution. Without any commentary, allowing images to speak for themselves to music.
A portrait of film critic Manny Farber, featuring interviews with Farber and art critic Dave Hickey, as well as inventively displayed clips of the films that Farber discusses.
This short film is only thirteen minutes long, but it is a razor-sharp depiction of civilization pushing out Europe’s last wilderness in Northern Sweden. The white man is hunting ptarmigan, enormous exer-tions are being expended, watercourses are running dry and forests are being devastated. Thirteen minutes about a world in change. But un-fortunately not for the better.
Documentary about the influential pop composer and record producer Joe Meek, who died in dramatic circumstances in 1967 after a bizarre childhood and a career, often controversial, which spanned the period from the mid-50s to the rise of the Beatles in the 60s. At the end of his life he was suffering from paranoid delusions that people were watching him through walls. Alan Lewens’ film charts an Ortonesque tale of post-war Britain.