Category: Documentary

December 25, 2023 / Documentary

DON’T SHOOT THE COMPOSER is far from an ordinary profile of Georges Delerue. It also serves as a calling card for Ken Russell, whose work would define the 1970s as Delerue’s did in the 1960s. It begins with a sly work of pastiche, parodying the conventions of French noir. It goes onto encompass slapstick, verité scenes of the Delerue family and a harrowing montage of the Vietnam War. This eclectic approach gives us a sense of the different facets of Delerue’s life- his love of cinema, his home life, his work ethic. It also prefigures Russell’s feature length biopics of Mahler and Liszt, though in a more modest- and lucid- fashion.

December 25, 2023 / Documentary

Interweaving poetry, painting, photography, music and sculpture, this feature documentary is an innovative look at the lives and work of Canadian men and women artists of Italian origin. Broaching issues of identity and culture, the film explores the relationship between the immigrant experience and the creative process.

December 24, 2023 / Documentary

Filmed on location at La Plata, Castro’s former guerrilla headquarters- the first time any foreign film crew had been permitted there – the documentary examines the origins of Castro’s revolution, and its ultimate successes and failures. It places U.S.-Cuban relations within the context of history, dating back to the Spanish-American War in 1898. The documentary goes on to paint a canvas of everyday Cuban life. It contrasts the successes of Cuba – medical care, education and housing – with the often repressive political measures implemented by the Castro government. We hear from Cuban artists, State Department officials, exiled writers, and Fidel Castro himself.

November 26, 2023 / Documentary

This travelogue tells the story of Turkey from 200BC, including the attack by the Greeks, Romans, the origination of the first seven religions, the Crusades, the creation of the Turkish State and the modern tourist industry.

November 21, 2023 / Documentary
November 20, 2023 / Documentary

A requiem for a Russian peasant woman, Maria Semionovna Voinova. The film is in two chapters. The first chapter consists of an impression of Maria Semionovna, scenes of the colours of summer time: hay–making, bathing in a river, work in the flax fields and a holiday in the Crimea. The second chapter, set nine years later, is in black and white and deals with how Maria Semionovna’s life ended. The mood is one of a sad and elegiac narration.

November 18, 2023 / Documentary

Beginning with the arrival by canoe of a TV and VCR in their village, The Spirit of TV documents the emotions and thoughts of the Waiãpi as they first encounter their own TV images and those of others. They view a tape from their chief’s first trip to Brasilia to speak to the government, news broadcasts, and videos on other Brazilian native peoples. The tape translates the opinions of individual Waiãpi on the power of images, the diversity of native peoples, and native peoples’ common struggles with federal agents, goldminers, trappers and loggers.

November 18, 2023 / Documentary

If we split the Spanish word “cadáveres” (corpses) in three parts, we obtain another three different words: “Cada-ver-es”, that can be roughly translated in English as “Every-sight-is”. This experimental documentary follows the life and work of Juan Espada, the man in charge at the morgue of the Medicine Faculty in València, Spain, and deals with our visual taboos, the ones that we evade to watch: madness, solitude, death,… and several more that get portraited during its shocking footage. Shot on 16mm with a budget so low that the filmmaker had to sell his camera to finish post-production.