Produced in 1927 at the height of the silent era, these fascinating short subjects were presented in serial format in theaters with a new installment weekly. We are taken behind the scenes in the town where 85% of all American motion pictures were created. We are taken backstage where some of the many highlights include what movie sets look like in real life, Cecil B. DeMille pondering a new story, directors on the set directing, Lon Chaney hamming it up on the set of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Hollywood Boulevard, Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre and much more.
Tag: USA
Since the turn of the century, popular media in the U.S. have promoted a stereotyped image of Latin America in order to justify the concept of U.S. dominance in the hemisphere. The Gringo in Mañanaland uses travelogues, dramatic films, industrial films, newsreels, military footage, geographical textbook illustrations, and political cartoons to take a detailed look at United States media representations of Latin America.
Surveying representative moments from the history of Mesoamerican antiquarianism, this experimental documentary suggests how diplomacy and Pan-Americanism framed the recontexualization of archeological objects as art. Part faked newsreel, part diffusionist rant, Ruins uses appropriated sounds and images to contemplate a history of appropriated objects. The film visits with Brigido Lara, master forger, and suggests parallels between the documentary film and the fake.
A remarkably colourful and absorbing documentary, Power Trip takes us to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia where AES, a multinational conglomerate based in Virginia, has bought into the recently privatised business of electricity supply. First task: persuade consumers accustomed to getting their power for free to part with half their incomes to pay for it. Second task: deal with riots. Next, dismantle countless homemade wiring systems, detect elaborate power diversion mechanisms and install meters… The obstacles to commercial success pile up on each other like an escalating absurdist nightmare that takes us into the highest echelons of political power and corruption.
A timid night-school teacher becomes the world’s first pregnant man after a one-night stand, sparking a whirlwind of media attention, political panic, and increasingly absurd situations as he struggles to navigate fame, love, and impending fatherhood.
The story of a young boy (Izzy) and his family, living in New York. His father (Paul) has recently had a stroke, completely debilitating him mentally and physically. Izzy tries to escape the reality of it all by breaking into nearby homes. His mother (Sue) struggles to keep the family together, battling Izzy’s outbursts and the strains of the entire situation.
A farm woman is accused of murdering her husband on a desolate farm in early 1900s Midwest America. Two women, a neighboring farmer’s wife and the sheriff’s wife, find themselves alone in the jailed woman’s kitchen while the prosecuting attorney and their husbands search the farm for evidence that would prove a motive for murder. As the women gather some things together for the accused, they uncover details of her life and discover what may be just what the men are looking for. Adapted from Susan Glaspell’s 1917 short story of the same name, the film illuminates a women’s world largely unnoticed by the men.
Born to Film is, among other things, intimately autobiographical, interspersing footage of Danny Lyon’s own young son with film shot in the 1930’s by Lyon’s father, a doctor who immigrated from Germany… Lyon’s passionate vision has deepened and grown in resonance and the film is not just family or even social history, but about human continuity, the power of instinct to survive, the grace that love and play bring to it, the wonder of being alive.