Discover Movies

First Nations documentary

The classic expedition documentary of the 1975 British Expedition led by Chris Bonington up the South West Face of Everest. The summit was reached by Doug Scott and Dougal Haston followed by an epic bivouac just below the summit. Sadly mountaineer and cameraman Mick Burke died near the summit a day later. Peter Boardman and Pertemba summitted a few days later and made a harrowing descent, finding the top of the fixed ropes only by chance. In many ways, this films records both the end of an era the of big British national expeditions and is the harbinger of a the new alpine style in the Himalaya.

A BAFTA award winning documentary featuring the design, construction and installation of the 30,000 ton steel drilling/production jacket for a BP oilfield in the North Sea.

Kollwitzplatz, Prenzlauer Berg: Children are playing and climbing all over the monument to Käthe Kollwitz, frowning adults are watching them. What would Gustav Seitz, the creator of the sculpture, say? Christa Mühl has asked him but reveals his answer only when the adults have finally disappeared. Until then, she constructs explosive matter as light as a feather, set to Belgian cembalo jazz and with the perky montage style that characterises her early documentary work. After Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler himself had the most controversial scene cut, the film could be broadcast on television and triggered a lively discussion about the practical value of art.

Panama’s strategic geographic position has long been its greatest economic asset, with the Canal serving as the cornerstone of its development. Yet for decades, control of this vital waterway remained in the hands of a foreign power. Through interviews with residents of Panama City, Una bomba a punto de estallar (1977) captures the hopes, doubts and political sentiments surrounding the negotiation of the new treaties between Panama and the United States, offering a vivid portrait of a nation debating its sovereignty and future.

A look at how the landscape of the Scottish Highlands has been shaped by man.

This film documents a day in the life of a 12 year old Korean girl, learning to dive as a haenyeo on the island of Jeju.

A few hours after Sanchez Bravo's execution, his sister recounts the condemned man's last night. Otaegi's mother talks about her son's life and the last conversation she had with him. Txiki's mother speaks of the solidarity of her village, where she has lived for eleven years, a widow with seven children. She denounces the "phantom" trial, the torture and murder of her son.

Hospital documentary on the testing of a medicine produced by a known pharmaceutical company on people considered psychiatrically calibrated that caused a "vascular storm" with horrible convulsions. Patients were discharged when they could make the fascist salute. Found at the market of the Fiera di Senigallia in Milan, signed by Grifi as ready-made.

The film tells about how on the Leningrad radio programs were created for children, about how the child perceives a fairy tale told on the radio. The film features the Honored Artist of the RSFSR, known to all Leningrad children Maria Petrova and People's Artist of the USSR Alexander Borisov.

A documentary about the search for the legendary Bigfoot, a large humanoid creature (also known as Sasquatch) who is rumored to inhabit the forests of the U.S. Pacific Northwest.

Writers, actors, directors discuss E.M. Forster and his literary works.

Recorded at Ronnie Scott's in London in 1974 and backed by the Tommy Flanagan Quartet, Ella Fitzgerald performs some of her most famous songs, including George Gershwin's The Man I Love.

Asma El Bakri's first film, A Drop of Water is a short observational-ethnographic documentary following life—sunrise to sunset—in a Western desert village. The film shows various practices of an endangered way of traditional life: farming, weaving, pottery, dancing, etc.

Earth's environmental crisis--brought about by uncontrolled technological progress--is endangering life on a global scale. At the core of the threats to the planet - wars, overpopulation, pollution, and the depletion of natural resources - is the inadequacy of the nation state to come to terms with the surmounting problems of twentieth century living. What is urgently needed is the kind of international cooperation where nation states relinquish part of their sovereignty to a world body entrusted with the management of mankind's future.

The documentary focuses on a children's home in East Berlin. In 1953, the largest children's home in the GDR was established in Königsheide. Initially built to house war orphans, the educational institution quickly became the GDR's model home and was given the name "Kinderkombinat A.S. Makarenko." From the mid-1960s onwards, "state children" were to be raised here according to the slogan "Ideal home in an ideal state."

Confessions of a surgeon — this is how readers and critics appreciated N. Amosov's book "Thoughts and Heart". Now he has become the hero of the film himself. How he lives, works, thinks, communicates with colleagues, patients, students…

Elder Marie Leo recounts her experiences going through puberty. Growing up on the Líl̓wat Nation near Mount Currie, B.C., Marie details the important process of preparing for womanhood. The various tasks and duties she undertakes demonstrate a complex, beautiful journey a young Líl̓wat person undergoes as they welcome adulthood and increased responsibilities. This short is part of the L’il’wata series. In the early 1970s, at the outset of her documentary career, Alanis Obomsawin visited the Líl̓wat Nation, an Interior Salish First Nation in British Columbia, and created a series of shorts that provide personal narratives about Líl̓wat culture, histories and knowledge.

Career overview of Hollywood director "Wild Bill" Wellman,

Zurich’s Urdorf school was pioneering in terms of sexual education for children in Switzerland. Starting in 1970, pupils of all ages there were offered wider information and more perspectives on gender relations than was habitual then. The Werkfilm Collective portrayed this experiment at a decisive moment: towards its end, when the question arose of whether or not to institutionalise such courses.

“It’s the Same Old Game” is a 16mm color film on urban studies directed by Charles Hobson. It was made to encourage citizen participation in the planning process, and shows examples of poor urban planning and development in which the residents had no voice. This film features interviews with children about their neighborhood, community activists, and planners that advocate for community involvement.

The action takes place in a metallurgical factory which was part of the Pechiney-Ugine-Külhman trust in Couëron, Loire-Atlantique, in 1975. To show their solidarity with their husbands on strike, workers' wives invaded the director's office and obtained in two hours what was refused to them for months. But the management complained and sued. Twelve wives were charged with forcible confinement. The mobilization then widened. The women called on the Bretagne Cinema Production Unit (UPCB) to make a film about their struggle. Narrating the courageous action of solidarity of women with the strikers of the factory and the emergence of a collective awareness, both feminist and working-class, the film is also an echo chamber sensitive to the aspirations of the twelve women who were charged.

Artist John Smith tells stories about tower block life, editing in bold, unconventional fashion, cutting into the material and highlighting the components and conventions of the film form - yet an intimate portrait of the block's inhabitants still emerges.

Shot in 1974 by Danny Lyon and a single audio person, in twenty days in Santa Marta Colombia. The film shows the daily rhythms of a gang of boys who live on the city’s streets. Their survival skills and errant lifestyles are in evidence as they beg for scraps to eat, wheel and deal with storekeepers and street vendors, and play together.

Art film part of the REWIND + PLAY, An Anthology of Early British Video Art box-set.

Early video-installation by Dalibor Martinis, where the artist turns the TV set into a still life and info news into "circulus vitiosus".

Cliff Richard and Cliff Barrows, a member of Billy Graham's team, travel through Israel discussing passages from the Scriptures.

Die alte neue Welt (The Old New World) (1977) is an East German documentary directed by Annelie and Andrew Thorndike. The film explores the evolution of human history over millions of years, tracing the development of societal formations from primitive society to socialism and communism. Through a blend of archival footage, original graphics, and animation, it contextualizes the progress of human civilization within the broader timeline of Earth's history. The documentary argues that only in socialism or communism can a foundation for a dignified human life truly exist. The film features a musical score by Hans-Dieter Hosalla, performed by the Staatskapelle Berlin.

A ten part documentary on the female condition in Italy and in Europe in the 70s.

A BAFTA award nominated documentary looking at educational practices in junior schools across the West Riding of Yorkshire.

The work of photographer Diane Arbus as explained by her daughter, friends, critics, and in her own words as recorded in her journals. Illustrated with many of her photographs. Mary Clare Costello, narrator Themes: Arbus' quirky go-it-alone approach. Her attraction to the bizarre, people on the fringes of society: sexual deviants, odd types, the extremes, styles in questionable taste, poses and situations that inspire irony or wonder. Where most people would look away she photographed.

Peter Yung Wai-chuen's first documentary One Day in Locke (1971) was made to fulfil the wish of his teacher-mentor James Wong Howe, capturing the first Chinatown in the US. Locke locals were Chinese labourers who had come in the 19th century to build the railroad in California. As time passed, the town slipped into a slow decline which shrouded it in poetic desolation.

About a school in Belgium founded in 1907 by Ovide Decroly, doctor and pedagogue.

Machinery at work in a Scottish factory.

The official film record of the Bo'ness Fair which took place in June 1974 in Bo'ness, Scotland.

Young people with disabilities are provided with health care and vocational training. Is it enough to prepare them for their independent life? We get to know some charges of the Rehabilitation Center in Konstancin.

Every year, a ritual known as ida is performed by the Umeda people, who inhabit the dense primary forest of the Waina-Sawanda district of West Sepik, Papua New Guinea. Ida, the central social and cultural drama of the Umeda, is a fertility ritual, in which a dominant theme is the metamorphosis of the cassowaries. An ethnography by anthropologist Alfred Gell, Metamorphosis of the Cassowaries, complements the film.

Đurđa lives deep in the forest in a woodcutters’ settlement. The only woman in this men’s world, she does the household chores for the entire community. A film about her work and her life.

The film observes two Italians, the director's parents. The main theme is a balance of over twenty years of life abroad: what were the reasons, goals, desires, etc. of emigration, and which ones have come about? Emigration is a chronicle of two days of their (our) life, with work, leisure time, thoughts.

A historical survey of the office of the Canadian governor general, from its inception through the inauguration of Edward Schreyer to office.

A documentary about the people living in the South Indies.

Women from three separate Ju/'hoan bands have gathered at a mangetti grove at !O to play an intense game in which under-tones of social and personal tensions become apparent.

Depicts sexual deviations of various kinds and the question of what should be considered "normal" or not. The film deals with homosexuality, masturbation, fetishism, tidal law, voyeurism, exhibitionism etc.

A feature film with documentary inserts about freedom of speech in Norwegian film, from the "witch" dance in Hønefoss in 1977, to the challenging of Norwegian film censorship today.

A Day in the Life of Bonnie Consolo is a 1975 short documentary directed by Barry J. Spinello which presents the daily challenges faced by Bonnie Consolo, an armless woman, and her determination to overcome them. The film shows her driving, cooking, and shopping like anybody else. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film.

Documentary about the extraction and manufacture of charcoal, in Pompeu, Minas Gerais, focusing on charcoal burners in action, their lives, difficulties, relationships with bosses and the work carried out in a medieval process.

In two parts, it documents the litigation of Brigitte Fontaine, Monique Piton, Mireille and Erin Pizzey with Éditions de femmes in 1976 and those of Catherine Leguay and Brigitte Fontaine in 1977.

Short film by Fernando Lopes, decisive figure of the Portuguese New Wave.

A film made on the 50 year anniversary of the Reykjavík Power Plant, which discusses their main activities and future projects.

Blurring the line between documentary and fiction, THE BLUES UNDER THE SKIN dramatizes the tumultuous relationship of a young couple (Onike Lee and Roland Sanchez) as they struggle to overcome the barriers of poverty and prejudice that keep them from finding happiness together.

The film shows a workday of a garbage truck with garbage men on their tour through Prenzlauer Berg, especially in the area around Kollwitzplatz.

Analyzes alternatives in the farming profession in the 1970's. Expresses the opinions and values of two families which exemplify the changes occurring in farming.

Short film about the addictive nature of alcohol