4,137 Matches Found
Made in 1957, this film glamorizes a service job in which minor emergencies appear as serious and absorbing challenges. Marriage is assumed to be the natural end of the middle-class woman's working life. No. 97 in the Eye Witness film series.
Sakpata is one of the main deities of the "Vodoun" pantheon in Benin (Dahomey at the time of filming, in 1958). Initiation into the cult of the Vodoun gives rise to a long seclusion in a "convent" where young neophytes learn the sung dances specific to their divinity. The first part of the film shows the dance being performed to thank someone for a donation. The shot was made using a spring-loaded camera stopping after thirty seconds, while the sound recording on a tape recorder was continuous; the editing was done (for the first part only) not from the image but from the sound. The temporal architecture of the music is thus respected as well as that of the dance, linking several figures, and this in spite of the blacks replacing the missing images.
This documentary which opens with a ten-minute period drama about the importance of Williamsburg in 1774, explains the mission of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Dr. W.A.R. Goodwin in the 1920s to restore Williamsburg to a colonial American icon. Through the painstaking research of curator, historians, and architects, the town's restoration plan is mapped out. Construction tradesmen from the twentieth century transform rundown exteriors into period edifices. Interiors are modified and restored to livable, sometimes elegant, period condition. This vast undertaking leads to mid-century historical interpretation about the importance of the people and ideas of Williamsburg that forged a new nation.
Vertigine (Vertigo) is the original title of a fragment of around 4', signed by Michelangelo Antonioni, which is a part of the eight-minutes documentary La funivia del Faloria. The title was eventually modified in La funivia del Faloria because considered more effective to obtain the governmental prize (at the time the minimum length allowed was 8 minutes). Vertigine was shot in 1949 with the cinematographer Bellisario, who was director of photography in several documentaries in those years, but was edited only in 1950, after Antonioni had made his first feature film, Cronaca di un amore.
A Silver Bear winning short documentary film.
The film reports on the historical development of public transportation.
A satirical and surreal mockery of top-down, positivist urban planning exemplified in the character of "Professor C", the film was made by the architect Giancarlo De Carlo with Carlo Doglio, Michele Gandin, Billa Pedroni, Ludovico Quaroni and Elio Vittorini for the 10th Milan Triennale in 1954. Shot on 35mm film.
A short film about elderly care in Oslo. Social and welfare services. ***** Oslofilm was a series of public information films about life in and around Oslo, produced between 1940 and 1980. Funded by the state, the films offer valuable insight into postwar Norwegian society. A wide range of Norwegian filmmakers contributed to the productions, resulting in a rich variety of styles and expressions. Several of the films also possess notable cinematic qualities, standing out as more than just informational material. The Oslofilms represent a unique and important chapter in Norwegian film history.
This film portrait of the artist Josef Lada was made for the purpose of popularising the works of the contemporary artist, whose creative body of work suited ideological objectives. This biopic is conceived for the most part as a commentary on a series of drawings and paintings. Nonetheless, it also captures the artist while he is at work and in contact with family and friends.
Two kinds of starfish, the brittle and the feather. The brittle star moves its arms alone, without the aid of suckers. Underneath is a single opening. Stalks move food close to the mouth and move waste away. We see vents, used in reproduction and breathing. We watch the hatched young expelled into the water. The camera shows us brittle stars' intricate patters. We observe feather stars in clusters, like ferns. One turns over slowly; arms have branches with stalks for breathing and gathering microscopic food. Reproductive organs are inside branches. We see eggs develop at 1,400 nature's speed. Larvae emerge, 0.1 mm long. They grow. A feather star takes a walk.
Underwater photography, magnified close-ups, and film through microscope present the sea urchin, a complex creature. We see their mouth and five teeth close and open. After injecting one with gelatin, the shell is removed and we see the muscle structure, digestive tube, and reproductive organs. Magnified stems reveal suction cups; stems lengthen and contract allowing the sea urchin to move. We see microscopic calcareous stems; at their ends are jaws with various uses. Cilia everywhere are in constant motion, stirring up water and debris. African music on the soundtrack suggests a shuffle dance.
"Sur Les Traces De Premier De Cordée", a color documentary from 1952 which will be released the same year as the eponymous photo book published by Arthaud, features Roger Frison-Roche and his sidekick Georges Tairraz II on the Aiguille du Grépon (3482 m) in the Aiguilles massif which overlooks the Chamonix valley. Together they co-produce the images of the ascent. The young Pierre Tairraz, who completed his training in Paris, at the school in the rue de Vaugirard (Cinema promotion in 1953), also took part in this very technical aerial filming as assistant to his father Georges Tairraz II and cameraman.
The painter António Cruz wanders around the city of Porto painting what he sees: old and modern buildings, people arriving and leaving work in the factories, children playing. The impressionist realism of Cruz’s drawings dissolves into Oliveira’s vision of Porto, which at the same time portrays the painter and his work.
American tourists explore Sweden by train
One of the first documentaries to focus on the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the film gives voice to survivors of the atomic bombings and documents the long-term effects of radiation on their lives. Combining testimony with stark images of destruction and recovery, it serves as an early cinematic appeal against nuclear war.
Kenneth MacLeod narrates a tour of the beautiful Italian cities of Florence and Venice.
Students from nine nations unite on August 7, 1950 at the Franco-German border near Germanshof, tear down the barriers and remove the border posts and barriers, which they burn in a ceremony. This act is a commitment to Europe and a protest against the arbitrariness of borders between nations.
An early experimental film by Toshio Matsumoto. Produced as part of the student riots in Japan at the start of the 1960s, Matsumoto uses collage, archival footage, and impassioned narration to create an expressive, visceral criticism of the US-Japan Security Treaty.
The lyrical story of a student who got a scarce thing dishonestly, through the prism of the life of Soviet youth in the late 1950s.
Documentary short about Västerbotten, Sweden from the Norwegian border to the coast.
Experimental film picturing artwork by Jerzy Nowosielski.
Documentary short on the Octoberfest in Munich.
Collage with news items about the royal ship Vasa
For four centuries cod has been fished off the coast of Newfoundland. This film shows the exacting work of splitting, salting, drying and grading the fish, as well as the more recent methods of quick-freezing.
Padstow, a fishing village on the coast of Cornwall, celebrates May Day with an ancient custom: two osses (hobby-horses) dance through the town streets accompanied by drums and accordions. All Padstownians participate in the event, which has now become a tourist attraction drawing over tens of thousands of annual visitors. Folklorists Alan Lomax and Peter Kennedy and filmmaker George Pickow collected footage at the festival in 1951, producing a pioneering work in the use of sound, low-light photography, and conversational presentation of narrative. A favorite of Margaret Mead, who used it in her classes, the film circulated widely and continues to have influence today, especially in the neo-Pagan community.
A documentary showing the town of Port Augusta in South Australia.
Manufacturing of ceramic objects at the Arabia factory.
Walt answers the often-asked question of just where the stories for his studio's cartoons come from, which is from practically anywhere.
Deals with the establishment of the Italian republic and Italy’s foreign affairs, particularly how Italy regained national sovereignty and appreciation from the USA and Western Europe after the Second World War. It explains in what way Italy benefits from integration into a Western alliance system (NATO, Council of Europe, European Coal and Steel Community) during the Cold War.
This short film was made by filmmaker (later archivist) Liam Ó Laoghaire (aka Liam O’Leary) and was commissioned by the Cultural Relations Committee of the Irish Department of External Affairs. The film was designed to promote the city of Dublin to its inhabitants and to potential visitors from abroad. Brendan J. Stafford’s crisp black and white cinematography serves the city’s elegant architecture well while the narrator tells of the city’s cultural, literary and architectural history and its many venerable inhabitants. The elegant Georgian squares, the bustling markets, the tranquil parks and the sparkling nightlife present a city that is vibrant, cultured and steeped in history.
This short on movie sound men starts with a short history of sound in the movies. We then see how the different jobs in the sound department contribute to the finished film. They start with the technicians, who record the original sounds, and end with the re-recording mixer who takes several different tracks and blends them into a single soundtrack. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division in 2012.
At a time when the USSR and the USA fervently vied to develop nuclear arms, the mass media buzzed with terms inspired by nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll such as the “Daigo Fukuryu Maru Incident,” the “ash of death,” “radioactive tuna,” and “radioactive rain,” and nuclear testing continued, Japan, the only nation to have suffered an atom-bomb attack, felt massive anxiety. “What is the radioactive ash of death?” “What effect does it have on living creatures?” Against the background of the era, the film scientifically describes the terrors of radioactivity with the cooperation of many scientists, physicians and research institutions.
Documentary made for the 60th anniversary of Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein.
Grandad of Races is a 1950 American short documentary film about the Palio di Siena held in the Piazza del Campo in Siena, directed by André de la Varre. It won an Oscar at the 23rd Academy Awards in 1951 for Best Short Subject.
Documentary short by Bernhard Dörries.
Documentary film with fictional elements. The subject of the film is the economic and social reconstruction achievements of the state of Lower Saxony from 1946 to 1950. These are illustrated primarily by annotated documentary footage and graphics, with the reports embedded in a frame story that introduces and structures the retrospective.
A documentary about a vision care school that enables visually impaired children to learn the skills necessary for a full life.
See the variety of water-skiing in beautiful Cypress Gardens, Florida!
Short Documentary about a garden with strange sculptures near Rome.
This 95-minute, full-color documentary was released in the U.S. as Sixth Continent. That continent is Africa -- or, more specifically, the coast of Ethiopia. Director Folco Quillici takes his cameras deep, deep into the waters near the coastal islands of Dalach, observing the passing parade of sea life on an up-close-and-personal basis. Particularly thrilling is a shark attack and its aftermath, with the cinematographers obviously in the thick of things. Gian Caspare Napolitano provides the narration, while the lush, evocative musical score is the handiwork of Roberto Nicolosi.
A British Transport Film.
At the end of 1954, Eduardo Ducay, Juan Julio Baena and Carlos Saura travelled to the region of Sanabria (province of Zamora) to make a commissioned documentary on the construction of a system of reservoirs. Much of the filmed material was unusable due to a technical problem, but Ducay rescued part of it and combined it with voice-over to construct a work on absences.
Behind the scenes of Knäppupp's 1957 tour
A celebration of the culture and the ancient traditions in Badacsony.
This short documentary offers a step-by-step account of a fast freight train on a run from Toronto to Halifax, with glimpses of the vast amount of organization necessary in the operation of a country-wide transportation network.
This film was cobbled together from Japanese newsreels and propaganda films, to boost home-front morale, filmed during World War Two.
Abandoned documentary on the country Brazil which director Clouzot wanted to make while on honeymoon with his wife Véra Clouzot whose of Brazilian origin. Only an introductionary section set in Paris was ever filmed.
After the last train at night and before the first in the morning, 800 people are hard at work behind the scenes making London's Underground fit to travel on. Including brushing dust from ventilation ducts, ‘fluffers’ cleaning up rubbish, routine rail replacement and fixing a broken rail discovered at 3.30am.
A film encouraging farmers to grow corn.
About the work of fishing vessels of the Okhotsk expedition.