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A group of school kids on a ski trip start hearing startling news from the radio.

The Dislocation of Amber was filmed in the city of Suakin, a formerly flourishing port in Sudan, now in ruins. Its history is one of famine and opulence, devastation and progress, cultural damage and rich trade. Shariffe used the poetry of the great Sufi masters Ibn al-Farid, and Sheikh Abd al-Rahim al-Burai (Burai of Sudan) to accentuate a sense of desertion and alienation hinted at in the title. This surreal masterpiece of Sudanese cinema features poems sung by the late Sudanese singer Abdel-Aziz Dawoud.

“I think my film represents above all the proof to those who want to understand and accept it, that poetry can’t be filmed, that it is useless to try” - João César Monteiro

Part of BFI collection "Worth the Risk?"

A movie about giving birth.

In 1970, a British film crew set out to make a straightforward literary portrait of James Baldwin set in Paris, insisting on setting aside his political activism. Baldwin bristled at their questions, and the result is a fascinating, confrontational, often uncomfortable butting of heads between the filmmakers and their subject, in which the author visits the Bastille and other Parisian landmarks and reflects on revolution, colonialism, and what it means to be a Black expatriate in Europe.

In the interior of Paraíba a tournament between cowboys who must demonstrate mastery in knocking an ox down by the tail while they ride.

A short documentary exploring the UK’s 1970s approach to urban renewal through General Improvement Areas. Mixing location footage from Blackburn, Norwich, and Oxford with unexpectedly quirky presentation, the film contrasts small-scale housing improvements with the sweeping redevelopment schemes of the post-war era. Produced as a government public information film and shown at meetings between planners, architects, and residents, it stands as a modest, humane entry in Britain’s civic-minded documentary tradition.

This 11 minute homage to the male member shows its subject in the various stages of erection. The voice-over poem by James Broughton includes the line "This is the secret that will not stay hidden."

A short documentary about Arthur Penn.

The story of worker Yevgeni Moryakov, told by himself and supplemented with lyrical digressions and the author’s commentary.

From his home in Granada, pioneering guitarist Andres Segovia looks back on his 60-year music career and his contribution to Western music.

A work of Video Earth Tokyo. Carrying in the rice cooker to the Shinkansen (express train), the group cooked rice between Tokyo and Nagoya. As the train arrives, they started to have a dinner party on the platform.

In this unique film work you will experience things that have never been published anywhere before. Man is at the extreme limits to control the things in the universe - or do the things already control him? Also for the phenomenon hypnosis there is still no explanation. Shouldn't we search less in the universe than not better in the human psyche?

A documentary by Eduardo Coutinho about a hired-gun from Brazil's Northeast.

A psychological portrait of kolkhos chairman Edgar Kaulin, who saved many Latvian farmers from deportations by the Soviets in the period 1945-53, and with them built up a kolkhos.

The Voronezh Nuclear Power Plant reactor; Novgorod’s archaeological excavations. Archaeologist Boris Rybakov on importance of historical science. Lenin’s Materialism & Empirio-Criticism. The first university dept of natural compound chemistry in the Soviet Union, located in Tashkent, Uzbek SSR. Agriculturalist Pavel Lukyanenko develops winter wheat varieties at Krasnodar Research Institute of Agriculture. French physicist Hubert Curien on USSR–France collaboration in nuclear physics. Foreign members of the USSR Academy of Sciences: Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Niels Bohr; theoretical physicist Igor Tamm on nuclear transformations in planetary & meteoritic matter, study of the Moon in relation to the Earth’s evolution. Dedicated to the 250th anniversary of the founding of the Academy of Sciences. Archival film, photographs, manuscripts, books, interviews from Academy members, explore its role in the development of science, economics, and its prominent figures throughout its history…

The first chapter in our Masters of Modern Sculpture series looks at groundbreaking work from the brilliant minds that reshaped sculptural art and inspired generations to come. Narrated by George Segal, The Pioneers explores famed pieces from sculptors such as Rodin, Maillol and Picasso.

Following the life of Pampas boxer Mario Paladino, who died in the ring, this documentary delves into boxing as a job opportunity for men from the interior of the country.

In a very traditional and popular setting, this documentary follow Willie Lamothe who becomes a national icone aftera 25 years career. The film follows the stars through is retelling of his career, his private life and his shows. It also follows testimonies from his fans and friends. Finaly, it his full of Willie Lamothe's music.

An exciting video journey through the world of time-lapse photography by one of the founders of the science of photobiology, Dr. John Nash Ott. Do fluorescent lights cause cancer and childhood learning and behavior disorders? Can long-term exposure to low-level radiation as from TV sets, computers, fluorescent lights, and similar devices harm you? Does living behind window glass and with glasses covering our eyes over years affect our health? Is natural sunlight and trace ultra-violet radiation really harmful? Or is it necessary and beneficial? How do cells, plants, and animals respond to constant exposure to different light color frequencies? These and similar questions were the subjects of Dr. Ott's pioneering investigations in the field of photobiology, using the methods of time-lapse photography.

Report on vicuña breeding.

This short film uses photographs from various public and private collections, interwoven with the memories of islanders who lived at the turn of the century, to tell the tale of how Prince Edward Island somewhat reluctantly became a Canadian province.

Lutz Eisholz’s first feature film was produced at West Berlin’s German Film and TV Academy. In an experimental documentary he portrays the working class outcast Bruno S., who prowls the city as a street musician, performing his own songs. The film unfolds Bruno’s story: abandoned by his mother as a child, he was maltreated in correctional institutions in Nazi Germany. On release after WWII he found work but started performing at the same time as a self-taught musician and poet. Although incapable of “normal” human bonding, he was still able to rejoice in life. When Werner Herzog saw this film he recognized Bruno’s potential and hired him to play starring roles in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) and Stroszek (1977).

Collaboration with Nam June Paik and Dimitri Devyatkin, combining footage from the US and Russia: Brezhnev on TV, a May Day parade, veterans in the park. The film was shown internationally in New York.

In the late seventies, a group of Brazilian documentary filmmakers traveled to the ABC region in the suburbs of São Paulo with the purpose of recording a wave of worker strikes taking place in response to the negligence of the increasingly powerful and abusive automotive industry. Documenting striking women metal workers, Olga Futemma and Renato Tapajós’ Trabalhadoras Metalúrgicas is a particularly vigorous work among the films produced during this moment in São Paulo worker history. Scenes filmed during the first Congress of Metallurgical Women of São Bernardo and Diadema in 1978 are intercut with images documenting the appalling working conditions against which the women featured in the congress were striking.

Sex therapists Inge and Sten Hegel discuss some of the letters they have received from people around the world and features actors portraying a few of the acts described therein.

A portrait of John Grierson, the first Canadian Government Film Commissioner and founder of the National Film Board in 1939. Interweaving archival footage, interviews with people who knew him and footage of Grierson himself, this film is a sensitive and informative portrait of a dynamic man of vision. Grierson believed that the filmmaker had a social responsibility, and that film could help a society realize democratic ideals. His absolute faith in the value of capturing the drama of everyday life was to influence generations of filmmakers all over the world. In fact, he coined the term 'documentary film'.

A short documentary about Rakovski street in Sofia.

This controversial film from director Glauber Rocha records the funeral of his friend, major Brazilian painter Emiliano Di Cavalcanti.

We begin with a fragmented portrait of Činča, between the stories she tells and the thoughts of those surrounding her. In The Head, a girl is confronted with the possibility of dying. Intermezzo focusses on the moments of abstraction amid the hustle and bustle of a city. In Our Stock Exchange, unemployed people seek work. Second Floor, Basement shows us a hospital where only two floors separate birth and death.

A short documentary showing people working on railway tracks.

Short documentary on the 75th anniversary of the belgian football club Beerschot.

A poet's eulogy to his beloved mode of transport.

A portrait of Serb erotic surrealist painter Ljubomir "Ljuba" Popović.

About a painting workshop with children aged 7 to 12 who create artwork inspired by the sea and sand.

The two-part film by Hartmut Bitomsky is an "essay film with a plot." It revolves around the transportation of books that are meant to go from Munich to Cologne. It's about reading the right texts, deciphering secret messages, the violence that emanates from books and sometimes doesn't return. At the same time, it's about cinematic storytelling; suspense arises where it doesn't belong and gets resolved when no one expects it. (Subtitle of Part 1: "Wandering Plot," Part 2: "At the Inferno of Silence")

“I met Gordon Matta-Clark at the 1975 Paris Biennale. He was looking for a place to make a piece. I led him to a building across the street from my place on rue Beaubourg that I had been taking photos of for the past year and which was about to be demolished. In front of my eyes Conical Intersect became the last unexpected and dazzling resident of 29 rue Beaubourg.” —Marc Petitjean

About the huge international assistance that the USSR provided to China.

The heroes of the documentary are military recruits from the Baluty neighborhood in Lodz. We follow their story from the moment of the military commission to the first exercises on the training ground. The film features, among others, "In the raspberry chruśniak" by Bolesław Leśmian and the song "When one day I will call you again" by the band Czerwone Gitary.

Brazilian short film

A documentary about the most discussed working conflict in modern Norwegian history. In 1975 Geir Sundet was fired with no given reason. Could it be that he was a Marxist-Leninist? His colleagues lays down the work in protest.

Alice Cooper and band’s first performance, organized by his friend Frank Zappa, at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival in 1969.

A radical Christian group's lecture tour of US colleges was filmed in the cinema verité tradition, with hand held camera, sync and wild sound. To avoid making a conventional documentary, the filmmaker created a dynamic collage by stroboscopically editing together pairs of scenes using a rapid rhythm of three-frame units.

Eric Clapton and his band toured Europe by train in 1978, and a documentary called "Eric Clapton and his Rolling Hotel" was filmed, but never released. Clapton put his band in a three-carriage train, originally at the disposal of Hermann Goering during the Nazi years in Germany, and traveled from town to town on the continent, from one concert to the next. It was an easy way to transport and house the band and equipment, and it offered ample opportunity for interviews, groups interactions, and filming. Clapton talks about his music and his works and peaks the viewers interest with stories about musicians like Hendrix and George Harrison. The interviews are supplemented with performances by Muddy waters, Elton John and George Harrison, as well as Clapton and his band. Tracks featured are Cocaine, Further On Up The Road, Lay Down Sally, Tulsa Time, Worried Life Blues, Early in the Morning, Badge, Wonderful Tonight, Key to the Highway, Double Trouble, Crossroads and Layla.

A group of young militant workers, OS at the Peugeot plant, solicited at home by the in-house recruiters, disembark in Sochaux carrying all their belongings on their backs and immediately snatched up by the chains of the Peugeot empire, manufacturing chain, bachelor hotel chain, Peugeot department store chain, jokingly named Ravi...

In this stunning film by Christopher Nupen, Segovia returns to the Granada of his youth, site of his personal and musical formation. The world-famous Alhambra—empty of tourists, between midnight and 4 AM—plays host to a deeply moving selection of Segovia’s signature pieces, many in his own arrangements, all imbued with the meditative, profoundly soulful qualities that lifted him to the pinnacle of artistry and helped him redefine what was considered possible for guitarists.

Divided into five parts, this film traces the long strike by workers at the Caravelair caravan factory in Trigniac, near Saint-Nazaire, led by the C.G.T. and C.F.D.T. unions. Shot in 1975, the film achieved the strange feat of being produced entirely by workers' producers - 15,000 of them paid in advance for their tickets - and of being amortized, and even made profitable, by being shown outside the commercial circuit alone.

The film De straat (The Street) opens with scenes of a protest in a street. Right after, we see aerial views of a busy highway. The narrator's words say it all: 'The street has become nothing more than a highway – a movement machine, as Le Corbusier called it. The heart of the city, the street, has turned into nothing but a space for traffic.' The car has ruined both the street and community life, and the footage hits this message home. Shots of Belgian cities overrun by cars and trucks are mixed with peaceful clips of Italian towns, where kids spend their whole day playing outside. In short, the film is a powerful critique of motorized traffic in our cities

“Being a bricklayer, this was one of my most important films. It represents eight hours of work...you start your early morning, you look at the work which is in front of you—then you get stuck into it—you have a morning tea, then you have lunch—and in the afternoon, of course, you knock off. I wanted to construct the 22 minutes of film very much like how I laid bricks in the physical sense—with a trowel and mortar. So I worked out a rhythm for the film—I had 3 frames, 6 frames, 12 frames, and 24 frames, and virtually all of it was done single-frame. For the soundtrack I used myself laying bricks in real time—you lay the trowel, you scrape it, you take off the ‘mud’, etc, and that continues right through the film. Some people refer to this as a ‘structural’ film…rather this is a film by a bricklayer who knows the material very well.” (Paull Winkler)