Discover Movies

An adroit expansion on the notion of a "blue" movie, Mark Rappaport's early short BLUE STREAK contrasts the rarified realm of classical composition with an unspoken assortment of words predisposed to human sexuality, all layered over footage of a room filled with naked women and men. At the intersection of high art and low art, Rappaport skillfully dissects the absurdity of such distinctions and brings notions otherwise undiscussed in polite society to the forefront.

Over 100 years ago, 300 Germans from the Tyrol region (Germany) arrived in the Peruvian jungle and founded the colony of El Pozuzo; this is a report on their descendants.

The styles of Henri Matisse's works range from impressionism to fauvism to an almost abstract technique. He, along with Picasso, are regarded as two of the giants of 20th century art. This installment of the Museum of Modern Art series depicts the works of Matisse, and is the only film record of the landmark exhibition in Paris in 1970. All of his works, including the seldom-seen paintings from the Russian collections are shown here. Rare footage of the master painter at work is also offered. Matisse scholar Pierre Schnieder narrates.

A tongue-in-cheek documentary that goes "behind the scenes" during the production of Federico Fellini's film "Amarcord" (1973).

Luanda, the capital of Angola. The city, its people, and everyday life. Traditional aspects and the challenges of the future, presented in a brief yet dynamic overview.

Vintage documentary that briefly looks at the making of several parts of the film and showcases Heston discussing the film and philosophizes with famed anthropologist Ashley Montagu.

An in-depth look at the making of ‘The Message’, featuring interviews with key figures such as Moustapha Akkad, the film's producer, who shares his personal connection to the project. The documentary covers various aspects of the production, including the construction of the massive historical Mecca set, the creation of costumes, and the challenges of shooting in the desert. It also discusses the decision to shoot the film in two different languages (Arabic and English) and the unique issues that arose from this choice.

When Taipei is still quiet and asleep, trucks after trucks emerge in the dark with fresh fruits and vegetables, seafood and meat. Intermediate wholesalers' auction chants rise and fall; the Central Market is getting ready to feed the city's population. The film offers a glimpse into the lively hustle and bustle of the Market in the 1970s, but was likely banned from broadcast due to its perceived display of the unhygienic conditions.

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.

The female question in all its aspects is highlighted through interviews with women in different situations and conditions. Older women who have been working for years in the general markets since the early morning and who then return home and continue to work as housewives, then the workers of a factory occupied, a housewife, a woman who tells of her experience with sex and a woman who tells of her clandestine abortion, a new mother who tells about her motherhood and then interviews with girls elementary school that already, despite them, undergo an education based on patriarchy values.

The film highlights the dangers of extreme heat and the importance of staying hydrated and cool. It portrays a conversation between two friends, one of whom insists on playing basketball despite the oppressive heat. The narrative emphasizes that heat-related illnesses can be avoided by recognizing the body's signals and taking necessary precautions, such as drinking water and staying indoors. The film concludes with a report of record-breaking temperatures, underscoring the seriousness of heat exposure.

A declaration of love to Lusatia and its Sorbian inhabitants.

A 1979 documentary on Java and Bali, written and directed by Phillip Noyce. The end credits say this film was produced for QANTAS Airways, which suggests it was used as some sort of promotional piece for travel to these particular locations.

A luminous journey through Spain in search of the sun and the many commonalities and differences that for millennia have united and divided the inhabitants of that land of many landscapes, many cultures and many ideas.

This film, which represents 7 years of shots on 5 continents, shows both the wonders of the wild world and the drama of its systematic destruction by man. Dramatic fights, scenes of tenderness and love, mingle with gags and documents never before presented on a screen.

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.

The film was shot on the property of writer Ken Kesey in La Honda, California, in 1965 and depicts Beat Generation figure Neal Cassady high on amphetamines and speaking in a stream of consciousness.

This film covers the transitional political period between the election of the Parti Québécois on November 15, 1976, and the Canadian federal election that brought Joe Clark to power. Featuring some of our most colourful politicians, historians, journalists, artists and citizens, this film highlights in parallel the convictions of each on the national political question, on the eve of the first Quebec referendum. Montage of newsreels shot between the election of the Parti Québécois on November 15, 1976, and the federal election of 1979.

In this film, outspokenly homosexual filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim has documented his encounters with friends in the New York "underground" arts movement, the better-known of whom are William Burroughs (who says nothing for the camera), Andy Warhol (seen in the distance) and Fernando Arrabal (who is interviewed in Spanish). The emigrants named in the title are notable Germans who left the country before World War II, such as Greta Keller and Grete Mosheim. Reviewers at the time of the film's release considered it to have been a sort of paid vacation for the filmmaker rather than a serious effort. (Clarke Fountain, Rovi)

Henry Miller discusses his art as a writer, among friends and colleagues such as Lawrence Durell and Anais Nin among others.

A vignette based on the story of John McIntosh, the Ontario developer of the McIntosh apple.

Using Paraguay, Peru, and Guatemala as examples, Bananera libertad analyzes the dependence of small Third World countries on global trade, a form of exploitation from which European consumers profit greatly.

Vox pops conducted outside Yoko Ono's MOMA show in December 1971.

How we destroy the site of Lake Trémelin in Iffendic, in the name of tourism of course. The lake becomes the prey of promoters for a "marina"! A nature museum will be built there.

A look into Africa that is rarely available to ethnographers or anthropologists. At its heart is the spirit of interaction. It observes, but with the wavering eye of home movie, rather than the fixed formality of a documentary.

Katja Raganelli was not solely interested in female filmmakers, but women artists in general. This early work offers a portrait of painter-educator-pacifist Anna Ottonie Krigar-Menzel, also known as Annot. Suppressed by the Nazis and forced into exile, it’s tempting to consider Annot a key inspiration for Raganelli, as one of her main works is a late 1920s cycle of paintings called Faces of Working Women, depicting female surgeons, physiotherapists, all manner of women’s labour.

Short film about the tanks of the NVA (army of the German Democratic Republic)

When the Nazis took power, the Jewish artist Leo Haas (1901-1983) was arrested in his Czechoslovakian hometown. He spent the next six years in different concentration camps and became known for the paintings he did in the Theresienstadt camp. This film presents Haas as a political artist and resistance fighter and celebrates him as a socialist caricaturist dedicated to the GDR.

A look at the Garifuna culture in Honduras.

Short film that shows daisies throughout the day with music as an accompaniment.

It addresses the topic of old age based on interviews with elderly people who talk about their lives, their memories, and their attitude towards death from the nursing home that houses them.

The film focuses on Black writer Carolina Maria de Jesus, who lived in a favela.

The camera visits Jerzy Noskiewicz, an ornithologist, the host of a bird reserve on Lake Świdwie in the Szczecin province. Nature is an equal protagonist of the film, but the camera follows the guide, Noskiewicz. Full description: The protagonist of the film is Jerzy Noskiewicz (1932-1989), a nature lover and researcher who didn’t want to work and live in the city. He settled in the bosom of nature, on Lake Świdwie in the Szczecin province. The ornithologist’s nickname among the local residents was "The Sheriff". He examined the local birds himself and with his students since the 1950s. He was a pioneer in the field of bird protection in Western Pomerania.

Rolling into the village: Circus Hein. Angelika Andrees is interested in the individual acts presented in the ring, but even more in what happens before and afterwards. Or what the audience look like from below, when various bottoms are squashed on the wooden benches. Sometimes there’s clacking and knocking, or the pattering of rain, and in the end, Bob Dylan sings. “Travelling Circus” was made when Andrees was still at the Babelsberg Film Academy. She experiments with different elements, switches tones and thus captures the moods crystallising around the travelling attraction. A portrait emerges, without commentary and with very few, short interview sequences.

Pearl fishermen from Red Sea, scuba harpooners from Polinesia, Japanese diver women expose themselves every day to attacks by sharks infesting their waters. Fishermen of abalone from Mexican California work in waters where they often meet the killer whale, the biggest predator of all the oceans. Scuba divers collecting the black coral at the Hawaii do their job 80 m deep, where a bad encounter and a risk of an embolism are continuous. Even bigger is the risk the coral fishermen from Sardinia take, when they reach 120 m deep using special respiratory mixtures. Then there're also the scuba diver geologists trying to study underwater volcanic eruptions and the biologists who approach dangerous animals

A group of students discuss their experience of further education and the benefits gained.

A young girl becomes pregnant. She decides to get an abortion, and the viewers gets to observe her until the application for abortion is being processed.

Short documenting the importance of comic books to children's imaginative development, in spite of adult fears that they might be a negative influence.

Jaime, a poem of suffering and loneliness, describes the existence and pictorial work of a man isolated in a psychiatric hospital.

Peter Gimbel and a team of photographers set out on an expedition to find and film, for the very first time, Carcharodon carcharias—the Great White Shark. The expedition lasted over nine months and took the team from Durban, South Africa, across the Indian Ocean, and finally to southern Australia.

portrays the Bruder working class family, whom she met during her time as a social worker in the Märkisches Viertel. Equipped with a Super-8 camera by Helga Reidemeister, the family had already begun filming their everyday life independently in the fall of 1969. However, when, together with Reidemeister, they looked through the four-hour material at the editing table in the summer of 1974, they realized that it depicted the family's problems only superficially and left the social context out of the picture. Reidemeister, who had not yet intervened in the film shooting, then spent a lot of time with the family and documented everyday life together with them. The result was a multi-layered mixture of family self-testimony and reflection on social relationships.

Two women in a living room: smoking, playing cards, listening to the radio. As often in Dwoskin’s films, the use of masks, make-up and costumes allows the characters to playfully transform themselves. Shot in colour film, C-film exuberates swinging London energy. In the second part of the film, the women appear to be watching the rushes of the film on an editing table. ”We are making a movie” we hear them say. As Dwoskin points out, “C-film asks how much is acting acted”, an ongoing question in Dwoskin’s cinema. Produced by Alan Power, with Esther Anderson & Sally Geeson.

How does a country go from a dictatorship to a democracy? A detailed report on the political representation in the heart of the Spanish Transition, only a few months after General Franco’s death, when the sincere democratic vocation of Spanish people must effort to destroy, one heavy brick after another, the wall that those who supported the dictatorship and those who fought it from the exile built with resentment, hatred and prejudices.

Film cameras cruise the Soviet Union's mighty Volga River, providing a view of the Russian people along its 2300-mile length, including looks at the fishing industry, a rural village, a manufacturing town and the wedding of two factory workers.

For 'Et les chiens se taisaient' Maldoror adapted a piece of theatre by the poet and politician Aimé Césaire (1913–2008), about a rebel who becomes profoundly aware of his otherness when condemned to death. His existential dialogue with his mother reverberates around the African sculptures on display at the Musée de l'Homme, a Parisian museum full of colonial plunder whose director was the Surrealist anthropologist Michel Leiris.

The first uncensored documentary about the Soviet Union ever made by an outsider. The film takes viewers to 12 of the 15 states of the former USSR.

Torn between the world of their childhood and the world where they must now live and work, two flamboyant Newfoundlanders pay a nostalgic visit to the deserted outport where they were born. This is their story, and the story of so many others who, like them, became victims of the Newfoundland government's controversial Resettlement Program.

A construction site with foreign workforce – lunch break. A Greek man tries to write a request letter to the German authorities to allow his parents to stay in Germany because of the Greek-Turkish clashes on Cyprus. A German foreman helps him write the appeal. Upon saying that the reason for summoning his parents is that their lives are threatened by the Turks, other bricklayers join in and a row takes place. During the row the letter is torn, lunch break is over and the bricklayers go on laying bricks.

A portrait of the Scottish artist Sir William Gillies.

Psychedelic surfer documentary. Also see http://encyclopediaofsurfing.com/entries/drugs-and-surfing