Discover Movies

A satire about “thrill seekers” who recklessly ignore basic safety rules when it comes to workplace safety.

This 1980 Arena documentary profiles writer and performer Victoria Wood and teenage playwright Andrea Dunbar. Wood is seen, alongside Julie Walters, during rehearsals for Wood's stage play Good Fun at the Sheffield Crucible and the film explores her talent to amuse through her witty and engaging songs. The film also looks at Dunbar, as her first play, The Arbor, written when she was only 15, was running at the Royal Court.

Voyages traces the development of the artist's brilliantly colored work, from his early canvases, images of dance and music, and odalisques to his cut-out pieces and chapel decorations. Filmmaker Didier Baussy draws on a wealth of paintings, archival footage, photographs, and extracts from Matisse's Notes of a Painter to capture the richness of the artist's legacy and the splendor of his achievements.

A spiritual journey, symbolized by the spiral, through images and sounds selected from the physical world over several years as the filmmaker moved between city and country and journeyed to the Center. Lee added some sounds and music to enhance the mood and sees the film as a mirror in which the image is distorted by his own consciousness.

A silent, Super 8 film by Joseph Morder.

This documentary talks to women training with machine guns, to undergraduates taking courses in How to Stay Alive, to retired generals who run schools for mercenary killers, and to self-appointed clergy who say their native America has "gone soft on the Devil and the Reds" and has become a "Disneyland for Dummies".

A study of the legendary Polish cinemagician, whose exquisite model animations include the featurette The Tale of the Fox (1931), in which a typical 3-minute sequence required up to a quarter of a million different puppet scenes. Providing a window on his working methods, this documentary includes extracts from Starewicz's films and interviews with his collaborators.

About the hero of Socialist Labor, winner of the USSR State Prize, member of the Central Committee of the CPSU, combine harvester of the Lenin's Path collective farm The Peschanokopsky district of the Rostov region by N.V.Pereverzeva.

The memory of a person, or the memory of a place (Rhys Graham).

A MAKING OF 天国にいちばん近い島/ The Island Closest to Heaven, narrated by Harada Tomoyo.

The daughter of a Nebraska minister, Anna Louise Strong earned a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Chicago. But it was in the Pacific Northwest, where she witnessed the 1916 Everett massacre and chronicled the 1919 Seattle General Strike, that her political vision took shape. In Moscow she helped found the first English language newspaper, in Spain her many visits resulted in her book, Spain in Arms; and in China she interviewed Mao in a Yan'an cave in 1946. She is buried in Beijing in a special cemetery for martyrs of the revolution.

We rush to search for the truth in distant lands, but it often turns out that its solution lives next to us. We drive along Vernadsky Avenue without thinking about what secrets these scientists have discovered, because we get used to words without thinking about their meaning.

Peter Couchman presents this story, which documents the four days leading up to the overthrow of the Philippines Marcos government in 1986.

It explains the lifestyle systems of the Paracas culture, which originated 1000 years ago on the desert coasts of southern Peru.

Describes the Quakers' struggle for religious freedom and the founding of the Pennsylvania colony, under the leadership of William Penn. Describes the colony's belief in freedom of speech and religion, and in the equality of all. Explains why Pennsylvania prospered.

A short documentary produced and directed by famed volcanologist Maurice Krafft in order to educate audiences about how volcanoes are formed, erupt, and are studied.

Examines the lives of deaf and blind children in a special wing of an institution in Amhearst, Nova Scotia. Shot during a month in residence at the school and edited over two years, the tape carefully observes and records the relationship these children have with each other, with their wards and with the artist himself. A thoughtful evocative study, with no voice-over commentary or "explanation."

Documentary on Christian metal band Stryper.

A documentary about the 1892 cholera outbreak in Hamburg.

This documentary by Michael Blackwood looks at the development and production of Glass' opera Akhnaten. The film follows two productions by the Württemberg State Theater, Stuttgart, and the Houston Grand Opera.

A documentary on the musical life of a small Swedish town, the joy of playing with average skills.

An engaging and enlightening documentary about Jeff Keen shown on Channel 4 in 1983. Features Keen performing in front of his film projections as well as talking about and showing his work in different media.

Presents a science fiction story in which two aliens tell the story of earth after World War III, when human beings are reduced to the level of savage cannibals. Even though the man and woman fall in love, they cannot stay together because one will be food for the other

The film is dedicated to the work of Olga Berggolts during wartime and her role in the radio committee of besieged Leningrad.

Michel Recanati was a militant leader in the May, 1968 riots in Paris, organizing many groups to meet, discuss, and act on leftist principles both before and after the disturbances. He was imprisoned for a short while in 1973. Disillusioned after the failure of the demonstrations and the death of the only woman he had loved, his life seems to have changed from a period of hope and activism to one of bottomless despair. His friend, Romain Goupil wrote and directed this biographical documentary. Death at 30 received the 1982 Cannes Film Festival's Golden Camera Award for "Best First Feature-Length Film."

A documentary directed by Siamak Bayat that explores the history of Qashqai Kilim weaving, the preparation of its raw materials, and the role of women in the tribe, including their leadership and management of daily life.

Television documentary from BBCs Arena program in which David Lynch, fresh off the release of Blue Velvet, examines his surrealistic influences in cinema which excerpts from several classics works of the avant-garde

The famous French film director Jean-Luc Godard is interviewed by British film theorist Peter Wollen and the editor of Framework Don Ranveaud. He talks of the developments in his work, the change in style epitomized by his most recent film, Sauve Qui Peut, his work with Francis Ford Coppola and the relations between his previous films and the new one. He also discusses his radical method of scriptwriting and the critical responses to his latest film.

From 1983 to 1989, New Yorker Nelson Sullivan captured more than 1,900 hours of video footage and saved most of it on VHS tapes, making a collection of 601 episodes documenting his everyday life in the East-Village, as well as following some flamboyant local icons like RuPaul, Sylvia Miles, and Phoebe Legere.

A live, half-hour campaign broadcast for Governor Jerry Brown during the 1980 Democratic primaries—produced by Francis Ford Coppola and staged in Madison, Wisconsin—experimenting with real-time video effects. The production was plagued by technical mishaps (audio failure, on-screen typos, and misfiring composites), earning the tongue-in-cheek nickname “Apocalypse Brown.”

A documentary shot in SF circa 1979 about a trio of middle-class kids experimenting with heroin and cocaine. They start out innocently enough but they soon get in over their heads.

Andy Kaufman's legendary sold-out Carnegie Hall performance, featuring all of Kaufman's classic routines, including Foreign Man, Elvis, conga drums, plus Andy wrestling women and even taking on a real male wrestler! Also appearing is a menagerie of Kaufman's collection of human oddities, including the infamous Tony Clifton, The Love Family (a sub-Partridge Family singing group who do a bang-up version of "The Age of Aquarius" complete with synchronized dance movements), Grant Bowman the "Happy New Year Man" (straight from Times Square, where Andy found him), "cowgirl" Eleanor Cody Gould and an uncredited, surprise big name guest as Andy’s grandmother. Bob Zmuda appears as Andy's referee, and at the end of the show, Andy takes the entire audience out for milk and cookies.

As summer fades into the golden days of autumn, chattering streams of children converge again on neglected schools to renew friendships and share the adventures of vacations. Leaves flame into scarlet, and beneath the dull warmth of October's sunshine, the morning air takes on a sharp cool edge. Animals stir to prepare for winter. Footballs fill the air. Fat pumpkins are transformed into leering monsters as unearthly little demons waft through the darkness of Halloween. Leaves curl into brittle shells and float to earth to the be raked into burial mounds. Homes are filled with the intoxicating smells of turkey and cranberries and pumpkin pie. We digitized and uploaded this film from the A/V Geeks 16mm Archive. Email us at [email protected] if you have questions about the footage and are interested in using it in your project.

A portrait of the caricaturist Mihai Stănescu, the film is not a conventional documentary, as it resorts to small comic scenes that highlight the playful personality of the plastic artist. "Antiinterviu" contains a prologue conceived in the aesthetics of silent comedies, with a little boy who scribbles on any surface he finds, from the walls of buildings to the clothes of citizens standing in line at the Alimentara, being chased and pulled by the ears by police officers and other adults around him for his disobedience. The defiant attitude of Mihai Stănescu, known at the time for his caricatures with political allusions, also appears to have a mischievous dimension.

A woman born in 1949, the year the GDR was founded, talks about her life based on 35 images in her family album that each represent one year. This short was to premiere on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of East Germany. Officials rejected it, however, as an ostensibly negative portrait of GDR family life presented by an atypical woman. It was released under a different title a year later.

Chanel--more than just one of the world's most successful fashion labels, also the name of a woman who led a fascinating life. This Paris designer banished the corset from women's fashion, created the bouclé suit and the famous 'little black dress,' and made costume jewelery socially acceptable. Her elegant but comfortable clothing stressed the new-won freedoms of 1920s women; her perfume made ladies irresistible. Chanel's head designer Karl Lagerfeld explains why her simple style is still today an inspiration. Unique shots and designs from the archives reveal Coco Chanel's passion both for fashion and for life.

Notes on the inception and making of Hail Mary.

Explores the detailed concepts of Ireland and Irish Freedom developed by Patrick Pearse, a leader of the 1916 Irish Rebellion, visiting the places his writing developed -- St. Enda's school in Rathfarnham, Dublin, and his cottage in Rosmuc, Connemara -- and the issues to which he was committed, and which still dominate Irish life: language, the role of the Church, Northern Ireland, and education. Presented in the format of a modern TV current affairs interview.

Life and work of the Peruvian musician Alfonso de Silva (1902 – 1937).

Valtos is a story told from thirty years hence, in the last moments of its narrator, who awoke one day in 1987 'with the knowledge that I had been duplicated during the night, and that I was an inferior replica of myself'. There follows a relentless, epic, pursuit of an absconding phantom - his 'original' - which ends in catastrophe at Valtos, a place at once ethereal and terrifying.

A requiem for a Russian peasant woman, Maria Semionovna Voinova. The film is in two chapters. The first chapter consists of an impression of Maria Semionovna, scenes of the colours of summer time: hay–making, bathing in a river, work in the flax fields and a holiday in the Crimea. The second chapter, set nine years later, is in black and white and deals with how Maria Semionovna's life ended. The mood is one of a sad and elegiac narration.

A tribute to ballet teacher Kay Mackinnon de Pacheco, showcasing her choreographic, academic, and professional work.

A new water pump has been proposed by a local firm. The film traces the parallel portraits of a technician-demonstrator of the new pump and that of a villager who owns two old models of water pump. Attached to his machines, he isn’t convinced that they need modernizing.

With Israel as an example, the reality of how military force is deemed necessary to maintain national sovereignty and the price involved is examined.

A documentary portrait of the late Earl Warren, the Chief Justice who presided over the Supreme Court during some of its most turbulent years from 1953 to 1969.

Voices from the past echo through the deserted, snow-covered stone houses in a village in the Caucasus Mountains.

"A country without artists is a dead country... I hope we are alive..." It is in this film by Fawzi Sahraoui produced by the RTA in 1985 and filmed a few months before the painter M'hamed Issiakhem 'turns off this sentence is spoken. A very interesting docu-fiction in which Issiakhem delivers himself with finesse, passion and generosity.

Shot partially at the Lakeland Civic Center in Lakeland, Florida, this video contains backstage footage and interviews with the band.

"Breathtaking in its techniques, rhapsodic in its passion, and encyclopedic in its scope, the film traces the long fall from paradise into modern barbarism." - Art Gallery of Ontario

Sexually abused by her father from infancy to early adolescence, Shirley Turcotte is now in her thirties and has succeeded in building a rich and full life. To further reconcile her past and present, she is returning to the people and places of her childhood. Her mother, brothers and sister, all of whom were also caught up in the cycle of family violence, openly share their thoughts. Their frank disclosures will encourage survivors of incest to break through the silence and betrayal to recover and develop a sense of self-worth and dignity.

DEFA documentary in honor of the 750th birthday of the city of Berlin.

Gordon Smith, head of the Collum Collum Aboriginal Co-operative which operates a cattle station in northern New South Wales, and Sunny Bancroft, the station manager, are negotiating with the Aboriginal Development Corporation in Canberra for a loan. Finance is needed to stock the property with breeding cattle so that the station can become financially independent.

Report on the forming of the new residential area Thälmannpark, beginning with the still working gasworks, up to inauguration of the monument of Thälmann.

Captain Irving Johnson sailed aboard the bark "Peking" in 1929, as the sun set on the day of commercial sail. During his voyage on the big German windjammer, Johnson compiled unequaled footage of the crew's daily activities, and spectacular images of a wild storm as the ship made the dangerous passage around. Johnson's narration of the trip is a delight.

Playing with the recording of a water polo match, Galeta creates a kind of Copernicus twist in the structure and perception of this sports game. The ball still motivates the movements of players, but it is no more a dynamic element, but the fixed center of the image.

al-Zubaidi uses GDR material to tell a rather linear story of Palestine, deploying the archive for illustration and evidence.

Documentary

In a farmhouse on Cape Breton Island where Shawn Peter Dwyer, age 10, lives with his mother and nine brothers and sisters, children's pockets are usually empty and their lives well filled.