Enter The Magic Circle and enjoy a spectacular show with performances from a brilliant selection of professional magicians circa 1952.
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Enter The Magic Circle and enjoy a spectacular show with performances from a brilliant selection of professional magicians circa 1952.
Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.
Grigio was a small stray dog, a mongrel for generations. He never had a real owner. For a while he followed one of those couples of itinerant musicians who wander through rural villages and the outskirts of big cities. It was one of them who, one day, gave him the name Grigio.
This biographical docudrama traces the life of Dr. Albert Schweitzer, from his birth in Alsace, up to the age of 30 when he made the decision to go to French Equatorial Africa and build his jungle hospital. The latter half of the film encompasses a full day in the hospital-village, following the octogenarian Samaritan in his daily rounds.
Variations on the cultural and intellectual explosion in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district in 1946.
One of the first filmed portraits of a jazz musician.
A short documentary on Paul Gauguin, a French painter and sculptor.
The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky claimed, or has been credited with, the 'creation' of abstract art. At the core of this film is a dramatic recreation of Kandinsky's account of returning to his studio one dark evening, and being astonished by an unknown masterpiece of abstract art leaning against the easel - a picture which turned out to be one of his own landscapes fallen on its side. 'Now I knew for certain that the object spoiled my pictures.' While this film's narration does indeed emphasize the notion of an inspired breakthrough to Abstraction, the picture it conveys in more purely filmic ways is a rich and complex one.
Documentary focused on underwater shootings and hawaiian dances.
A biographical film about cinematic illusionist Georges Méliès featuring Méliès’s widow, Jeanne d’Alcy, as herself, and their son André as his own father.
Rendez-Vous a Melbourne is the official filmed record of the 1956 Olympic Games in Australia. At the time of its release, there was much controversy in the documentary-filmmaking world over the fact that the Aussies signed over exclusive distribution rights to a French firm, resulting in a boycott from other movie companies. None of this matters when the film is seen today: though not in the same league as Leni Reifenstahl's Olympiad, this 110-minute extravaganza is consistently entertaining. Fifteen cameras were utilized to lens every aspect of the event; it was then up to editors Jean Dudrumet and Monique Lacombe to burrow through miles and miles of film to cull the highlights seen herein. Portions of Rendez-Vous a Melbourne have since resurfaced in practically every Olympics documentary -- not to mention the many TV specials attending the now-biannual event.
The planet is filled with dust and particles of all kinds, natural or originated by man. Such a state of things has of course a great many consequences for public health, with diseases like silicosis, inherent in various human activities, some of which are detailed (farming, notably the treatment of flax; industrial activity, particularly porcelain and cement work, coal mining).
François Reichenbach follows a group of young men from the day they enlist in the US Marine Corps, all the way through basic training.
A tour of the nightlife in Rome, Paris, London, Madrid, Vienna, Brussels and more. Episodes presenting famous artists and people performing.
Denys Colomb de Daunant (1922 - 2006) is a writer, poet, photographer and filmmaker known for being the author and co-writer of the film Crin-Blanc (1952) directed by Albert Lamorisse. Highly symbolic character of the Camargue, aristocrat and dandy, he was also a manager and hotelier. He would lead the immemorial life of an animal herder if he did not have another passion: images. The photographic apparatus and the camera are like sensitive antennas that he spreads over his world and which seek the truth beyond appearances. Since Crin Blanc his photographs have appeared in illustrated books on five continents. Among his many films, Corrida Interdite (in competition at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival) and Le Rêve des Chevaux Sauvages (Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival) are global short film successes. The animals, the images... a single passion: that of a free life in one of the rare countries where you can still live freely: the Camargue.
Commissioned by the journal Présence Africaine, this short documentary examines how African art is devalued and alienated through colonial and museum contexts. Beginning with the question of why African works are confined to ethnographic displays while Greek or Egyptian art is celebrated, the film became a landmark of anti-colonial cinema and was banned in France for eight years.
A family goes on holiday, abandoning the little girl’s dog.
Intimate glimpses of popular British stars off duty, alongside several American stars.
In preparation for the celebration of the 1951 Festival of Britain, this short film was released to assure British citizens of their nation's place in the world and of their own places within that nation. Illustrative scenes of farming, science, political, and social life are juxtaposed to present a familiar and reassuring image of Britain.
The story of a young woman named Maria, who unexpectedly inherits a royal title and a castle after the death of her uncle, a king. Heavily reliant on archival footage of various notables, both stars and royalty.
Shows the improved services and other benefits that oil brings to the backward territories. The financial and technical resources of foreign lands have tapped the liquid wealth hidden below the surface of the earth. In return a new prosperity and improved standard of living is being brought to the peoples of those formerly barren lands.
An animated film about the history and use of hot water.
A documentary account of a research expedition to the Persian Gulf, following a BP-sponsored underwater survey near Bahrain in search of oil. Featuring Jacques Cousteau and the research vessel Calypso, the film captures early scientific diving and marine exploration at the intersection of industrial ambition and oceanographic discovery.
Documentary on France's industrial chemistry.
The film tells of the beginnings of the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. At the end of the 1950s, the Tanzanian National Park Administration wanted to fence in the protected area around the Ngorongoro Crater. Bernhard and Michael Grzimek were invited by the national park administration in 1957 to get a precise picture of the animal migrations and to provide the national park administration with the values they needed for their project. Using a new counting method with two airplanes, the Grzimeks found out that the migration of the herds was different than assumed.
A BAFTA Special award nominated animated documentary that's based on the animated look at the annual report of ICI as shown in "Balance 1950" from 1951.
Jean-Louis Barrault, Charles Dullin and Roger Blin each say a poem. The actors do not appear on screen.
Madrid, Spain, 1949. The Circo Americano arrives in the city. While the big top is pitched in a vacant lot, the troupe parades through the grand avenues: the band, a witty impersonator, the Balodys, acrobats, jugglers, acrobatic skaters, clowns and… Buffallo Bill.
A collection of amateur films made by photographer Roderic Vickers and friends.
Le chant du Styrène is a 1958 French documentary film directed by Alain Resnais. The film was an order by French industrial group Pechiney to highlight the merits of plastics.
The evolution of Picasso's painting up to his “pink phase.”
How to make the most of a defeat. How to make money from Napoleon's fiasco at Waterloo.
A short documentary directed by Jesus Franco.
Part of Reichenbach's series of short documentaries on America.
Alain Resnais & Robert Hessen use the famous Picasso mural "Guernica" in combination with newspaper headlines in an anti-war cry against the Spanish Civil War. Narration by Jacques Pruvost highlights the Guernica atrocity of April 1937, followed by a poem by Paul Eluard read by María Casares to a discordant score by Guy Bernard.
Survey of the Royal Highlights of June in Coronation year; the Coronation, the Derby, Queen's visits to Guildhall and Edinburgh. Made in 3-D.
Approximately ten minutes of 35mm footage survives at the Svenska Filmminstitutet from a documentary (probably not completed or even edited) shot in the convent of the Swedish sisters of Saint Brigid, Rome, at the request of the Swedish Red Cross, for victims of the Polesine flood of November 1951.
Chris Marker’s travel essay Sunday in Peking transforms a long-held childhood dream into a cinematic journey through Beijing. Blending documentary observation with reflective narration, Marker captures the city’s rhythms, traditions, and everyday life in mid-1950s China with his signature curiosity and lyricism.
Twenty-four hours in the story of the British Railways Channel ferryboats, the 'link spans' directly joining the roads and railways of Britain with those of France and all the Continent. The Lord Warden laden with an assortment of road vehicles from Dover, and the Night Ferry from Newhaven carrying passengers bound for Paris, Vienna or Rome are two of the ferries illustrated in this film; and freight is not forgotten.
Story of life on board HMS Victorious, Britain's most modern aircraft carrier. Shows various departments of the ship; jets landing on and take-offs from the flight-deck. Scenes in Gibraltar and Malta. Includes the first film credit for Michael Winner, as Associate Producer.
A look at the traditional dances of Scotland.
Les Etoiles de Midi is an engaging docudrama about some of the more spectacular exploits of French mountain climbers over the last several decades. In one re-enacted story, there is a wartime escape through the mountains, and in another, a daring rescue of a pair of climbers who had been missing. The actors themselves are adept at the sport of climbing, and they give the scenes an immediacy and real daring that brings the stories alive. A combination of their acrobatics and skill and the outstanding episodes in the history of French climbing creates a winning 78 minutes.
A medium-length documentary commissioned by the Cuenca City Council. The documentary shows an honest, sincere, although sometimes mere tourist portrait, of the lands of Cuenca and its people, without artifice or imposture, with feeling and authenticity and at the same time with marked coldness.
A humorous documentary about a historic hunt in 1929 through the African savannah and Indian jungle with lots of animal footage.
Documentary produced by Unilever about of the operations of its subsidiary. The United Africa Company (Timber) Limited, and associated companies,
Ancient Greece, contrasted with modern Greece.
Mr. Groß wants to learn how to cook. To that end, he is attending Ms. Klein's cooking school.
Join renowned explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau as he investigates aquatic habitats worldwide, showcasing whales, sharks, and diverse marine life. The film highlights the brutal realities of nature while capturing the wonder of underwater exploration, as the team ventures into previously unseen ocean depths.
Gilles Groulx's first film shot in 1955 with a camera borrowed from his brother and edited during his spare time when he worked as an editor at the Radio-Canada news service a few years before he joined the NFB. Silent film, presented as its author left it, where the soil and the dialectic of Groulx's work are already there: documentary realism, the social space to be explored, daily life, the relationship between individual and society, social disparities, the consumer society, seduction and happiness.
This short documentary records the celebration and ritual surrounding a snowshoe competition in Sherbrooke in the late 1950s. The film marked the beginning of a new approach to reality in documentary and prefigures the trademark style of the NFB's newly formed French Unit. Today, "Les raquetteurs" is considered a precursor to the birth of direct cinema.
Historical film covering the British Vanwall Grand Prix team behind the scenes and at the 1957 Monaco Grand Prix and British Grand Prix at Aintree.
A short documentary on the chateaux of the Loire in France was commissioned by the French Tourist Bureau.
Everyday life of fishermen on Brittany's Ile de Sein.
An allegorical documentary about the workers of the world, whose common destinies and hopes for peace are symbolically united by the rivers that run through their respective lands. The film was shot on the Volga, the Mississippi, the Nile, the Yangtze, the Amazon and the Ganges and combines these images of five continents with the music of Dmitri Shostakovich and the poetry of both Bertolt Brecht and Paul Robeson.