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Cinema Studies

Cinema Studies


AROUND INDIA WITH A MOVIE CAMERA

By Sandhyu Suri

Award-winning filmmaker Sandhya Suri (I for India) skillfully weaves together archival footage - including hand colored sequences - with a new score by composer Soumik Datta to create an emotionally resonant story about life across India from 1899 to 1947.

Drawn exclusively from the BFI National Archive, Around India features some of the earliest surviving film from India as well as gorgeous travelogues, intimate home movies and newsreels from British, French and Indian filmmakers. Taking in Maharajas and Viceroys, fakirs and farmhands and personalities such as Sabu and Gandhi, the film explores not only the people and places of over 70 years ago, but asks us to engage with broader themes of a shared history, shifting perspectives in the lead up to Indian independence and the ghosts of the past.

DVD (Color, Black and White, Closed Captioned) / 2018 / 72 minutes

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GRAY STATE, A

Director: Erik Nelson

In 2010 David Crowley, an Iraq veteran, aspiring filmmaker and charismatic up-and-coming voice in fringe politics, began production on his film Gray State. Set in a dystopian near-future where civil liberties are trampled by an unrestrained federal government, the film's crowd-funded trailer was enthusiastically received by the burgeoning online community of libertarians, Tea Party activists and members of the nascent alt-right.

In January 2015, Crowley was found dead with his family in their suburban Minnesota home. Their shocking deaths quickly become a cause celebre for conspiracy theorists who speculate that Crowley was assassinated by a shadowy government concerned about a film and filmmaker that was getting too close to the truth about their aims.

A Gray State combs through Crowley's archive of 13,000 photographs, hundreds of hours of home video, and exhaustive behind-the-scenes footage of Crowley's work in progress to reveal what happens when a paranoid view of the government turns inward - blurring the lines of what is real and what people want to believe.

DVD / 2017 / 93 minutes

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JEAN ROUCH, THE ADVENTUROUS FILMMAKER

By Laurent Vedrine

Jean Rouch first went to Niger in 1941 as a 24-year-old civil engineer, building roads in the French colony. But unlike other colonists, he came to see Nigeriens as equals, spending much of the next 60 years in West Africa.

Much has been written about how Rouch's films, blending fiction and documentary, road movie and ethnography, influenced the French Nouvelle Vague and the cinema verite movement. But JEAN ROUCH, THE ADVENTUROUS FILMMAKER is unique in its exploration of the less well-known role Rouch and his films played in developing cinema in Niger, from working with local crews, to featuring Nigeriens on camera, to a fascination with telling Nigerien stories that continue to resonate.

It was a meeting with 18-year-old fisherman Damoure Zika that would set Rouch on his future path. With Zika as intermediary, Rouch was allowed to film a ceremony with his grandmother, the conduit for a spirit that would possess her. This sparked his interest in ethnography, a practice he approached with openness and lack of judgment. In contrast with filmmakers of the era who set themselves apart from the "others" they were filming, Rouch collaborated with locals such as Zika - who both co-directs and appears in many films - and screened cuts with his subjects, encouraging them to offer input and make changes.

During the course of his career, Rouch made over 120 films. The excerpts in this documentary capture their astounding range - from the comedy of COCORICO! MONSIEUR POULET to the striking MOI, UN NOIR, which launched the career of great Nigerien director Oumarou Ganda, to the shocking and controversial THE MAD MASTERS, which captured a violent possession ritual that Rouch saw as offering an outlet for the traumas of colonialism. Rouch's work was not without controversy, especially when it comes to his shaping the realities he films, and the accusation that he sometimes sensationalizes through his outsider's gaze, concerns that are addressed here.

JEAN ROUCH, THE ADVENTUROUS FILMMAKER features archival interviews with Rouch, a wealth of excerpts from his films, and interviews with an array of West African commentators: Rouch's longtime collaborator and sound engineer Moussa Hamidou, filmmakers Sani Magori, Aicha Maky, and Abdoulaye Boka, ethnologist and filmmaker Mariama Hima, teacher and researcher Antoinette Tidjani Alou, and author and illustrator Sani Djibo.

DVD (French, Color, Black and White, With English Subtitles) / 2017 / 55 minutes

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CINEMA NOVO

By Eryk Rocha

CINEMA NOVO is a film essay that poetically investigates the eponymous Brazilian film movement, the most prominent in Latin America in the past century, through the analysis of its main auteurs: Nelson Pereira do Santos, Glauber Rocha, Leon Hirszman, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, Ruy Guerra, Caca Diegue, Walter Lima Jr, Paulo Cesar Saraceni, among others.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 90 minutes

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SANDY DING - PSYCHOECHO

By Sandy Ding

Sandy Ding is an experimental filmmaker who lives and works in Beijing, China. He graduated from CalArts Film School USA in 2007 and started teaching in China Central Academy of Fine Arts since 2008. He produced several psycho-active films with the idea of combining ritual process in projection and sound. His work is energy patterns, telling mysteries with abstractions or powerful symbolic elements. He is equally interested in live performance of theater projections, untypical gallery projections, installations and live noise music to extend the idea of experimental film.

FILMS
Mancoon 10 min, 16mm, silent, color, 2007
Water Spell 42min, 16mm, color, 2006-2007
Prisms 20 min, 16mm, color, 2012
Dream Enclosure 18 min, 16mm/Digital, b/w, 2011-2014
The Radio Wave Beneath the Dirt Ice and Flowers 10 min, 35mm, silent, b/w, 2006

BONUS
River in the Castle 4 min, 16mm, silent, b/w, 2016
Original noise music: "Peacock and Ocean Erosion" by Liquid Palace 28 min, 2016.

DVD / 2016 / 132 minutes

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STUDIO EEN: EXPERIMENTAL FILMS FROM THE LOWLANDS

a collection of 12 films from the Dutch film cooperative Studio Een

In 1990, as a student, Karel Doing decided to create Studio een. Many artistic, avant-garde, underground movements and counterculture movements seemed to be over. The rise of video and its academic use began to compete with Super8. To work against the decline of the Super 8 format and techniques, Karel Doing and two of his friends (Saskia Fransen and Djana Mileta) from the art school in Arnham, started to think about creating a new space and promoting the invention of DIY techniques for filming and processing Super8 films.

In this particular context, Studio een was launched. Conceived as a actual workspace, Karel Doing, Djana Mileta and Saskia Fransen, began by establishing it within a large network of festivals, galleries and other workspaces. They bought optical printers from a professional laboratory that was set to shut down and started to learn by themselves, out of necessity, how to process film. It wasn't long before Studio een became well-known in DIY film circles and began to host various artists who come to meet each other, not only to exchange ideas and work together on the use of Super8 or 16mm, but also to experiment with diverse narrative and sound forms. Some members, Joost Rekveld for example, chose to pursue a career as a musician as well as a filmmaker.

After 7 years in Arnhem, Studio een moved to Rotterdam where it continued to thrive. It became a model for many artists in creating their own laboratories, research centers and studios dedicated to experimental cinema.

Studio een no longer exists, but the laboratory itself continues in Rotterdam under the name of Filmwerkplaats by being involved in new experimentations in filmic creation while promoting the works of members and invited artists.

This DVD edition includes works of various Dutch artists who had a main role in the early years of Studio een, from 1992 to 1996.

DVD / 2016 / 114 minutes

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DYING OF THE LIGHT, THE

Director: Peter Flynn

The Dying of the Light explores the history and craft of motion picture presentation through the lives and stories of the last generation of career projectionists. By turns humorous and melancholic, their candid reflections on life in the booth reveal a world that has largely gone unnoticed and is now at an end. The result is a loving tribute to the art and romance of the movies - and to the unseen people who brought the light to our screens.

DVD / 2015 / 94 minutes

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I DON'T BELONG ANYWHERE: THE CINEMA OF CHANTAL AKERMAN

By Marianne Lambert

I DON'T BELONG ANYWHERE: THE CINEMA OF CHANTAL AKERMAN explores some of the Belgian filmmaker's 40 plus films, and from Brussels to Tel Aviv, from Paris to New York, it charts the sites of her peregrinations.

An experimental filmmaker, a nomad, Chantal Akerman shared with Marianne Lambert her cinematic trajectory, one that never ceased to interrogate the meaning of her existence. And with her editor and long-time collaborator, Claire Atherton, she examines the origins of her film language, and aesthetic stance.

I DON'T BELONG ANYWHERE includes excerpts from many films made throughout Akerman's career, including JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES (1975), NEWS FROM HOME (1976), THE RENDEZ-VOUS OF ANNA, JE, TU, IL, ELLE (1974), SOUTH (1998), FROM THE EAST (1993), FROM THE OTHER SIDE (2002), LA-BAS (2006), and, what would be Chantal Akerman's last film, NO HOME MOVIE (2015).

DVD (Color) / 2015 / 67 minutes

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MY SEVEN PLACES

By Boris Lehman

My Seven places' starts at the moment I was evicted from several places which are dear to me. They served me well as homes, both as place for living and working. This was the start of my urban wandering, which would take me ten years - a journey of 300.000 kilometers - before returning just about to my starting point. The adventure was both physical and metaphysical. Fragments of documentary films, a personal diary, bedside-table notes, piece of fiction, 'My Seven places' is an essay about passing time, embellished by a jumble of reflections both light and serious; finally, it is an attempt to simply exist. The fourth episode of my autobiographical fiction, which started in 1983

2 DVDs (French, With English Subtitles) / 2015 / 323 minutes

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SEASONS IN QUINCY, THE: FOUR PORTRAITS OF JOHN BERGER

With Tilda Swinton
Directed by Bartek Dziadosz, Colin MacCabe, Christopher Roth & Tilda Swinton

Prolific artist, philosopher, writer, storyteller and "radical humanist" John Berger is the focus of this vivid four-part cinematic portrait. In 1973, he moved from urban London to the tiny Alpine village of Quincy. THE SEASONS IN QUINCY: FOUR PORTRAITS OF JOHN BERGER examines different aspects of Berger's life in this remote village in the Alps. In four seasonal chapters, the film combines ideas and motifs from his work with the texture and history of his mountain home.

"Ways of Listening" (Directed by Colin MacCabe, 26 minutes)
Tilda Swinton, a longtime friend and collaborator, joins Berger for a frank and revealing conversation.

"Spring" (Directed by Christopher Roth, 19 minutes)
Berger's seminal writing on animals is illuminated by local farming practice and set alongside other philosophical approaches to animal consciousness. Directed by Christopher Roth.

"A Song for Politics" (Directed by Bartek Dziadosz and Colin MacCabe, 20 minutes)
Berger is joined by writers Ben Lerner and Akshi Singh along with Colin MacCabe and Christopher Roth for a lively political discussion of our present moment and its relationship to the past.

"Harvest" (Directed by Tilda Swinton, 25 minutes)
Berger's son and Swinton's children join their parents for a visually rich journey to Quincy from the Scottish highlands, seeing the countryside anew.

United by their central vision and an original score by by Simon Fisher Turner, the four short works that comprise THE SEASONS IN QUINCY beautifully combine to make a feature film.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2015 / 90 minutes

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BEYOND ZERO: 1914-1918

By Bill Morrison
Music composed by Aleksandra Vrebalov and performed by Kronos Quartet

Given up as lost for generations, footage from World War I never before seen by modern audiences comes to thrilling new life in BEYOND ZERO: 1914-1918. Auteur director Bill Morrison scoured film archives for rare 35mm nitrate footage shot during the Great War. Now, viewers can see an actual glimpse of a war fought in fields, in trenches, and in the air emerges for the first time.

Through a veil of physical degradation, unstable chemical elements and the bleeding of original film dye, viewers can see soldiers performing training exercises, parades and troop movements. While some of the battle footage was re-enacted for cameras, some is documentary footage of the war itself. All the footage was originally shot on film at the time of the conflict.

A prismatic and cinematic a message in a bottle from a century ago and accompanied by a magnificent score by Aleksandra Vrebalov performed by the Kronos Quartet, BEYOND ZERO: 1914-1918 is a powerful record of wartime past. Out on the same fields with the soldiers 100 years ago, the film is itself both collaborator and survivor.

DVD (Color) / 2014 / 40 minutes

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MY CONVERSATIONS ON FILM: CHAPTERS 1-3

The film talks about movies, naturally, but mostly explores how the cinema of Boris Lehman builds and unfolds before our eyes. It is a raw and spontaneous work, seemingly a kind of first draft, because nothing is prepared, but rather, presents chance encounters and opportunities to film. Therefore, there are many hesitations, repetitions, moments that may appear boring, but which I did not wish to remove or "clean up", as they say in the jargon of cinema, because such moments are part of the work. The film is, as Patrick Leboutte once said, a thought in the middle of being formed.

Ultimately, this film is about the art of being together. It is a gallery of portraits interwoven with the watermark of the self-portrait.

My Conversations on Film are composed of three chapters. The first, from 1995, includes fifteen interviews and is accompanied with six movie clips. The second is composed of seventeen interviews conducted between 1995 and 1998 (+ seven extracts). The third covers from 1998 to 2010 and contains thirteen interviews (+ five extracts).

3 DVDs (French, English, With French, English, German Subtitles) / 2014 / 404 minutes

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THANHOUSER STUDIO AND THE BIRTH OF AMERICAN CINEMA

The Thanhouser Company was a trail-blazing studio based in New Rochelle, New York. From 1910 to 1917 it released over 1,000 films that were seen by audiences around the globe.

This 53-minute documentary reconstructs the relatively unknown story of the studio and its founders, technicians, and stars as they entered the nascent motion picture industry to compete with Thomas Edison and the companies aligned with his Motion Pictures Patents Corporation (MPPC).

Ned Thanhouser, grandson of studio founders Edwin and Gertrude Thanhouser, narrates this compelling tale, recounting a saga of bold entrepreneurship, financial successes, cinematic innovations, tragic events, the launching of Hollywood careers, and the transition of the movie industry from the East Coast to the West and Hollywood.

DVD / 2014 / 53 minutes

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BILL MORRISON: COLLECTED WORKS (1996 - 2013)

16 films by Bill Morrison

This five-disc set comprises 16 works by filmmaker and multimedia artist Bill Morrison, called "one of the most adventurous American filmmakers" by Variety. Morrison's work is characterized by his sensitive approach to found, often decaying film footage, and his close collaboration with contemporary conmposers, including Vijay Iyer, Johann Johannsson and Bill Frisell. Among other shorts and features, this set includes his acclaimed DECASIA (2002), "the most widely acclaimed American avant-garde film of the fin-de-siecle." (J. Hoberman, The Village Voice).

DISC 1: Blu-Ray (75 minutes)
Decasia 67 minutes, 2002
Light is Calling 8 minutes, 2004

DISC 2: DVD (107 minutes)
City Walk 6 minutes, 1999
Porch 8 minutes, 2005
Highwater Trilogy 31 minutes, 2006
Who by Water 18 minutes, 2007
Just Ancient Loops 26 minutes, 2012
Re-Awakenings 18 minutes, 2013

DISC 3: DVD (107 minutes)
The Mesmerist 16 minutes, 2003
Ghost Trip 23 minutes, 2000
Spark of Being 68 minutes, 2010

DISC 4: DVD (86 minutes)
The Miner's Hymns 52 minutes, 2011
Release 13 minutes, 2010
Outerborough 9 minutes, 2005
The Film of Her 12 minutes, 1996

DISC 5: DVD (80 minutes)
The Great Flood 80 minutes, 2013

5 DVDs (Color, Black & White) / 2013 / 455 minutes

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TO CHRIS MARKER, AN UNSENT LETTER

By Emiko Omori

TO CHRIS MARKER, AN UNSENT LETTER is a cinematic love letter to Chris Marker, the notoriously private filmmaker and artist--director of LA JETeE, SANS SOLEIL, LE JOLI MAI and many other films, and self-described "best known author of unknown works".

Directed by Emmy-award winning cinematographer and filmmaker Emiko Omori, whose credits include Marker's THE OWL'S LEGACY, the film is a contemplative essay whose form is inspired by Marker's signature style.

Alongside Omori's thoughts and recollections of the filmmaker, and her examinations of some of his key works, the film incorporates interviews with Marker associates and admirers including film critic David Thomson, film programmers Tom Luddy and Peter Scarlet, filmmakers Marina Goldovskaya and Michael H. Shamberg, 12 MOKNEYS screenwriters Janet and David Peoples, computer scientist Dirk Kuhlmann, and many others.

Their warm reflections join Omori's to examine the legacy of a filmmaker as beloved as he was enigmatic.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2013 / 78 minutes

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CUBAN ANIMATIONS FROM THE YOUNG DIRECTORS FILM FESTIVAL

These eight short animations have been screened at the Muestra Joven (Young Directors) Film Festival in Havana, Cuba. The Festival began in 2001 and is recognized as the most important showcase for young cinematic talent in Cuba.

Cuban animation is world renown and even though many of these young animators don't have access to the latest technology they are still able to produce interesting, provocative and aesthetically beautiful works.

8 Formas de Enfermar / 8 Ways to Get Sick (Leandro de la Rosa), 4 min., 2009

Como Desaparecer completamente /How to Completely Disappear (Harold Rensoli), 3 min., 2009

El Traje / The Suit (Abdel and Adrian de la Campa), 5 min., 2010

La Revancha / The Revenge (Ivette Avila), 3 min, 2009

Tic Tac / Tick Tock (Alien Ma Alfonso), 6 min., 2008

Ninos imaginarios / Imaginary Boys (Alien Ma Alfonso), 4 min., 2010

La Costurera / The Seamstress (Ivette Avila), 6 min., 2010

Comunidades Modernas/Modern Communities (Lester Harbert Noguel), 3 min., 2008

DVD (Color) / 2012 / 35 minutes

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FEMALE DIRECTORS (NU DAOYAN)

By Yang Mingming

Ah-Ming and Yueyue are two out-of-work film school grads living in Beijing who decide to turn the camera on each other and make a film about their lives.

On the surface, FEMALE DIRECTORS is the ultimate documentary for the age of oversharing. Two young women love the camera and record the minutiae of their lives: meals, nasty fights, phone calls. Soon after the camera starts rolling, they discover that both are seeing the same sugar daddy. Recriminations and profane accusations follow. Eventually, the pair, make up, break up with the man they call "short stuff" and go traveling together.

But there is much more to this film. Is it a documentary, mockumentary, or a sly piece of drama? Ah-Ming herself is a fiction-the on-screen persona of Yang Ming Ming, the film's actual director. Deliberately unpolished, FEMALE DIRECTORS highlights rather than obscures the presence of the the camera, as it is dropped on a bed, Ah-Ming and Yueyue jostle over it, or as one or the other implores her counterpart to turn it off.

While it purports to be the true story of two women filming themselves, FEMALE DIRECTORS constantly reminds us of the process that has gone into making it. It is a genre-bending, self-aware piece of experimental filmmaking that bears repeated viewing.

DVD (Color, Chinese with English subtitles) / 2012 / 43 minutes

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JOURNAL DE FRANCE

By Raymond Depardon and Claudine Nougaret

Travelling alone, internationally acclaimed photographer and filmmaker Raymond Depardon spent six years capturing his home country with a large format camera. This long, solitary road trip provided fertile ground for the creation, with his long-time partner and collaborator Claudine Nougaret, of a remarkable travel journal.

The journey returned Depardon to important places from his past as a reporter - Chad, Venice, Cannes - and to a wealth of previously unseen footage from his archive: an interview with Jean-Bedel Bokassa, film of Jean-Luc Godard, extraordinary glimpses of private and public life.

Intimate, compelling, revelatory, JOURNAL DE FRANCE offers a unique portrait of a country and its landscapes, an overview of a truly illustrious career and a fascinating resume of the development of the photographic art over the past half-century.

DVD (French With English Subtitles, Color) / 2012 / 100 minutes

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BOATLOAD OF WILD IRISHMEN, A

Directed by Mac Dara O Curraidhin
Written by Brian Winston

Robert Flaherty (1884-1951) was the man credited with being the father of the modern documentary film after he produced and directed "Nanook of the North" in 1922. Flaherty is one of the great name directors in the history of cinema and to this day films such as "Nanook of the North", "Moana", "Man of Aran" and "Louisiana Story" are widely regarded as classics and still regularly screened.

Flaherty is also a controversial figure in that he was also the first to show that filming the everyday life of real people could be molded into dramatic, entertaining narratives. The minute he chose to stage scenes in order to make a better film out of his seminal Inuit project "Nanook of the North", he was opening documentary's Pandora's Box. And with his later work in Samoa, the Aran Islands and Louisiana first raised such enduring topics of documentary ethics as ethnographic falsification, exploitation of one's subjects and the perils of corporate sponsorship.

But this entertaining portrait of Flaherty shrewdly looks beyond standard polemical positions to present a complex view of the man and his work (shown in vivid excerpts).

A BOATLOAD OF WILD IRISHMEN includes testimony from Flaherty himself as well as contributions from amongst others, Richard Leacock - cameraman on "Louisiana Story" (1948) and father of the contemporary hand-held documentary style, Martha Flaherty - Flaherty's Inuit granddaughter, George Stoney - documentary filmmaker and professor at New York University, Sean Crosson - film scholar at the Huston School of Film, Jay Ruby - anthropologist and film scholar at Temple University, and Deirdre Ni Chonghaile - musician and folklorist from arainn, as well as telling interviews with the people whose parents and grandparents Flaherty put onto the cinema screens of the world: Inuit, Samoans and, of obvious personal interest to the Irish filmmakers, the 'wild men' of Aran

DVD (Color) / 2011 / 84 minutes

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GOLDEN SLUMBERS

By Davy Chou

Between the early 1960s and 1975, Cambodia was home to a vibrant film industry that produced more than 400 features. When the Khmer Rouge seized control of the country, they halted production, demolishing the industry along most of the rest of the country's cultural life. Cinemas were closed, prints destroyed, and the filmmakers, actors, and screenwriters who were not able to flee the country were slaughtered.

Davy Chou's GOLDEN SLUMBERS resurrects this cinema's heyday. Though very few of the films from this period have remained intact, Chou uses the soundtracks, advertisements, posters and lobby cards to recreate his subjects' shared memories of a golden era.

The film contains interviews with the era's surviving artists, including directors Ly Bun Yim, Ly You Sreang, and Yvon Hem, and actor Dy Saveth. Two dedicated cinephiles-one of whom says he can remember the faces of film stars better than those of his brothers and sisters-recall plotlines and trade film trivia. Chou also takes us inside Phnom Penh's shuttered movie palaces, now transformed into karaoke bars, restaurants, and squats.

These reminiscences and recreations testify that while the most of the films of this era have vanished, their memory endures for an entire generation of Cambodians, leaving a complex legacy for today's youth to inherit.

DVD (Color, Black & White ) / 2011 / 96 minutes

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WALKING DEAD GIRLS, THE

An intriguing rarity for those seeking to study and understand a sub-genre of horror filmmaking, The Walking Dead Girls! is a behind the scenes look into zombie culture in the United States and the obsession with sexy female zombies. What is it about zombie bimbos, or "zimbies", that are starting to gain the world's interest? Why are zombies now in mainstream culture and seen in advertising from JCPenney to Sears?

With interviews with zombie master maker George Romero, cult filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman, scream queen Linnea Quigley and cult movie star Bruce Campbell.

Includes a rare look into the making of a zombie pinup calendar and behind the scenes of "Stripperland", The Walking Dead Girls! is a look into the zombie phenomenon created by Romero that is 40 years in the making.

DVD / 2011 / 90 minutes

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CHANTAL AKERMAN, FROM HERE

By Gustavo Beck & Leonardo Luiz Ferreira

In CHANTAL AKERMAN, FROM HERE, the renowned Belgian filmmaker sits down for an hour-long conversation about her entire body of work.

Throughout, the camera holds steady from outside an open door. The long, unbroken shot, and the frame-within-a-frame pay homage to Akerman's own unmistakable style ("I need a corridor. I need doors. Otherwise, I can't work", she says). But by shooting her in profile, the filmmakers provide a contrast to the signature frontality of her compositions (one of the many subjects covered in the wide-ranging interview) - an acknowledgement of this portrait's contingency also underlined by the title.

Akerman describes her first experiences with avant-garde film in New York, and, in particular, the lessons she took from the work of Michael Snow. She answers questions about her approach to fiction, documentary, and literary adaptation, covering everything from the early short LA CHAMBRE (1972) to the recent feature LA-BAS (2006). She explains her preference for small budgets and small crews, and the paramount importance of instinct and improvisation in her directorial process.

She is nothing if not forthcoming, candidly assessing her successes and failures, including an aborted attempt at writing at Hollywood screenplay. An image emerges of a filmmaker as assured and idiosyncratic as the work suggests. We see that behind Akerman's cinematic innovations there is not only a remarkable intellectual clarity, but an ethical commitment to making films in which the viewer can "feel the time passing-by in your own body", because, she says, "that is the only thing you have: time."

DVD (Color) / 2010 / 62 minutes

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ART OF FILMMAKING, THE

This box set features the following 5 documentaries about the art of filmmaking:

Tales From the Script
Screenwriters ranging from newcomers to living legends share their triumphs and hardships in this probing, insightful, and often hilarious odyssey through the world of movie storytelling. By analyzing their triumphs and recalling their failures, the participants explain how successful writers develop the skills necessary for toughing out careers in Hollywood.

FEATURING: Shane Black (Lethal Weapon), John Carpenter (Halloween), Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption), William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), David Hayter (X-Men), Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost), Paul Schrader (Raging Bull & Taxi Driver), Ron Shelton (Bull Durham), David S. Ward (The Sting) and many more.

Directors: Life Behind the Camera
Made in cooperation with the American Film Institute, this 4 hour interactive film features thirty-three legendary directors who reveal intimate and in-depth knowledge about the art of filmmaking and, as well, their own career in the movies.

FEATURING: Robert Altman, Robert Benton, Tim Burton, James Cameron, Chris Columbus, Wes Craven, Cameron Crowe, Frank Darabont, Jonathan Demme, Richard Donner, Clint Eastwood, Nora Ephron, William Friedkin, Terry Gilliam, Ron Howard, Lawrence Kasdan, Spike Lee, Barry Levinson, George Lucas, David Lynch, Adrian Lyne, Garry Marshall, Penny Marshall, Sydney Pollack, Rob Reiner, Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Bryan Singer, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Robert Zemeckis & David Zucker.

Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary
From cinema-verite pioneer Albert Maysles to mavericks like Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, the world's best documentarians reflect upon the unique power of their genre in this comprehensive film. Including interviews with 38 directors and film clips from classics such as Grey Gardens and The Thin Blue Line, this one-of-a-kind film explores the complex creative process that goes into making non-fiction films.

FEATURING: Nick Broomfield, Joan Churchill, Patricio Guzman, Werner Herzog, Scott Hicks, Heddy Honigmann, Kim Longinotto, Kevin Macdonald, Albert Maysles, Errol Morris, Laura Poitras, and many more.

Light Keeps Me Company
Twice an Oscar Winner and considered one of the foremost cinematographers of all time, Sven Nykvist shot some of the most important films in the history of cinema. Lovingly directed by his son, included are clips from his work, rare home movies, family photographs, behind-the-scenes footage, and interviews with the legends who worked with him.

FEATURING: Woody Allen, Richard Attenborough, Ingmar Bergman, Roman Polanski, Gena Rowlands, Susan Sarandon, Stellan Skarsgard, Vittorio Storaro, Liv Ullmann, Vilmos Zsigmond, and others.

Lavender Limelight: Lesbians in Film
From Go Fish to Paris is Burning, this festival favorite goes behind the scenes to reveal seven successful lesbian directors. These talented movie-makers enlighten and entertain as they discuss topics including how they got their start, inspirations, filmmaking techniques, Hollywood vs. Indie, and breaking out of the "gay ghetto."

FEATURING: Cheryl Dunye, Su Friedrich, Jennie Livingston, Heather MacDonald, Maria Maggenti, Monika Treut, and Rose Troche.

6 DVDs / 2009 / 574 minutes

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CAPTURING REALITY: THE ART OF DOCUMENTARY

Director: Pepita Ferrari

From cinema-verite pioneers Albert Maysles and Joan Churchill to maverick moviemakers like Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and Nick Broomfield, the world's best documentarians reflect upon the unique power of their genre in this comprehensive and eye-opening two-disc box set.

Featuring interviews with 38 directors and 163 film clips from classics such as Grey Gardens and The Thin Blue Line, as well as recent work like Darwin's Nightmare and Touching the Void, Capturing Reality explores the complex creative process that goes into making non-fiction films. Deftly charting the documentarian's journey, it poses the question: can film capture reality?

DVD-R / 2009 / 98 minutes

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FILMS OF MICHAEL SPORN, THE

Director: Michael Sporn

This Collector's Edition Box Set includes 12 films on 6 discs from the award-winning animator Michael Sporn, including: Whitewash; The Talking Eggs ; Champagne; The Hunting of the Snark; The Marzipan Pig; Jazztime Tale; Abel's Island; The Dancing Frog; The Red Shoes; The Little Match Girl ; The Emperor's New Clothes; Nightingale.

Based on stories from such acclaimed writers as William Steig (author of Shrek), Russell Hoban, Hans Christian Andersen, and Lewis Carroll, these widely acclaimed films feature a stunning array of voice talent, including James Earl Jones, Tim Curry, Danny Glover, Ruby Dee, Regis Philbin, and Linda Lavin.

When it's "time for a break from Disney" (Chicago Parent Magazine), put a Michael Sporn DVD on and enter the imaginative world of this "poet of animation" (Oscar-winning Animator John Canemaker).

DVD / 2008 / 360 minutes

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OPERATION FILMMAKER

By Nina Davenport

In 2004, American actor Liev Schreiber saw an MTV segment on Iraqi film student Muthana Mohmed, whose dreams of becoming a filmmaker had been thwarted by the bombing of his university during "Operation Iraqi Freedom." Schreiber, then preparing to film his directorial debut, Everything is Illuminated, in Prague, invited Muthana to work as a production assistant on the film.

Nina Davenport was hired to document Muthana's experience as an intern on the Hollywood movie. But Schreiber's well-intentioned gesture doesn't result in the inspiring story everyone had hoped for, as differing expectations and agendas clash. In particular, Muthana begrudgingly performs or shirks responsibility for the tasks assigned to him, repeatedly squandering a golden opportunity.

For OPERATION FILMMAKER, Davenport chronicled Muthana's story over a two-year period, from his work in Prague as a P.A. on Schreiber's Holocaust drama and later on Doom, a sci-fi film starring "The Rock," to a stint at a London film school, periodically contrasting his experiences abroad with scenes of Muthana's family and friends in wartorn Baghdad.

While documenting Muthana's relationships with the producers, crews and stars of both films-characterized by a psychologically fascinating stew of good intentions, bad faith, liberal guilt, and opportunism. Davenport herself eventually becomes embroiled in the young man's perennial financial difficulties and visa problems. In its continuing but futile search for a "happy ending," OPERATION FILMMAKER exposes the often mutually manipulative relationships between filmmakers and their subjects.

DVD (Color) / 2007 / 92 minutes

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KUXA KANEMA: THE BIRTH OF CINEMA

By Margarida Cardoso

The first cultural act of the nascent Mozambique Government after independence in 1975 was to create the National Institute of Cinema (INC). The new president Samora Machel had a strong awareness of the power of the image, and understood he needed to use this power to build a socialist nation. INC's goal was to film the people, and to deliver these images back to the people.

Reflecting the country's commitment to independence and socialism, the history of the INC and the films it produced cannot be disassociated from the movement embodied by Samora Machel and FRELIMO (Mozambique Liberation Front). Footage from the films - found by filmmaker Margarida Cardoso in an abandoned, burnt out building - show Mozambique's trajectory from great hope to great disillusionment. Weaving these images together with interviews of the people who produced them, KUXA KANEMA constructs a history of the birth and death of local cinema, and the birth and death of an ideology.

Directors, screenwriters, technicians return to the INC to view the footage, and discuss their industry as a unique testimonial to the country, its struggles and wars.

Today, the People's Republic of Mozambique is simply the Republic of Mozambique. Samora Machel's death marked the end of Mozambique's cinema (the current government prefers television). There is nothing left of the INC. The forgotten images that captured the first eleven years of independency - the years of the socialist revolution - are rotting, taking with them both the history of a period, and the history of hope.

DVD (Color / Black & White) / 2003 / 52 minutes

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GAO RANG (GRILLED RICE)

By Claude Grunspan

The war in Vietnam was the most filmed conflict in world history. But, unlike the thousands of Western journalists, a small band of North Vietnamese and NLF cameramen has largely been forgotten, though they founded Vietnamese cinema.

GAO RANG (meaning grilled or burnt rice) tells the story of these cameramen/soldiers. In their own words, they describe their experiences filming in combat, first against the French and later the Americans.

Mai Loc and Khoung Me, two veterans from the French war, tell of acquiring the first cameras and instruction manuals. Mr. Xuong, a traveling projectionist during both wars, recalls projecting films along the 17th Parallel, and remembers how the public reacted to the films.

Tran Van Thuy (director of HOW TO BEHAVE) and Le Man Thich (Director at the Studio for Documentary Films in Hanoi) screen some of the material that they shot. They describe the hardship and fear they faced in combat and during American bombings. For all of them, "to make propaganda was obvious." But they also discuss their regrets. Thuy says "If we had had a more critical historical awareness, we could have left much better images." Their films give the impression that everything was easy. They didn't film enough of the hard daily life, and regret the many "heroic deaths that were not filmed." It would have been "useless," the footage would not have been used.

Today, much of the footage these cameramen and their comrades shot is disappearing. The cost of preserving and storing the film is too expensive. Their history (and part of ours) is being "recycled" for a few bits of silver.

DVD (Color / Black & White) / 2000 / 52 minutes

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LEVEL FIVE

By Chris Marker
With Catherine Belkhodja

A woman (Laura), a computer, an invisible interlocutor: such is the setup on which LEVEL FIVE is built. She "inherits" a task: to finish writing a video game centered on the Battle of Okinawa - a tragedy practically unknown in the West, but whose development played a decisive role in the way World War II ended, as well as in postwar times and even our present.

A strange game, in fact. Contrary to classical strategy games whose purpose is to turn back the tide of history, this one seems willing only to reproduce history as it happened. While working on Okinawa and meeting through a rather unusual network - parallel to Internet - informants and even eye-witnesses to the battle (including film director Nagisa Oshima), Laura gathers pieces of the tragedy, until they start to interfere with her own life.

As in any self-respecting video game, this one proceeds by "levels". Laura and her interlocutor, intoxicated by their enterprise, use this as a metaphor for life itself, and gladly attribute levels to everything around them. Will she attain LEVEL FIVE?

DVD (French With English Subtitles, Color) / 1996 / 106 minutes

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FAR FROM VIETNAM

By Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch, Chris Marker, and Alain Resnais

Initiated and edited by Chris Marker, FAR FROM VIETNAM is an epic 1967 collaboration between cinema greats Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch and Alain Resnais in protest of American military involvement in Vietnam--made, per Marker's narration, "to affirm, by the exercise of their craft, their solidarity with the Vietnamese people in struggle against aggression."

A truly collaborative effort, the film brings together an array of stylistically disparate contributions, none individually credited, under a unified editorial vision. The elements span documentary footage shot in North and South Vietnam and at anti-war demonstrations in the United States; a fictional vignette and a monologue that dramatize the self-interrogation of European intellectuals; interviews with Fidel Castro and Anne Morrison, widow of Norman Morrison, the Quaker pacifist who burned himself alive in front of the Pentagon in 1965; an historical overview of the conflict; reflections from French journalist Michele Ray; and a range of repurposed media material.

Passionately critical and self-critical, and as bold in form as it is in rhetoric, FAR FROM VIETNAM is a milestone in political documentary and in the French cinema.

DVD (English, French With English Subtitles, Color) / 1967 / 115 minutes

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LE JOLI MAI: THE LOVELY MONTH OF MAY

By Chris Marker & Pierre Lhomme
Music: Michel Legrand
Narration: Simone Signoret

"A far-reaching meditation on the relationship between individual and society" (Film Comment), LE JOLI MAI is a portrait of Paris and Parisians shot during May 1962.

It is a film with several thousand actors including a poet, a student, an owl, a housewife, a stockbroker, a competitive dancer, two lovers, General de Gaulle and several cats.

Filmed just after the March ceasefire between France and Algeria, LE JOLI MAI documents Paris during a turning point in French history: the first time since 1939 that France was not involved in any war.

Part I, "A Prayer from the Eiffel Tower," documents personal attitudes and feelings around Paris. A salesman feels free only when he is driving his car, and then only if there is not too much traffic. A working-class mother of eight has just gotten the larger apartment that she had been wanting for years. The space capsule of American astronaut John Glenn is examined by a group of admiring children. Two investors talk about their careers and adventures. A couple in love since their teens discuss the possibility of eternal happiness. At a middle class wedding banquet, the guests are raucous while the bride is quiet, dignified and reserved.

Part II, "The Return of Fantomas," is an investigation of the political and social life of the city. Marker and Lhomme alternate between public events and private discussions: the former focusing on the Algerian situation, such as a funeral for people killed in Paris street demonstrations after the Algerian settlement. Meanwhile, the latter includes a conversation with two girls about the state of France; a meeting with a pair of engineers who describe the potential of the current technological revolution; a n African student who discusses his own response to the French and the Parisians' reaction to his skin color; a worker-priest forced to choose between the Church and his fellow workers; and an Algerian worker describing conflict he has experienced with native Frenchmen.

The film ends with sweeping views of Paris, the facades of its prisons, and the faces of its people as they struggle to make sense of their moment in history.

DVD (English, French With English Subtitles, Black and White) / 1963 / 145 minutes

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TRAVELS IN THE CONGO: VOYAGE AU CONGO

A report by Andre Gide and Marc Allegret
A film by Marc Allegret
With a new score by Mauro Coceano

In 1925, Marc Allegret accompanied Andre Gide on a journey to French Equatorial Africa, the Congo, as his secretary, and novice filmmaker. Filming throughout their 11-month travels, and only three years after Nanook of the North, Allegret's goal was to immerse viewers "as we ourselves had been, in the atmosphere of this mysterious country."

Unusual for its time Travels in the Congo (Voyage au Congo) is a largely observational documentary (with one dramatized sequence) showing aspects of the lives, culture, and built environments of diverse groups in the region, amongst them the Baya, Sara and Fula peoples, and without trying to shoehorn them into a dramatic narrative.

Travels in the Congo does, of course, retain a certain colonial gaze; in writing about the film, Allegret referred to its subjects as "a humanity without history." But overall it remains steadfast in its approach, presenting its subjects on their own terms.

After Travels in the Congo, Marc Allegret had a long career as a filmmaker and photographer. Andre Gide wrote two books about their time in Africa, Travels in the Congo and Return from Chad, and went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Allegret and Gide carried out most of their journey on foot. Porters carried the film's negatives for months, through extreme heat and humidity. But the nitrate footage survived. In 2018, Travels in the Congo was restored and digitized by Les Films du Pantheon in collaboration with Les Films du Jeudi, with the support of CNC and the Cinematheque francaise, and the help of the British Film Institute. This restored version also includes a newly commissioned instrumental soundtrack.

DVD (French, With English Subtitles, Black and White) / 1927 / 117 minutes

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