Rich Hall's How The West Was Lost (2008)
Genre : Documentary
Runtime : 1H 29M
Director : Chris Cottam
Synopsis
Comedian Rich Hall goes west to find out what killed off that most quintessentially American of all film genres, the western. Through films such as The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, Little Big Man, The Wild Bunch and Unforgiven, Rich charts the rise and fall of America's obsession with its own creation myth - the Wild West. He explores how the image of the cowboy as a moral, straight-talking heroic figure was created by Hollywood but appropriated by Washington, as one president after another sought to associate themselves with this potent symbol of strength and valour.
Second part of a three-part documentary series on the making of Once Upon a Time in the West, Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone's masterpiece, released in 1968. (Preceded by An Opera of Violence; followed by Something to Do With Death.)
First part of a three-part documentary series on the making of Once Upon a Time in the West, Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone's masterpiece, released in 1968. (Followed by The Wages of Sin.)
Third part of a three-part documentary series on the making of Once Upon a Time in the West, Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone's masterpiece, released in 1968. (Preceded by The Wages of Sin.)
An account of the life and work of American film director Sam Peckinpah (1925-84), a tortured artist whose genius and inner demons changed the Western genre forever.
An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.
An up-and-coming journalist finds his world and faith increasingly challenged when he's granted the interview of a lifetime – with someone who claims to be God.
Los Angeles, 1969. TV star Rick Dalton, a struggling actor specializing in westerns, and stuntman Cliff Booth, his best friend, try to survive in a constantly changing movie industry. Dalton is the neighbor of the young and promising actress and model Sharon Tate, who has just married the prestigious Polish director Roman Polanski…
Salvador Mallo, a filmmaker in the twilight of his career, remembers his life: his mother, his lovers, the actors he worked with. The sixties in a small village in Valencia, the eighties in Madrid, the present, when he feels an immeasurable emptiness, facing his mortality, the incapability of continuing filming, the impossibility of separating creation from his own life. The need of narrating his past can be his salvation.
Besieged by cancer and nearing the end, the genius Argentine-Brazilian filmmaker Héctor Babenco (1946-2016) asks Bárbara Paz, his wife, for one last wish: to be the protagonist of his own death.
A chronicle of the long career of American filmmaker Roger Corman, the most tenacious and ingenious low-budget producer and director in the US film industry, a pioneer of independent filmmaking and discoverer of new talent.
Daniel, a successful TV journalist living life in the fast lane, has fallen into a deep depression. His seemingly perfect life suddenly collapses under him when panic attacks force him to deal with himself and his past.
Flamboyantly gay Austrian television reporter Bruno stirs up trouble with unsuspecting guests and large crowds through brutally frank interviews and painfully hilarious public displays of homosexuality.
The Amazon rain forest, 1979. The crew of Fitzcarraldo (1982), a film directed by German director Werner Herzog, soon finds itself with problems related to casting, tribal struggles and accidents, among many other setbacks; but nothing compared to dragging a huge steamboat up a mountain, while Herzog embraces the path of a certain madness to make his vision come true.
550 artists were interviewed over ten years. At some point during those interviews, they were asked a question and told to answer with one word only. Some stuck to one, some said more, some answered quickly, some thought it through, and some didn't answer at all. That question… Lennon or McCartney?
In 1939, boy-wonder Orson Welles leaves New York, where he has succeeded in radio and theater, and, hired by RKO Pictures, moves to Hollywood with the purpose of making his first film.
A superb, moving and thrilling interview with American actor Sterling Hayden (1916-86), held in Besançon, France, on board a dilapidated barge, when he was 65 years old. An unparalleled portrait, in his own words and without any qualms, of a legendary Hollywood star, icon of film noir and the western, who was also a marine, an OSS agent, an anti-communist informer, a writer and a wandering sailor: the hero of his own life.
An intimate portrait and saga of four film pioneers--Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack who rose from immigrant poverty through personal tragedies persevering to create a major studio with a social conscience.
Filmmaker and comic writer Kevin Smith interviews comic book legend Stan Lee about his life and work in comics across the decades.
Pierre is a clumsy, overly serious math teacher at an all-girls high school. His life is thrown into chaos after encountering a beautiful British actress and the paparazzi that follow her around.
The life and work of one of the great masters of Italian cinema, Sergio Leone (1929-89); a rich and fascinating portrait through unpublished testimonies of collaborators, actors, directors and critics who reconstruct every aspect of his creative activity.
