Film Before Film (1987)
Genre : Documentary
Runtime : 1H 23M
Director : Werner Nekes
Synopsis
An exhilarating and amusing encyclopedic look at the "prehistory" of cinema. Werner Nekes charts the fascination with moving pictures which led to the birth of film, covering shadow plays, peep shows, flip books, flicks, magic lanterns, lithopanes, panoramic, scrolls, colorful forms of early animation, and numerous other historical artiffices. Working with these formats, early "producers" created melodramas, comedies, -- as well as lots of pornography -- anticipating most of the forms known today. Nekes probes these colorful toys and inventions in a rich and rewarding optical experience. Film Before Film is a bewildering assault of exotic (and sometimes erotic) images and illusions.
Winnipeg, 1939: Bosnian immigrant Nihad Ademi conceives of a way to harness the power of the Aurora Borealis in order to broadcast imagery of his vast and beloved adopted land from coast to coast to coast.
In Spring is a masterpiece of the Ukrainian film avant-garde, a non-fiction film created by Mykhail Kaufman. In it, the now almost unknown Kyiv of 1929 appears. Shots of the awakening of the city, renewal of its life, echo with lyrical pictures of the revival of nature. Kaufman's attentive camera stops for a long time on the smiling faces of the children, painting a lyrical picture of a confession of love for Kyiv.
A short film from Jonas Mekas depicting an afternoon in New York of people joining in singing "Hare Hare"
The short film is a montage of sped up clips of The Ringling Brothers Circus in action set to a musical track. The film is separated into four segments, each segment which focuses on different acts within the circus. The later segments often incorporate clips from earlier segments, mostly as background to the featured acts. The speed of the clips match the tempo of the soundtrack music.
The 16-minute film falls neatly into two nearly equal parts, separated by fades to and from black. Part one depicts a sunrise, a journey out to sea in a boat, then gulls flying around the boat while fish are cleaned, and finally the journey back and the reappearance of land.
A powerful nation has experimented with a new gas, which does not kill or injure the asphyxiated subjects, only puts them in a lethargic and mystical state. X-70 gas bombs will be dropped by mistake over Nebelux and provoke an unexpected mutation of the population of this friendly little country. (miff.com.au)
Experimental film with Gunvor Nelson's daughter Oona.
The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty was pieced together by documentarian Esfir Shub from material recorded between 1913 and 1917, and represents the final years leading up to the Russian Revolution. Through editing, Shub casts a critical, ironic light on the former czarist regime. The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty is the first film in Esfir Shub's trilogy that continued with The Great Road (1927), and concluded with Lev Tolstoy and the Russia of Nicolai II (1928).
A tense vignette about the fate of an unlucky man in poverty-stricken Weimar-era Germany.
The film is dedicated to the achievements of the Ukrainian SSR for the eleventh anniversary of the October Revolution.
Helsinki, Forever is a montage film about the city of Helsinki by the award-winning Finnish film director and academic Peter von Bagh. The film draws a portrait of Helsinki and also acts as an essay on Finnish culture in a wider sense. It shows Helsinki as captured by leading Finnish feature film and documentary makers over a period of one hundred years.
In the 1936 short Allegretto, diamond and oval shapes in primary colors perform a sensual, upbeat ballet to the music of composer Ralph Rainger. The geometric dance is set against a background of expanding circles that suggest radio waves.
The story revolves around two objects, a rare set of 18th-century Limoges china, and a 19th century aristocratic portrait. As these items are passed, sold, or stolen from one character to another, a giddy round dance of excess begins to take shape, one which suggests that if history doesn't repeat itself, it certainly rhymes. Together with co-writer Gérard Brach, whose other co-writing credits include Repulsion and Tess, Otar Iosseliani uses a feather-light touch to expose the futility of class and social order, making a bagatelle of the concerns of rich and poor alike.
Romance sentimentale is a 1930 French film directed by Grigori Aleksandrov and Sergei M. Eisenstein. A short, experimental, slightly poetic montage of city and abstract images.
The film's soundtrack is an original musical composition produced with synthetic sound - through photographing unusual geometric shapes and running them through an optical sound head. The images are an artistic rendering of this soundtrack.
This twisted sequel to the Oscar-nominated film "Guard Dog" details the continuing adventures of an eager canine. This time he takes a job helping the blind, but still leaves a path of destruction in his wake.
An aging movie actor who is preparing to shoot a death scene finds himself visited by the spirit of a dead, long-ago lover.
A story told with few words. We see a solitary man and a solitary woman, each alone with their thoughts. She is in the country, staring out a window. Nature is quiet, waiting for spring, trees are bare. He is in the city, walking from the docks, watching, somewhat aimless. She walks a country lane. Both are alone. She writes him a letter, offering an opportunity. Will he take it?
Julian, a middle-aged single doctor, meets his childhood friend Pablo again. The latter is back from Africa and has just married a beautiful young blonde, Elena. Julian falls in love with her and tries to seduce her, but she mockingly pushes him away from her. He then finds that Ana, his nurse, bears a troubling resemblance to Elena. He decides to gradually transform Ana into Elena…
Eric Rohmer directs this short documentary that narrates the presence of women in French universities as of the time of its release -- 1966. During the film's short run, the narrator continues to point out that during the advent of World War II, only 21,000 women attended college and made only a 30 % of the student body, a number that by the 1964-1965 school year had passed the 120,000 mark. Instead of opting to live according to what was expected of them, now they were joining the work force, trading in aprons for lab jackets and becoming professionals even after getting married.
