Paradise (2014)
Genre : Documentary
Runtime : 1H 10M
Director : Alain Cavalier
Synopsis
"Since childhood, I've had the good fortune of going through two mini depressions of happiness, and I'm serenely awaiting the third. This alone is enough for me to believe in a certain beauty to life and to have the pleasure of attempting to film it in all its forms (trees, animals, gods, humans...) and to do so when love is intense. The filmmaker has lost a part of innocence. It's so difficult to spot it around you, so difficult not to lose it during a film shoot. I'm grateful to those who you look at on screen. To stand up to time, I've a tactic, which is to dig into my stock of emotions and old images. Not so as to find what will never come back, but to discover the signs of spring in winter. This allows me to begin another day with an easy, light step." (Alain Cavalier)
Free adaptation of Shakespeare′s drama: The Danish queen masquerades her daughter as a boy. Thus, the girl lives her whole life as Prince Hamlet.
With family connections to some famous French artists, writers, and musicians of the time, Sacha Guitry decided to film the individuals in action, to celebrate the greatness of his culture ,threatened by Germany in the ongoing Great War.
“Brüder”, a film directed by Herr Werner Hochbaum ( who was a remarkable film director in the talkie 30’s ), was one of those films which showed the harsh daily life of the working class. The film depicts, in a kind of fictional documentary, the 1896 Hamburg dockworkers' strike: the workers receive meagre wages for hard work and live under miserable conditions and finally go on strike (to make matters more personal, one of the strikers has a brother who is a policeman). Even though the inspiration for the story was an event that took place in the XIX century, things had little changed by the troublesome twenties so the story had a perfect contemporary ring.
In the Crimea, the Reds and the Whites aren't done fighting, and Jeanne discovers that the man she loves is a Bolshevik (when he kills her father). Penniless, she returns to Paris where she works for her uncle. Soon after, her lover Andreas is in France to organize the sailors in Toulon. So also is a thief, traitor, and libertine, Khalibiev, who wants to seduce Jeanne. His schemes, Jeanne and Andreas's naivete, and a lost diamond bring the lovers to the brink of tragedy.
Four stages of a lesbian relationship explored in an experimental film starring performance artists Terry Sendgraff and Barbara Hammer on suspended trapezes and ropes.
The building of blast furnaces Magnitogorsk and the Kubas Basin by Komsomol, the Communist Union of youth, as part of Stalin’s first five-year plan.
Carlos and his girlfriend Carmen are a happy and fun couple; however, his friend León and his girlfriend Luisa are quite the opposite; so Carlos recommends León to visit the mysterious Kamus —an artist, a drunkard, a philosopher—, in the hope that he can free him from his depressing and contagious existential pessimism…
Essay documentary explores eroded emulsions and images for lost vestiges of lesbian and gay culture. First feature by a pioneer of lesbian cinema, Hammer weaves gay and lesbian couples with footage that unearths the forbidden and invisible history of a marginalized people.
In a dark and spare theatrical space, four characters use gesture, language, and movement to explore themes of desire and mortality.
Hammer used old x-ray footage, rearranged, colored and orchestrated through optical printing, in order to reveal hidden bodily movements and rhythms in its constant juxtaposition.
A young Belgian girl, raised by her longtime nanny, flees Europe at the advent of World War I and travels to America to find her real mother.
A disturbingly organic-looking figure speaks to us of life, politics and death as the symbol of the common man toils away. Written and narrated by William S. Burroughs.
Exploding Plastic Inevitable was a series of multimedia events organised by Andy Warhol between 1966 and 1967, featuring musical performances by The Velvet Underground and Nico, screenings of Warhol's films, and dancing and performances by regulars of Warhol's Factory. It is also the title of a 18-minute film by Ronald Nameth filmed during one week of the show in Chicago, Illinois in 1966.
Peyote Queen opens with black-and-white perforations that pulsate to the beat of drumming and escalate to light-bathed split screens and kaleidoscopic effects. Switching to lively organ accompaniment, the film pours out a stream of simple scratchings that rollick across the screen. Fish, breasts, flowers, boats, water, lips, hearts, stars—the hieroglyphs explode with color and celebrate the female creative force. The surge slows with the return of ritual drumming, this time with chanting, and a self-reflective coda. -- National Film Preservation Foundation
Hyman Goldberger, the president of film studio Super-Colossal Pictures, is in trouble--his major backer is threatening to stop financing his pictures. He finds a group of six wealthy individuals who may want to become investors in the studio if his disgruntled backer pulls out. Unfortunately, his bumbling runner Albert picks that day to invite six of his street musician friends to be in the film that is currently shooting at the studio, and Hyman mistakes them for the potential investors. Complications ensue.
The film was produced as a compilation film. Blum reported in “Film-Kurier“ (5.11.1928): "It will be assembled from excerpts of partly unpublished Ukrainian films. […] Some American footage has also been used. To get material as impressive as possible, a number of films, 0-60, have been viewed." Based on ideas by Dziga Vertov, and largely assembled from the last reel of his film 'The Eleventh Year', this compilation presents an explicit critique of the very technology that Vertov sought to praise, stressing the dark side of industrialization—hands mangled in workplace accidents, train wrecks, coffins—and connects to a particularly German concern with the negative effects of technology stretching from the Romantics to Heidegger, Horkheimer, and Adorno in the twentieth century.
Married carnival performers are subjected to the abuses of their employer in this silent film gem that has not received as much attention as it deserves. When the boss' unwanted advances on the wife are refused, he taunts a lion until it nearly kills her. But the other performers assist in a unique plot for revenge. Jaque Catelain directs and stars in this film made for influential French director Marcel L'Herbier's production company. Some sources also list L'Herbier as co-director, as he is credited here. The film boasts some rapid-fire editing techniques that were decades ahead of its time.
The film stars actor Rod La Rocque as 'Jerry Cleggert', a good-natured descendant of an infamous clan of pirates who resides aboard the rickety ship Jasper B. Cleggert is informed that in order to inherit a large inheritance, he must marry by his twenty-fifth birthday - otherwise he would relinquish all claims to his impending fortune. Jerry soon meets his ideal would-be bride Agatha Fairhaven (Mildred Harris) and the two immediately fall in love. Complications arise when Jerry's cousin, the dastardly lawyer Reginald Maltravers (Snitz Edwards) claims Agatha as his own. The courting couple suffer a series of mishaps on the way to altar; they are waylaid en route by a trio of bandits, escape from a runaway taxi cab, and outrun a mob of unscrupulous state authorities.
Produced by MGM in cooperation with the U.S. Navy, this short film follows U.S. naval aviators through their basic training in Florida and advanced training in California.
A montage of some home movies taken by Archie Stewart (1902-1998), an early enthusiast in taken 16 mm sound films of his family. We see his daughters, Mary and Anne, playing in the aftermath of a January, 1936, snowstorm. Next, indoors, the girls bring in a birthday cake and sing to Archie. He has Anne read to him from a children's book, and a year later, has her read aloud to show her progress. Anne and Mary dress up Pat the family dog in a dress and scarf and hold a tea party, chattering away. Archie's high-pitched voice provides narration on and off camera.
