From Akerman to Vertov, ON CINEMA is our collection that takes you to the creative center of the 20th Century’s own, great art-form.
Many of these films are love songs to the form made by great filmmakers -- from Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville on French Cinema or Nagisa Oshima on Japanese Cinema, to Chris Marker on Andrei Tarkovsky.
Ross McElwee contributes his eccentric and visionary take on TV, Nanni Moretti a tragicomic drama on an Italian filmmaker’s’ daily life, and exclusively on OVID, Florence Strauss in the series THE LAST TYCOONS takes us on an intimate tour through the rich and otherwise unexplored world of French film producing. What do they say? ACTION!
Directed by Thom Andersen & Noel Burch • Documentary • With Billy Woodberry, Paul Jarrico, Alfred Lewis Levitt, Abraham Polonsky, Ayn Rand • 2014 • 118 minutes
A fascinating documentary by Thom Andersen (director of Los Angeles Plays Itself) and Noel Burch (author of To The Distant Observer), Re...
Directed by Claire Pijman • Documentary • With Robby Müller, Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch, Lars von Trier, Steve McQueen • 2018 • 86 minutes
Director of Photography Robby Müller has inspired generations with his ground-breaking camerawork. For her extraordinary film essay, Living the Light, directo...
Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • With Andrei Tarkovsky • 2000 • 55 minutes
ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF ANDREI ARSENEVICH is renowned French filmmaker Chris Marker's homage to his friend and colleague, Andrei Tarkovsky, who died in 1986. Widely regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of the...
Directed by Tinatin Gurchiani • Documentary • 2013 • 101 minutes
A filmmaker puts out a casting call for young adults, aged 15- to 23. The director wants to make a film about growing up in her home country, Georgia, and find commonalities across social and ethnic lines. She travels through citie...
Directed by Saskia Boddeke • Documentary • 2017 • 70 minutes
The fascinations of filmmaker Peter Greenaway, whose motto is "art is life and life is art,"are captured like butterflies and arranged in an alphabet, a form that suits him perfectly as an encyclopedist. In intimate conversations with ...
Directed by Margarethe von Trotta • Documentary • With Liv Ullmann, Olivier Assayas, Ruben Östlund • 2018 • 99 minutes
On the 100th anniversary of his birth, internationally renowned director Margarethe von Trotta examines Ingmar Bergman’s life and work with a circle of his closest collaborators...
Directed by Martina Kudlacek • Documentary • 2007 • 97 minutes
Martina Kudlacek, director of the critically acclaimed "In the Mirror of Maya Deren," brings us the story of Marie Menken (1909-1970), one of New York's outstanding underground filmmakers, who inspired and worked with renowned artist...
Directed by Mercedes Gaviria Jaramillo • Documentary • 2021 • 72 minutes
After studying abroad, Mercedes returns to Colombia to work on the next film by her father, the famous Víctor Gaviria (The Rose Seller). Fluctuating between admiration and reproach, Mercedes constructs a private diary that ...
Directed by Frederic Choffat and Vincent Lowy • Documentary • With Marcel Ophuls, Jean-Luc Godard • 2010 • 44 minutes
In 2009, in a small theater in Geneva, Switzerland, the film directors Marcel Ophuls and Jean-Luc Godard met for an unusual, surprisngly intimate and sometimes contentious dialog...
Directed by Franco Sacchi • Documentary • 2007 • 56 minutes
First came Hollywood, then Bollywood and now Nollywood, Nigeria’s booming film industry, which released 2000 feature features in 2006 alone. Where else can you shoot a full-length dramatic film for $10,000 in 7 days? Until recently litt...
Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 1998 • 116 minutes
Based on the life and work of the Russian film director Alexander Medvedkin (1900-1989), THE LAST BOLSHEVIK is a tribute from one filmmaker to another. An archeological expedition into film history that reveals new cinematic treasures, ...
Directed by Philippe Baron • Documentary • 2010 • 52 minutes
The first cinematic depiction of the life of Jesus, Sidney Olcott's 1912 film FROM THE MANGER TO THE CROSS is the only movie ever shot in the places described by the New Testament. The fourth feature-length film release in the history ...
Directed by Anne-Marie Miéville & Jean-Luc Godard • Documentary • With Michel Piccoli • 1995 • 50 minutes
Jean-Luc Godard produced this ambitious project, directed by his wife, Anne-Marie Miéville. Travelling around six regions (each of which featured in a classic film) he interviews young local...
Directed by Manuel Abramovich • Documentary • With Lucrecia Martel • 2017 • 75 minutes
An illustration of filmmaking’s many stages — mysterious, delirious, playful, frustrated — and complex artistic collaboration with its subject, Manuel Abramovich’s new film concerns Lucrecia Martel during the ...
Directed by Terence McSweeney, George Lee • Documentary • 2019 • 30 minutes
For a huge number of people around the globe the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have become "America's story". Films like the Academy Award-winning The Hurt Locker (2009) and the commercially successful and culturally impa...
Directed by Bill Morrison • Documentary • 2017 • 120 minutes
This meditation on cinema’s past from Decasia director Bill Morrison pieces together the bizarre true history of a long-lost collection of 533 nitrate film prints from the early 1900s. Located just south of the Arctic Circle, Dawson Ci...
Directed by Peter Friedman • Documentary • With Roy Smeck, Gene Autry, Arthur Tracy, Mel Bay • 1984 • 27 minutes
In 1926, Warner Brothers premiered the first sync-sound film ever made. It featured a largely unknown vaudeville performer named Roy Smeck. The film showcased Roy’s virtuosity on the ...
Directed by Martina Kudlácek • Documentary • With Miriam Arsham, Stan Brakhage, Chao Li Chi, Rita Christiani, Maya Deren • 2002 • 104 minutes
With In The Mirror Of Maya Deren, documentary filmmaker Martina Kudlácek has fashioned not only a fascinating portrait of a groundbreaking and influential...
Directed by Lloyd Ross • Documentary • 2007 • 52 minutes
An American in Sophiatown puts Come Back, Africa into the context of the time it was made ( 1957-1958) - recreating the sense of danger, the intrigues which were necessary to make the film under the nose of the apartheid regime. We come to...
Directed by Evgeny Tsymbal • Documentary • With Denis Kaufman, Mikhail Kaufman, Boris Kaufman • 2002 • 54 minutes
The fascinating and tumultuous lives of Mikhail, Boris and Denis Kaufman (better known as Dziga Vertov) are the focus of this powerful documentary. Using rare archival footage from R...
Directed by Marlon Riggs • Documentary • 1991 • 88 minutes
An essential companion to Ethnic Notions, Color Adjustment explores black representation in the age of primetime television. Deconstructing cultural touchstones from Amos ’n’ Andy to The Jeffersons to The Cosby Show, this cogent and prov...
Directed by Joe Angio • Documentary • With Spike Lee, Mario Van Peebles, St. Clair Bourne, Gil Scott-Heron • 2005 • 85 minutes
Melvin van Peebles’ remarkable life story reveals an artist and a man whose groundbreaking impact on film, politics and pop culture remains, forty-five years after the r...
Directed by Andrea Weiss • Documentary • With Ian McKellen • 1996 • 74 minutes
Billed as 'a kind of post-modern queer soap opera for Britain', Andrea Weiss' documentary tells a sharp story. She evaluates the way gay and lesbian people have been depicted in mainstream British film and television....
Directed by Jim McBride • Drama • With Eileen Dietz, Kit Carson • 1967 • 73 minutes
David Holzman's Diary is one of the most influential films of the 1960s, an "ingenious puzzle movie" (Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader) that charts the self-destruction of a media-saturated youth. As news from the Viet...
