On Cinema
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!
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A Daughter’s Tribute to Her Father: Souleymane Cissé
Directed by Fatou Cissé • Documentary • With Souleymane Cissé, Martin Scorsese, Costa-Gavras, Baba Diop • 2022 • 73 minutes
A Daughter’s Tribute to Her Father: Souleymane Cissé is the story of a filmmaker as told by his daughter. Through interviews with his friends, family, and collaborators, th...
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Prism
Directed by Eléonore Yameogo, An van. Dienderen, and Rosine Mbakam • Documentary • 2021 • 78 minutes
Is the technology of photography and motion pictures inherently racist?
For PRISM, Belgian filmmaker An van. Dienderen invited Rosine Mbakam, from Cameroon, and Eléonore Yameogo from Burkina Fas...
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Rock Hudson's Home Movies
Directed by Mark Rappaport • Documentary • With Eric Farr • 1992 • 63 minutes
Rock Hudson’s Home Movies is a provocatively entertaining and hugely influential film essay from Mark Rappaport (From the Journals of Jean Seberg). It uses a collage of film clips from throughout Hudson’s career, and a...
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Chantal Akerman by Chantal Akerman
Directed by Chantal Akerman • Documentary • 1996 • 64 minutes
When asked to participate in the Cinema, of Our Time series, Chantal Akerman jokingly suggested herself as subject matter. She envisioned a film consisting solely of excerpts from her films, but when pressed by the producers to includ...
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Catching Sight of Thelma and Louise
Directed by Jennifer Townsend • Documentary • 2019 • 86 minutes
Powerful, authentic, and timely, CATCHING SIGHT OF THELMA and LOUISE dives off the edge into the truth of women's experience in the world. It revisits the journey of Thelma and Louise through the lens of viewers who saw that iconic ...
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Mia Madre
Directed by Nanni Moretti • Drama • With Margherita Buy, John Turturro • 2016 • 107 minutes
Acclaimed Italian auteur Nanni Moretti finds comedy and pathos in the story of Margherita, a harried film director (Margherita Buy, A Five Star Life) trying to juggle the demands of her latest movie and a...
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Stooges: The Men Behind The Mayhem
Directed by Paul E. Gierucki • Documentary • With Larry Fine, Moe Howard, Curley Howard, Shemp Howard • 2005 • 63 minutes
Whether you're a lifelong Stoogephile, or just a casual knucklehead, you are sure to find something to love about this award-winning, in-depth look at America's most beloved ...
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The Story of Film: A New Generation
Directed by Mark Cousins • Documentary • With Mark Cousins • 2022 • 167 minutes
A decade after The Story of Film: An Odyssey, an expansive and influential inquiry into the state of moviemaking in the 20th century, filmmaker Mark Cousins returns with an epic and hopeful tale of cinematic innovati...
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The Taking
Directed by Alexandre O. Philippe • Documentary • 2021 • 76 minutes
This illuminating essay uses film scenes to tell of the forced cultural appropriation of a world-famous landscape. Monument Valley is one of the most recognizable landscapes in the world. Its iconographic use in American Western...
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40,000 Years of Dreaming (George Miller)
Directed by George Miller • Documentary • With George Miller • 1996 • 65 minutes
Mad Max director George Miller explores the tradition of film production in Australia, forging a link between the imported technology of filmmaking and the ancient Aboriginal creation myths. In parallel with tracing...
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Hal (a film about Hal Ashby)
Directed by Amy Scott • Documentary • With Hal Ashby, Norman Jewison, Haskell Wexler • 2018 • 90 minutes
Although Hal Ashby directed a remarkable string of acclaimed, widely admired classics throughout the 1970s—HAROLD AND MAUDE, THE LAST DETAIL, SHAMPOO, COMING HOME, BEING THERE—he is often ove...
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100 Years of Japanese Cinema (Nagisa Oshima)
Directed by Nagisa Oshima • Documentary • With William B. White, Nagisa Oshima • 1996 • 52 minutes
The forces and themes that have shaped his nation's cinema drive Nagisa Oshima's forceful and erudite essay. Based entirely on archive footage, it considers the rediscovery of Daisuke Ito's Chuji's...
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A Boatload of Wild Irishmen
Directed by Mac Dara O Curraidhin • Documentary • 2011 • 84 minutes
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 ci...
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To Tell the Truth (series)
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There are countless histories of narrative film, but the documentary has never received its due. TO TELL THE TRUTH presents two films that place familiar historical events in a startling new perspective and help viewers understand the choices behind, and consequences of, on-screen "reality."
WOR...
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Trespassing Bergman
Directed by Jane Magnusson, Hynek Pallas • Documentary • With Ang Lee, Laura Dern, Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott • 2015 • 107 minutes
A group of filmmakers visit Ingmar Bergman's house on the remote Swedish island of Faro to discuss his legacy, and the art of filmmaking. Ingmar Ber...
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Cinema Novo
Directed by Eryk Rocha • Documentary • 2016 • 90 minutes
CINEMA NOVO is a film essay that poetically investigates the eponimous 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, Leo...
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Escapes: The Life of Actor and Screenwriter, Hampton Fancher
Directed by Michael Almereyda • Documentary • With Hampton Fancher • 2017 • 89 minutes
Directed by Michael Almereyda (Experimenter) and executive produced by Wes Anderson (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Escapes blazes a wild path through mid-20th-century Hollywood via the experiences of Hampton Fanc...
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From the Journals of Jean Seberg
Directed by Mark Rappaport • Documentary • With Mary Beth Hurt • 1995 • 97 minutes
From the Journals of Jean Seberg is a profoundly illuminating exploration of Jean Seberg’s career from the brilliant filmmaker Mark Rappaport (Rock Hudson’s Home Movies). Mary Beth Hurt (The Age of Innocence) por...
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A Bit of Scarlet
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....
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1914: A War of Images
Directed by Günter Kaindlstorfer • Documentary • 2014 • 45 minutes
World War I was the battlefield for the first propaganda war in history. The recently invented and very popular medium of film was used by all military parties to create deception and manipulate public opinion. Scientists, using ...
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Wim Wenders' Story of His Early Years
Directed by Marcel Wehn • Documentary • With Wim Wenders, Peter Handke, Robby Müller • 2007 • 96 minutes
In intimate conversations Wim Wenders talks about his sheltered upbringing in post-war Germany. The film follows him on a journey into the past that takes him to Paris, where he lived as a yo...
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The Making of 'Rocky Road to Dublin'
Directed by Paul Duane • Documentary • With Peter Lennon, Raoul Coutard • 2005 • 27 minutes
This documentary reunites director Peter Lennon and cinematographer Raoul Coutard, who recount the making of their then controversial but now classic documentary on Ireland in the Sixties. Rocky Road to D...
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Love Express: The Disappearance of Walerian Borowczyk
Directed by Kuba Mikurda • Documentary • With Bertrand Bonello, Neil Jordan, Patrice Leconte, Slavoj Žižek, Terry Gilliam, Andrzej Wajda • 2018 • 76 minutes
How does a filmmaker go from creating cutting-edge work and competing in Cannes to being labelled a failed erotic filmmaker? The debut docu...
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Abstract Cinema
Directed by Keith Griffiths • Documentary • With Stan Brakhage, William Moritz, John Whitney, Michael Scroggins, Jules Engel • 1993 • 51 minutes
Exploration of the work of pioneers in abstract cinema using rare archive film, film clips and interviews to demonstrate the influence of the early cin...