On Cinema

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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On Cinema
  • Bernadette Lafont: And God Created the Free Woman

    Directed by Esther Hoffenberg • Documentary • With Bernadette Lafont, Bulle Ogier • 2016 • 66 minutes

    Sex symbol, feminist icon, devoted mother: French actress Bernadette Lafont was a multi-faceted performer, who refused to be boxed into one role.

    In BERNADETTE LAFONT: AND GOD CREATED THE FREE ...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • To Tell the Truth (series)

    2 items

    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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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....

  • 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 ...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • Searching for Ingmar Bergman

    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...

  • The Celluloid Bordello

    Directed by Juliana Piccillo • Documentary • With Annie Sprinkle, Carol Leigh, David Henry Sterry • 2021 • 86 minutes

    Since the dawn of cinema, sex workers have served as muses to movie-makers. From the early white slavery pictures like The Girl Who Went Astray from 1900 to countless dramas and ...

  • The Story of Looking

    Directed by Mark Cousins • Documentary • 2021 • 87 minutes

    On the day before an operation to save his eyesight, filmmaker Mark Cousins explores what looking means to him, and the role our visual experience plays in our individual and collective lives. In a deeply personal meditation on the power...

  • Jutra

    Directed by Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre • Animation • 2014 • 13 minutes

    With an ingenious assembly of archival footage and animated sequences, Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre brings us a clever and astute cinephile portrait of Claude Jutra, the director of Mon Oncle Antoine. Continuing the undertaking she...

  • The Last Tycoons (series)

    8 items

    Exploring how a host of groundbreaking films were made, THE LAST TYCOONS is an eight-part series on the history of French cinema from the postwar era to New Wave and beyond – told from a unique angle.

    When film credits roll most people focus on the stars of the show. Not Florence Strauss. She...

  • Roy Smeck: Wizard of the Strings

    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 ...

  • Marcel Ophuls and Jean-Luc Godard

    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...

  • To Tell the Truth: Working for Change

    Directed by Cal Skaggs • Documentary • 2012 • 56 minutes

    Working for Change explores the birth of the social documentary, featuring interviews with several of the people who helped define and shape the form.

    While newsreels carried novelty and feel-good stories, left-leaning filmmakers such as ...