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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
  • 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 ...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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....

  • 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...

  • 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 ...

  • First Passion

    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 ...

  • To Tell the Truth: The Strategy of Truth

    Directed by David Van Taylor • Documentary • 2012 • 56 minutes

    THE STRATEGY OF TRUTH: DOCUMENTARY GOES TO WAR (1933-1945)

    The Strategy of Truth explores the role of film as propaganda during World War II, and the different forms it took in the US, the UK, and Germany. It also raises the central...

  • Chile, Obstinate Memory

    Directed by Patricio Guzmán • Documentary • 1998 • 58 minutes

    Hearing only the official version, a generation of young Chileans has grown up with little knowledge of the historical facts surrounding the events of September 11, 1973. On that day Salvador Allende's democratically elected governmen...

  • Dark Star: H. R. Giger's World

    Movie + 1 extra

    Surrealist artist H. R. Giger (1940–2014) terrified audiences with his Oscar-winning monsters in Ridley Scott's ALIEN. Sci-fi, horror, music, album covers, tattoos and fetish art have been influenced by his dark, intricate paintings and sculptures depicting birth, death and sex. Both a mesmerizin...

  • Michael H. profession:director

    Directed by Yves Montmayeur • Documentary • With Michael Haneke, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert, Juliette Binoche • 2013 • 92 minutes

    In 25 years, Michael Haneke established himself as one of the most important directors in cinema history. From his early work to Oscar ...

  • Dykes, Camera, Action!

    Directed by Caroline Berler • Documentary • 2019 • 61 minutes

    Lesbians didn't always get to see themselves on screen. But between Stonewall, the feminist movement, and the experimental cinema of the 1970s, they built visibility and transformed the social imagination about queerness. Filmmakers B...

  • What We Left Unfinished

    Directed by Mariam Ghani • Documentary • 2021 • 71 minutes

    The story of five unfinished films from the Communist era in Afghanistan, and the people who went to crazy lengths to make them - bringing together newly rediscovered and restored footage with new footage shot in the same locations, and ...