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Short Films

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  • Good White People

    Directed by Jarrod Cann & Erick Stoll • Documentary • 2016 • 16 minutes

    In the Spring of 2001, the African-American community of Over-the-Rhine in downtown Cincinnati arose in protest after unarmed 19-year-old, Timothy Thomas, was killed by a white officer named Steven Roach. In the years follow...

  • Now He's Out in Public and Everyone Can See

    Directed by Natalie Bookchin • Documentary • 2017 • 24 minutes

    A riveting polyphonic documentary, NOW HE'S OUT IN PUBLIC AND EVERYONE CAN SEE presents a fractured narrative about an unnamed man whose racial identity is continually redrawn and contested by clusters of impassioned narrators. This ...

  • Meantime

    Directed by Michael T Workman  • Documentary • 2022 • 19 minutes

    After Tim’s work-related stroke leads to troubling health complications, his son Michael returns home to Montana. As they spend the most time together since Michael’s childhood, they reckon with the past that haunts Tim.

    Meanti...

  • 24 Hours in the Life of a Clown (Jean-Pierre Melville)

    Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville • Documentary • 1946 • 19 minutes

    In Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1946 film debut, we follow aging circus clown Beby, from one night’s performance to the next. After the show, Beby eats the same spaghetti dinner his wife has been preparing for decades, lingers over fon...

  • Free Cinema (eleven films)

    11 items

    Free Cinema not only reinvented British documentary making, but this highly influential period in the country’s cinema history was the precursor for the better known British New Wave of social realist films in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

    The term Free Cinema was coined by critic and filmmake...

  • Tell Them Anything You Want (with Maurice Sendak)

    Directed by Lance Bangs, Spike Jonze • Documentary • With Maurice Sendak • 2009 • 39 minutes

    From Lance Bangs and Spike Jonze, acclaimed director of WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, comes A PORTRAIT OF MAURICE SENDAK, a loving look at one of the most cherished and controversial figures in children's l...

  • Trouble Sleep

    Directed by Alain Kassanda • Documentary • 2020 • 41 minutes

    Kassanda’s freewheeling urban portrait follows two young men, Fred and Akin, as they navigate the crowded roadways of Ibadan, Nigeria’s third largest city. Engineering graduate Fred is beginning a new job as a taxi driver, while Akin p...

  • Early Short Films of the French New Wave

    20 items

    All restored!

    Starting in the mid-1950s, a group of talented young filmmakers presented a radically new vision of French cinema. Dubbed the “Young Turks” by Cahiers du Cinéma co-founder André Bazin, they overturned the studio-based industry of the day, creating films that were modern, political....

  • 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 ...

  • Edith+Eddie

    Directed by Laura Checkoway • Documentary • 2017 • 29 minutes

    Edith Hill and Eddie Harrison got married in Virginia at ages 96 and 95. Dancing at the honky-tonk and going to church, their newlywed life is filled with affection, prayer and faith. Since tying the knot, both Edith and Eddie have ex...

  • City of Gold

    Directed by Colin Low, Wolf Koenig • Documentary • 1957 • 21 minutes

    A vivid recollection of the Klondike gold rush at its frenzied height, City of Gold uses a collage of still photographs to compare Dawson City of the gold rush, when the gold from its river beds flowed freely through the stores...

  • Killing Time

    Directed by Fronza Woods • Drama • 1979 • 9 minutes

    KILLING TIME, an offbeat, wryly humorous look at the dilemma of a would-be suicide unable to find the right outfit to die in, examines the personal habits, socialization, and complexities of life that keep us going. Part of the mediamaking move...

  • Cat Listening to Music

    Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 1994 • 3 minutes

    Marker fans are familiar with the cartoon representation of Guillaume-en-Egypte, Marker's beloved pet cat, which has become the reclusive filmmaker's alter ego. In this charming short, Marker reveals the real-life Guillaume, stretched out...

  • Fannie's Film

    Directed by Fronza Woods • Documentary • 1981 • 15 minutes

    In FANNIE'S FILM, a 65-year-old cleaning woman for a professional dancers' exercise studio performs her job while telling us in voiceover about her life, hopes, goals, and feelings. A challenge to mainstream media's ongoing stereotypes o...

  • Aguilucho: Dance of the Harpy Eagle

    Directed by Daniel Byers • Documentary • With Jose de Jesus Vargas • 2021 • 22 minutes

    In the remote Darién Gap rainforest, indigenous communities face the advance of loggers and cattle ranchers, an existential threat to their way of life and the ecosystem upon which they rely. When a rare Harpy...

  • Sensei Fran Kicks Ass

    Directed by Simone Fary • Documentary • With Fran Vall • 2019 • 19 minutes

    Octogenarian Fran Vall holds a 6th degree black belt in Judo and a 5th one in Naginata (Japanese sword fighting). In addition to mentoring at three martial arts clubs she still finds time to work as a ski and snowboard in...

  • African Air

    Directed by Brian Storm • Documentary • 2011 • 8 minutes

    Flying in a motorized paraglider over one of the most diverse continents in the world, George Steinmetz captures in his photography the stunning beauty, potential, and hope of Africa's landscapes and people.

  • Integration Report 1

    Directed by Madeline Anderson • Documentary • 1960 • 20 minutes

    INTEGRATION REPORT 1 examines the struggle for black equality in Alabama, Brooklyn and Washington, D.C., incorporating footage by documentary legends Albert Maysles and Ricky Leacock, protest songs by Maya Angelou, and a speech by M...

  • 575 Castro St.

    Directed by Jenni Olson • Documentary • With Harvey Milk • 2008 • 7 minutes

    575 Castro St. reveals the play of light and shadow upon the walls of the Castro Camera Store set for Gus Van Sant's Oscar-winning feature film Milk. These mundane shots are almost bereft of movement and sound. So quiet,...

  • Clotheslines

    Directed by Roberta Cantow • Documentary • 1981 • 32 minutes

    Clotheslines presents an enduring, vivid account of “women’s work,” showing how the creative energies of women have often been zapped by mundane tasks—and, in turn, how such tasks often reflect a ritualistic approach to life and surviv...

  • Zygosis: John Heartfield and the Political Image

    Directed by Gavin Hodge & Tim Morrison • Documentary • With Gavin Hodge • 1991 • 26 minutes

    Documentary tracing the development of Photomontage, based on the pioneering work of John Heartfield, through to the contemporary use of these techniques in advertising and video. The film looks at the wo...

  • Nice Colored Girls

    Directed by Tracey Moffatt • Drama • With Gayle Mabo, Cheryl Pitt, Janelle Court • 1987 • 16 minutes

    This stylistically daring film audaciously explores the history of exploitation between white men and Aboriginal women, juxtaposing the “first encounter” between colonizers and native women with ...

  • Reel Voices

    6 items

    OVID is proud to present six highlights from Pacific Arts Movement’s “Reel Voices” program. Reel Voices empowers high school students to learn the art of documentary filmmaking. The subjects of these films were chosen by the students, and they will surprise you with their craft and insight.

    Plus...

  • The Way Things Go

    Directed by Peter Fischli & David Weiss • Documentary • 1987 • 30 minutes

    Inside a warehouse, Swiss artists Peter Fischli (b. 1952) and David Weiss (1946—2012) built an enormous, precarious structure 100 feet long made out of common household items—tea kettles, tires, old shoes, balloons, wooden...