The inevitable subjectivity and diaristic potential of landscape is foregrounded in this semi-structuralist work of weird poetic beauty. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
Social & External
Mountain Music illustrates what happens when technology gets too advanced too soon. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.
Short film about the Manzanar Japanese American internment camp. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2011.
Jerry Martin quits his dull job as a bank clerk and falls in with a band of hobos. He takes on the guise of Bachelor, the "king of the market," and finds himself pursued by dangerous men who are after the real Bachelor. *Only fragments are known to exist. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2010.
Albert and David Maysles (Gimme Shelter) directed this 53-minute documentary about movie tycoon Joseph E. Levine (1963).
Begins as a whimsical piece with 'sheets' of lines running down the screen, progressing into more and more complex geometic patterns but without deviating from the basic precepts of 'dot and line' animation. Jazz piano on a lazy Sunday afternoon, and a spring color palette. -- Stephanie Sapienza. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2001.
A collaborative piece by Gore and Beckett, the film begins with one of Gore's characters composing a letter, to eventual mail it. Beckett's animation takes over at this point, transforming the envelope into a looping, cascading form that seems to be perpetually turning itself inside out. A brief Gore finale bookends the piece, which is one of only two extant examples of Gore's unique animation work. This film is usually appended to Gore's own Dream of the Sphinx. [Source: Mark Toscano] Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with CalArts in 2009.
Retired wealthy sea captain Jim McKay arrives in the Old West, where he becomes embroiled in a feud between his future father-in-law, Major Terrill, and the rough and lawless Hannasseys over a valuable patch of land.
Every school day, African-American teenagers William Gates and Arthur Agee travel 90 minutes each way from inner-city Chicago to St. Joseph High School in Westchester, Illinois, a predominately white suburban school well-known for the excellence of its basketball program. Gates and Agee dream of NBA stardom, and with the support of their close-knit families, they battle the social and physical obstacles that stand in their way. This acclaimed documentary was shot over the course of five years.
Produced by the Army Pictorial Service, Signal Corps, with the cooperation of the Army Air Forces and the United States Navy, and released by Warner Bros. for the War Activities Committee shortly after the surrender of Japan. Follow General Douglas MacArthur and his men from their exile from the Philippines in early 1942, through the signing of the instrument of surrender on the USS Missouri on September 1, 1945. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
The hand-painting of this film is interrupted by, and interspersed with, a geometrically structured Mask of Death (one of those frightening human idea-shapes of dying) immediately caught-up in threads of streaming, polarized crystals of Light (elaborately step-printed, with simultaneous frame-to-frame dissolves and printer "pull-backs" creating an effect as if the room in which the film is being viewed was inhaling viscous strands of Life's chemical material). The blurred photo-image of a person appears briefly superimposed on these "streamings": then there is a short visual "exhale" of this "crystallized" light, as the screen appears to re-absorb its imagery and resolve itself into a pale violet scattering of dust, is it? ... a nebulae, perhaps – i. e., some semblance both earthly and cosmic and (as such) as enigmatic as "the face of God." Collaboration with Sam Bush.
Les Blank's poetic documentation of 1967's Los Angeles Easter Sunday Love-In. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2002.
The Town was a short propaganda film produced by the Office of War Information in 1945. It presents an idealized vision of American life, shown in microcosm by Madison, Indiana. It was created primarily for exhibition abroad, to provide international audiences a more well-rounded view of America, and was therefore produced in more than 20 translations. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.
Satyajit Ray's poetic documentary was commissioned by the Chogyal (King) of Sikkim at a time when he felt the sovereignty of Sikkim was under threat from both China and India. Ray's documentary is about the sovereignty of Sikkim. The film was banned by the government of India when Sikkim merged with India in 1975. The ban was finally lifted by the Ministry of External Affairs in September 2010. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.
An uptight English writer traveling to Crete on a matter of business finds his life changed forever when he meets the gregarious Alexis Zorba.
African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Mississippi. After Tibbs proves not only his own innocence but that of another man, he joins forces with Gillespie to track down the real killer. Their investigation takes them through every social level of the town, with Tibbs making enemies as well as unlikely friends as he hunts for the truth.
Shot while LaPore was on a Fulbright Scholar Fellowship to Sri Lanka in 1993-1994. “I have made a film about travelling and living in a distant place which looks at aspects of daily life and where the war shadows the quotidian with a dark and rumbling step.”--LaPore. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2014.
When illegal card dealer and recovering heroin addict Frankie Machine gets out of prison, he decides to straighten up. Armed with nothing but an old drum set, Frankie tries to get honest work as a drummer. But when his former employer and his old drug dealer re-enter his life, Frankie finds it hard to stay clean and eventually finds himself succumbing to his old habits.
Four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.
As the west rapidly becomes civilized, a pair of outlaws in 1890s Wyoming find themselves pursued by a posse and decide to flee to South America in hopes of evading the law.
An aging, decadent landlord’s passion for music becomes the undoing of his legacy as he sacrifices his wealth in order to compete with the opulent music room of his younger, richer neighbour.
Nothing is as it seems when a woman experiencing misgivings about her new boyfriend joins him on a road trip to meet his parents at their remote farm.
A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.
Filmed over nearly five years in twenty-five countries on five continents, and shot on seventy-millimetre film, Samsara transports us to the varied worlds of sacred grounds, disaster zones, industrial complexes, and natural wonders.
Young and disenchanted Sam meets a mysterious and beautiful woman who's swimming in his building's pool one night. When she suddenly vanishes the next morning, Sam embarks on a surreal quest across Los Angeles to decode the secret behind her disappearance, leading him into the murkiest depths of mystery, scandal and conspiracy.
A former special forces contractor is forced out of retirement as an avocado farmer in Mexico when local gangsters try to force him and his family off their farm.
A beautiful woman from the city, Jennifer Hills, rents an isolated cabin in the country to write her latest novel. Soon, a group of local lowlifes subject her to a nightmare of degradation, rape, and violence.
In Los Angeles, a colorful assortment of bohemians try to make sense of their intersecting lives. The moody Dark Smith, his bisexual girlfriend, her lesbian lover and their shy gay friend plan on attending the wildest party of the year. But they'll only make it if they can survive the drug trips, suicides, trysts, mutilations and alien abductions that occur as one surreal day unfolds.
A picaresque journey through contemporary America, undertaken by a young woman granted access to the strange sects and cults that proliferate in this country by a series of gatekeepers eager to win her over.
When a former elite sniper is hunted down by the ruthless warlord who once held her captive, she must fight to the death to protect the daughter she has raised in hiding, on a remote Australian farm.
A glimpse into the raw and simple power of nature through encounters with farm animals: the eponymous Gunda, a mother pig; two cows, and a one-legged chicken.
An ex-special services veteran, down on his luck and desperate for work, takes a job as a security guard at a run-down mall in a rough area of town. On his first night on the job, he opens the door to a distraught and desperate young girl who has fled the hijacking of a Police motorcade that was transporting her to testify as a witness in a trial. Hot on her heels is the psychopathic hijacker and his team of henchmen, who will stop at nothing to extract and eliminate the witness.
Clinging to a smooth, curved surface high above a sentient abyss, a woman tries to cover the few feet back to safety without losing purchase and falling to her death.
Bill Whitney is worried that he is different to his sister and parents. They mix with other upper-class people while Bill is more down to earth. Even his girlfriend seems a bit odd. All is revealed when Bill returns home to find a party in full swing.
When an unsuspecting woman stops at a remote gas station in the dead of night, she's made the plaything of a sociopath sniper with a secret vendetta. To survive, she must not only dodge his bullets and fight for her life, but also figure out who wants her dead and why.
The Ducks are offered scholarships at Eden Hall Academy but struggle with their new coach's methods and come under pressure from the board to retain their scholarships before their big game against the Varsity team.
A shy but ambitious film student falls into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship with a charismatic but untrustworthy older man.
A series of eerie events thrusts an unlikely trio onto the trail of a nefarious government conspiracy lurking directly beneath their neighborhood.
In medieval England, Anne and her domineering mother-in-law Morwen struggle to survive on the outskirts of society. But when a man from Anne's past returns from war, a curse begins to take shape through a mysterious knight and threatens to destroy them all.
An atmospheric essay, which is an alternative version of Count Dracula, a film directed by Jess Franco in 1970; a ghostly narration between fiction and reality.
A retired San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.