Annabelle (Whitford) Moore performs one of her popular dances. For this performance, her costume has a pair of wings attached to her back, to suggest a butterfly. As she dances, she uses her long, flowing skirts to create visual patterns.
This is as slick a piece of campaign film as ever came out of Hollywood -- barring, of course, the anti-Upton Sinclair stuff turned out as newsreels in the 1930s during his campaign for governor of California. President Coolidge is presented as a simple man of the people who helps his cousin with the haying when he is in the neighborhood, works in the building he was born in and lives in the same house his father was born in: just another fellow like you and me. He runs the nation just about as well as we could.
Under the tutelage of anthropologist Franz Boas (her former Columbia professor) and Harlem Renaissance arts patron Charlotte Osgood Mason, Zora Neale Hurston spent nearly two years, from 1927 to 1929, studying the folkloric customs, work songs, spirituals, and vernacular language of African American communities along the River Road and from New Orleans to Florida.
Walt Disney explains some of the techniques of animation, and includes for the first time the pencil test footage of the "Soup Eating Sequence" from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Walt references a book called "The Art of Animation" which shows a technique that is used in animated cartoons that dates back to the ancient Egyptians and Greeks.
Documentary by Juan Francisco de Lasa about a pioneer of Spanish cinema. Gelabert attended one of the first sessions of the Lumière's cinématographe in Barcelona. Briefly after, he built a contraption based on this invention. He produced his first picture, "Dorotea", in 1897. His film "Riña en un café" is considered the first Spanish film to feature a plot.
Material filmed during and after the battle of Amman, in September 1970. The images document the rubble after the bombings, showing displaced people in the hall of a building, among the ruins, inside schools, while they are being treated . Some moments of a Yasser Arafat rally are also filmed.
Tribute to Leopoldo Méndez, a prominent Mexican artist, considered the most important printmaker in Contemporary Mexico
Between 1968 and 1970, J M Goodger, a lecturer at the University of Salford, made a film record of the living conditions in the slums of Ordsall, Salford, which were then in the process of being demolished. Under the title 'The Changing face of Salford', the film was in two parts: 'Life in the slums' and 'Bloody slums'.
A documentary about actor/director Dennis Hopper, showing him at his home and studio putting together his film "The Last Movie."
In 1970, Christian Ghazi and Noureddine Chatti met with a number of Arab political figures, especially Palestinians residing in Lebanon, resulting in this piece of armed (alternative or third) cinema that captures a crucial cross-section of the Palestinian resistance in Lebanon in 1970. The film features footage of Ghassan Kanafani, Sadiq Jalal El-Azm, Nabil Shaath and other personalities who share their vision of the Palestinian revolution, tracing its history back to the early 20th century. These testimonies describe the numerous strikes and popular protests that took place in Palestine under the Ottoman occupation, followed by the British colonization and the settlement of the Jewish state in 1948. They enumerate the objectives of the struggle, emphasising the necessity for a free and democratic Palestine, defended through armed or non-armed struggle by all its citizens, men and women of various affiliations.
A fascinating hybrid of performance and video verité, The Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd introduces Carel and Ferd, a couple who allowed Ginsberg to produce an ongoing documentary record of the intimate moments of their relationship. Carel, a porn actress, and Ferd, a drug addict, invite the camera to participate in their wedding, their sex life, and their break-up. Produced before the landmark PBS documentary An American Family introduced television audiences to the live-in camera — and many decades before the ubiquity of reality television — this document raises questions about the relationship between subject and camera, privacy and manipulation. Originally presented as an installation, this one-hour version, which includes interviews with Carel, Ferd and Ginsberg, was distilled from thirty hours of footage recorded from 1970 to 1975. - Electronic Arts Intermix
A documentary by husband and wife filmmakers, Mario Balibrera and Dana Evans, of the art colonies of Taos, New Mexico in the early part of the 20th century.
A pushy, narcissistic filmmaker persuades a Phoenix family to let him and his crew film their everyday lives, in the manner of the ground-breaking PBS series "An American Family".
Essie Coffey gives the children lessons on Aboriginal culture. She speaks of the importance of teaching these kids about their traditions. Aboriginal kids are forgetting about their Aboriginal heritage because they are being taught white culture instead.
Filip buys an 8mm movie camera when his first child is born. Because it's the first camera in town, he's named official photographer by the local Party boss. His horizons widen when he is sent to regional film festivals with his first works but his focus on movie making also leads to domestic strife and philosophical dilemmas.
A New York University professor returns from a rescue mission to the Amazon rainforest with the footage shot by a lost team of documentarians who were making a film about the area's local cannibal tribes.
A bold reveal of a rose tattoo opens this 1980 documentary on tattooing in New Zealand. The potted history includes visits to tattoo parlours on K' Road and Hastings, and the studios of industry legends Steve Johnson and Roger Ingerton. Tattooists discuss public stigma, people's reasons for getting inked, and popular designs: sailors, serpents, swallows and tā moko. Made for documentary slot Contact, Skin Pics chronicles a time when "folk art has become high art".
Documentary on Nicolas Roeg