In 1928, as the talkies threw the film industry and film language into turmoil, Chaplin decided that his Tramp character would not be heard. City Lights would not be a talking picture, but it would have a soundtrack. Chaplin personally composed a musical score and sound effects for the picture. With Peter Lord, the famous co-creator of Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit, we see how Chaplin became the king of slapstick comedy and the superstar of the movies.
Self (archive footage)
23 Mar 1970
German writer Uwe Johnson lived for several years in the 1960s on Manhattan’s Upper Westside where he got to know his neighborhood very well, observing the goings-on in the streets, cafeterias, and parks. In 1968 German Television agreed to co-produce a film for broadcast featuring interviews with various neighborhood characters.
01 Dec 1991
Shortly after German reunification, three residents of a quiet area north of Berlin talk about their plans and attempts at new economic beginnings amid the changes brought by the fall of the Berlin Wall.
24 Jul 2007
When Arthur Freed brought Alan Jay Lerner to Hollywood to compose a new Fred Astaire musical (based on Fred's life,) little did he know he would have to recast it's leading lady not once, but twice.
04 Aug 1933
The ultimate Bobby Jones golf series reaches its climactic conclusion on board a speeding train to oblivion.
08 Nov 1962
Like the best USIA films, The Wall distills political events into an emotionally clear and compelling ideological "story". In 1962 Walter de Hoog gathered footage from U.S. and German newsreel sources and crafted this taut short film about the first year of the Berlin Wall. Straightforward, keenly balanced narration portrays Berliners as "accepting the wall but never resigned to it". The extraordinary footage of the first escapes was propaganda enough-- His challenge was to make the politics human.
01 Jan 1996
The subject matter of Memory Room 451 is the cultural and historical significance of 20th-century hairstyles – the Afro, the conk, dreadlocks – in Black communities on both sides of the Atlantic. Akomfrah has disguised this exploration as a science fiction story – in the manner of the groundbreaking writers profiled in The Last Angel of History – while providing a bravura display of the aesthetics of video art in the 1990s. The tale of visitors from the future who gather dreams from unwitting subjects in order to construct a history of the Black diaspora both defamiliarizes Akomfrah’s ongoing project and points to the danger that extracting history from memory can be a kind of expropriation.
09 Nov 1960
Hansjürgen Pohland's short documentary is an audiovisual study that captures events and people on the streets on film. The special feature of the work is that the people and objects are portrayed exclusively through their shadows.
25 Dec 2023
Ricky Tomlinson sits back in his chair and takes a fond look back at the much-loved comedy series The Royle Family, sharing his memories of playing head of the family Jim Royle and his experiences working with the show’s co-creator Caroline Aherne, who, as well as writing the show with co-star Craig Cash, also played Jim’s daughter Denise. Ricky talks about how a chance encounter helped him get the part of Jim, recounts what it was like filming some of the show’s most iconic moments, and tries to get the bottom of the origins of Jim’s famous, below-the-belt catchphrase.
02 Nov 2022
Coming back during Winter, Alex Powell explores both the places and personal connections found in his hometown and how they've changed. “Guide to a Midwest Hometown” explores what makes the barren places at home feel sentimental and special, and the good and bad feelings that come when being back home. Inspired by "How To With John Wilson".
21 May 2021
Aldo has always felt like a being from another planet, stranded on Earth. His autism and long struggle to speak fluently alienated him from others. Now, he searches for meaning in the esoteric and for connection with people like himself.
05 Aug 2022
After the earthquake, my grandmother is facing the loss of her apartment.
27 Oct 2021
Twenty-two years after the massacre perpetrated by paramilitary groups in complicity with the government, the people of Acteal celebrate their martyrs and persist in their demand for justice.
19 Sep 1912
Footage of the German airship Hansa over Copenhagen.
01 Jan 2013
An insight into 5 queer film festivals accompanied with the discussion about the importance of queer film festivals, queer film and people's experience with both.
19 Feb 1995
Short documentary about Charles Laughton's 1995 film "The Night of the Hunter," with interviews with the cast and crew.
02 Apr 2016
The Kurdish Iraqi poet and actor Zeravan Khalil travels with his dog through an Alpine gorge after fleeing from IS war and genocide. As he remembers the abomination, he writes a poem with the title “You drive me mad” in Kurmanji Kurdish. In his home country, Yazidic Kurds are forbidden to work in his profession. Then he eats his apple and wanders through Europe’s middle with more hope.
22 Jan 2004
Testimony of the cast, the producers and other participants of the shootings of "The Osterman Weekend".
09 Sep 2000
Home movies and family photographs mixed with drawings and texts tell the story of a family that has lived with disease.
01 Oct 2011
Johann Lurf‘s film Endeavour slides between documentary, avant-garde film, and science-fiction. This highly singular combination of materials and techniques gives the viewer of Endeavour a feeling of flight, as the film continually evades the gravity of genres and definitive definitions. Lurf uses NASA footage from a day and a night launch of the space-shuttle that follows the booster rockets from take-off to splashdown.
04 Feb 2014
Retrospective documentary on the making of the low-budget horror cult favorite Night of the Demons (1988).