In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?
Self - Actress Testing for Alice
Self - Actor Testing for Freddy
Self - Soundman
Self - Actress Testing for Alice (uncredited)
Black Lady Clapping Her Hands (uncredited)
Self - Camera Assistant (uncredited)
17 May 1967
In this wildly entertaining vision of one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists, Bob Dylan is surrounded by teen fans, gets into heated philosophical jousts with journalists, and kicks back with fellow musicians Joan Baez, Donovan, and Alan Price.
01 Jan 1975
Making-of documentary about Lino Brocka's 1975 film "Manila in the Claws of Light," featuring interviews and behind-the-scenes footage.
A sock puppet explores a family history told from the perspective of a mother and father.
09 Apr 2007
How are the sex scenes filmed? What tricks are used to fake the desire? How do the interpreters prepare and feel? Spanish actors and directors talk about the most intimate side of acting, about the tricks and work methods when narrating exposed sex. In Spain the general rule is that there are no rules. Each film, each interpreter, faces it in very different ways.
Letter to L.Y is Stephanie Mavi Garcia Panclas' second experimental film for their class. The film surrounds the feeling of nostalgia shown through the layering of video.
17 May 1999
A film that describes the love-hate relationship between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski, the deep trust between the director and the actor, and their independently and simultaneously hatched plans to murder one another.
12 Jul 2011
Documentary about Buster Keaton's The 'High Sign' (1921) and Keaton's developing style.
12 Jul 2011
Short documentary on the making of Buster Keaton's One Week.
12 Jul 2011
Documentary about the development of Buster Keaton's The Haunted House (1921).
12 Jul 2011
Documentary about the Buster Keaton short Hard Luck (1921).
12 Jul 2011
The special effects in The Play House (1921) are discussed.
12 Jul 2011
Ben Model discusses scoring music for silent movies.
12 Jul 2011
The actors in My Wife's Relations (1922) are discussed in this documentary.
12 Jul 2011
Bruce Lawton discusses Buster Keaton's The Blacksmith (1922), a film that Keaton had dismissed as a "lesser" work.
12 Jul 2011
A short documentary on Buster Keaton's The Frozen North (1922), regarding how the events of Fatty Arbuckle's trial and William S. Hart's quick condemnation of Arbuckle, were reflected in the film.
12 Jul 2011
Documentary on Day Dreams (1922), a Buster Keaton silent comedy.
16 Nov 2010
This visual essay by John Bengtson, author of Silent Echoes: Discovering Early Hollywood Through the Films of Buster Keaton, reveals the locations where Keaton's 1924 comedy feature Sherlock Jr. was filmed in Hollywood and Orange County.
01 Nov 2011
Six million tons, suspended by the slightest gesture. Mother of the World presents a series of brief vignettes of Cairo just prior to the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. These fragmented scenes choreograph class structure and foreign influence into an intimate, poetic view of a nation about to change.
12 Jul 2011
Four visual essays by Silent Echoes author John Bengtson identifying Buster Keaton's shooting locations for his many short films produced between 1920-1923, many in the streets surrounding his former Hollywood studio, the same studio where, a few years earlier, Charlie Chaplin had made his brilliant series of Mutual shorts.
16 Dec 2024
In the summer of 1975, the young director Steven Spielberg set new standards for cinema worldwide with an oversized shark bite, a plastic shark fin and an unmistakable two-note main theme composed by John Williams. With the horror from the deep, a man-eating, gigantic great white shark, the film of the same name became a similarly traumatic reference as Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho": it triggered lasting primal fears across generations. On the beaches of the world, there was clearly a "before" and an "after". Steven Spielberg, who was only 28 at the time, not only set new standards for the thriller genre, but also hid his biting criticism of US capitalism in the 1970s behind it.