
28 Sep 1994

Lipstick
With an off beat sense of humour, the film looks at the politics and glamour of lipstick and the dilemmas of the modern woman in a marketed world.
28 Sep 1994
With an off beat sense of humour, the film looks at the politics and glamour of lipstick and the dilemmas of the modern woman in a marketed world.
10 Apr 1992
Through one woman's experience as an adopted person and also as a mother who relinquished her child in 1971, this documentary highlights the many complex issues associated with adoption.
18 Feb 1939
This John Nesbitt's Passing Parade short tells the story of Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite, and later established the Nobel Prize.
11 Jun 1922
This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.
22 Mar 1895
Working men and women leave through the main gate of the Lumière factory in Lyon, France. Filmed on 22 March 1895, it is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made, although Louis Le Prince's 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene pre-dated it by seven years. Three separate versions of this film exist, which differ from one another in numerous ways. The first version features a carriage drawn by one horse, while in the second version the carriage is drawn by two horses, and there is no carriage at all in the third version. The clothing style is also different between the three versions, demonstrating the different seasons in which each was filmed. This film was made in the 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and at a speed of 16 frames per second. At that rate, the 17 meters of film length provided a duration of 46 seconds, holding a total of 800 frames.
13 Apr 2024
Through a powerful visual metaphor, Camille Vigny gives a first-person account of the domestic violence she suffered. The images and text interact with remarkable precision to convey the devastating impact of the cataclysm. It's a political gesture, brimming with courage, an icy cry that takes your breath away.
30 Jun 1896
A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.
23 Sep 1927
A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.
01 Jan 1968
Portrait of the early era of computing which examines the workings of a new and mysterious machine: the Canada Land Inventory Geo-information System. This "instant library" was created to help assess and document the geographical landscape, including sampling and analysis of soil, forestry, timber, wildlife, resources, industrial sites, and many other aspects.
20 Nov 2001
A retrospective look at the five Dirty Harry films (1971-88), starring Clint Eastwood.
14 Aug 1908
Woman Draped in Patterned Handkerchiefs is a 1908 British short silent documentary film, directed by George Albert Smith as a showcase his new Kinemacolor system, which features a woman displaying assorted tartan cloths, both draped on her body and waved semaphore-style. The patterned handkerchiefs are, according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, “presumably the same cloths featured in Tartans of Scottish Clans (1906), this time shown from various angles.”
18 Apr 2024
This short documentary film captures the natural movement of the moon mixed with an experimental musical track that accompanies the rhythm of the "walk" on the stage that the protagonist occupies, the sky.
28 Oct 2020
Images, voices, and interrupted silences that evoke the intangible losses caused by COVID-19.
01 Jan 1990
From the unique vantage point of 200 miles above Earth's surface, we see how natural forces - volcanoes, earthquakes and hurricanes - affect our world, and how a powerful new force - humankind - has begun to alter the face of the planet. From Amazon rain forests to Serengeti grasslands, Blue Planet inspires a new appreciation of life on Earth, our only home.
02 Dec 2004
Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag follows American F-15 Eagle pilot John Stratton as he trains with some of the world’s best pilots. The movie depicts Stratton’s progression through the challenging and dangerous exercises of Operation Red Flag, the international training program for air forces of allied countries.
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.
26 May 2021
Pereda returns with a small, mysterious and moving tribute to Chantal Akerman, conceived as a series of joyful impossible letters addressed to the great disappeared from the cinema, to answer her fictional question about renting her bright apartment in Coyoacán.
14 Oct 1888
The earliest surviving celluloid film, and believed to be the second moving picture ever created, was shot by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince using the LPCCP Type-1 MkII single-lens camera. It was taken in the garden of Oakwood Grange, the Whitley family house in Roundhay, Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire (UK), possibly on 14 October 1888. The film shows Adolphe Le Prince (Le Prince's son), Mrs. Sarah Whitley (Le Prince's mother-in-law), Joseph Whitley, and Miss Harriet Hartley walking around in circles, laughing to themselves, and staying within the area framed by the camera. The Roundhay Garden Scene was recorded at 12 frames per second and runs for 2.11 seconds.
15 Oct 1888
A film by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, shot in late October 1888, showing pedestrians and carriages crossing Leeds Bridge.
25 May 1933
The film Terre Magellaniche represents the fruit of multiple and risky trips that the explorer Alberto M. De Agostini made in the Patagonian mountain range and in the Tierra del Fuego archipelago. Executed with rare mastery and exquisite artistic sense, the film shows the explorer in the labyrinth of Patagonian channels, penetrating the deep fjords between large masses of floating ice of curious shapes, coming from the immense glaciers that descend from the Cordillera and bathe its frontal walls on the waters of the sea. Transported to regions of extraordinary beauty, situated in front of gigantic mountains, from which majestic waterfalls rush, the viewer experiences the illusion of finding themselves in a mysterious kingdom of dream and enchantment.