Twenty-Four Dollar Island
★ 6.3 · 1927 · 13m · Documentary
A visual celebration of Manhattan and its waterways on the 300th anniversary of purchase from the local Native Americans.
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La Tour
1928 · ★ 6.3
A poetic documentary tribute to the famous Eiffel tower, built for the 1889 World Fair and intended to have been destroyed 20 years later. A vocal subset of Parisians (among which, one may surmise, Clair would've been counted) insisted the Tower remain above the River Seine, a continued display of French engineering excellence. Clair makes strategic use of double exposures and dissolves, capturing the mechanical exuberance of the Tower; The great swooping steel latticework edifice a bounding symbol of the modern age.
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Who Killed Nancy?
2009 · ★ 5
On October 12th, 1978, New York Police discovered the lifeless body of a young woman, slumped under the bathroom sink in a hotel room. She was Nancy Spungen, an ex-prostitute, sometimes stripper, heroin addict, and girlfriend of Sex Pistols' bassist Sid Vicious.
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Tadao Ando
1988
Tadao Ando, a self-taught architect, proposes an international architecture that he believes can only be conceived by someone Japanese. His architecture mixes Piranesian drama with contemplative spaces in urban complexes, residences and chapels. This film presents the formative years of his impressive career before he embarked on projects in Europe and the United States.
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2025
Documentary made for the University of York, UK, and DMDA exhibition New Fashion for the New Woman 1900-1950. Footage filmed by University of York students, edited by Ray Fairhurst.
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Banksy Does New York
2014 · ★ 6.8
On October 1, 2013, the elusive street artist Banksy launched a month-long residency in New York, an art show he called Better Out Than In. As one new work of art was presented each day in a secret location, a group of fans, called “Banksy Hunters,” took to the streets and blew up social media.
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Two-pot Screamer (or: How I Will Remember the Dec.13th Screening of Adam C. Briggs' A Grand Mockery)
A short documentary chronicling the liquor-drenched final night of A Grand Mockery (2024)'s theatrical run in New York.
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Kisho Kurokawa From Metabolism to Symbiosis
1993
A portrait of the internationally acclaimed Japanese architect who employs Buddhist ideas and western modernism to achieve intercultural architecture.
More info →View on Boulevard, New York City
1896 · ★ 6
Taken in 1896 on the Boulevard (upper Broadway) on the occasion of a bicycle parade in the heyday of the wheeling craze. Old-fashioned horse cars lend interest to the scene.
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Secret Origin: The Story of DC Comics
2010 · ★ 7
A look at the history of the comic book publication that launched such legendary characters as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.
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The Experimental City
2017 · ★ 4
In the 1960s, frustrated by the growing problem of urban pollution, Athelstan Spilhaus, a visionary scientist and futurist comic strip writer, assembled a team of experts to develop a bold experiment: the Minnesota Experimental City (MXC). MXC would be the city of the future, a domed metropolis for 250,000 pioneering residents, built from scratch and using cutting-edge technology to prevent urban sprawl and pollution. Things didn’t quite go as planned, as explored in Chad Friedrichs’ fascinating look back at the would-be city of tomorrow.
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