The Secret of Life on Earth
★ 7 · 1993 · 42m · Documentary
A breathtaking adventure across five continents and through time to reveal nature's most vital secret. Watch a flying fox gorge itself on a midnight snack of figs. Climb into the prickly jaws of insect-eating plants. Witness a mantis disguised as a flower petal lure its prey to doom.
More Like This
Sensible Soccers: Manoel
2025
"Manoel" captures Sensible Soccers' journey as they celebrate a decade together as a band by reimagining soundtracks for Manoel de Oliveira's classic films. The documentary delves into the poetic intersection of cinema and music, revealing the delicate harmony between these two timeless art forms.
More info →Message from Geneva
1936 · ★ 8
This expository film shows the mood of European society on the eve of the Second World War while promoting the values of international cooperation. Using the Swiss office of the BBC as an example, the film describes the functioning of radio and presents the possibilities opened by mass communications. After the advent of sound film, Cavalcanti promoted experimentation with sound, and in this connection he was interested in the communicational, organizational, and social aspects of radio.
More info →Don Emilio and His Little Doctors
1982 · ★ 8
Don Emilio is a humble, 63-year-old man who lives in the Amazon rainforest, seven miles from the city of Iquitos, Peru. For all of his adult life he has worked as a curandero and vegetalista, a traditional healer. He estimates that in his career he has treated more than 2,500 clients. Through the camera lens of anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna, Don Emilio tells us about his practice, his beliefs, his community, and his life. He shows us how he prepares ayahuasca and other herbal medicines. Finally, we see Don Emilio treat a man who has come to him for help, and hear from a poor woman who has brought her infant son for medical care.
More info →
Road to the Stars
1957 · ★ 5.9
This film consists of three parts. The first dramatizes the life of the founder of Soviet astronautics, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky; the second describes the development of rocket technology; and the third visualizes the future with enactments of the first manned spaceflight, spacewalk, space station construction and humans on the moon.
More info →
The Beauty President
2021 · ★ 6
In 1992, at the height of the AIDS pandemic, activist Terence Alan Smith made a historic bid for president of the United States as his drag queen persona Joan Jett Blakk. Today, Smith reflects back on his seminal civil rights campaign and its place in American history.
More info →The Red Bank. James Joyce: His Greek Notebooks
2013
This documentary aims to register this unknown side of James Joyce: His Greek Notebooks. Trieste. Bloomsday, 2013. Dance in slow motion, accompanied by text. By deconstructing the body, we turn it into a memory: of the body, of life, of texts. The biographical references to Joyce and Mando Aravantinou, combined with the diagonal slicing of the image, cancel the realism of the landscape, including that of the Narrator’s space/study. As a culmination, Joyce’s letter “A request for a loan in Greek” functions as a timely denunciation. Various routes through cities, such as Trieste, London, New York, and Athens; languages such as Greek and English. In addition to the primal myth of Ulysses, there is another issue: Greek is “the language of the subject of Ulysses”
More info →
Superheroes without Superpowers
2019 · ★ 7
The main (super)hero of Beatrice Baldacci’s documentary is a person depicted as the sum of her memories. The story of the director and her family is told in the first person, with home VHS recordings that show both Beatrice’s mother and Beatrice as a child taking on the role of an agent of memory. Outdated technology transforms the events of twenty years ago into an archaeological object.
More info →
After Two Hours, Ten Minutes Had Passed
2019 · ★ 6.5
Time as punishment — of juvenile inmates and bodies that become heavy in prescribed spaces.
More info →
Condor
2019
The July 2, 2019 solar eclipse, filmed in 100% totality, over the Chilean coast, in 16mm black and white. Condor is the national bird of Chile.
More info →
Liquidation
2013
Scratches. Cross-outs. Stripes. Arnaud is tirelessly attacking ancient masters' painting reproductions with the tip of his pen. His free and living interlaces highlight shapes and figures.
More info →
The Guns of James Bond
1964 · ★ 6.5
Short 1964 black-and-white documentary featurette hosted by Sean Connery and featuring the real-life inspiration for the character of Q, Major Geoffrey Boothroyd with a discussion of the gun weaponry used by James Bond.
More info →