Natpwe: The Feast of the Spirits
★ 5.6 · 2013 · 31m · Documentary
In Natpwe, the feast of the spirits, co-directors Tiane Doan na Champassak and Jean Dubrel have produced an immersive, seemingly timeless document of an annual Burmese trance ritual that dates back to the eleventh century. Shot in Super 8 and 16mm in sooty black and white, the film conveys the astonishing sense of liberation of tens of thousands of bodies and minds — a mass expression of faith, but also a rapturous respite from societal intolerance.
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1968 · ★ 6.8
Chris Marker and François Reichenbach document the massive anti–Vietnam War protest held in Washington, D.C., on October 21, 1967, where more than 100,000 demonstrators gathered at the Lincoln Memorial before marching on the Pentagon. Filmed amid the crowd, the short captures the tension, idealism, and growing radicalism of the American peace movement.
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1967 · ★ 6.2
Exploring the art of Armenian portraitist Hakob Hovnatanyan, Parajanov revives the culture of Tbilisi of the 19th century.
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Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory
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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.
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Stone
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Kevin Jerome Everson's single-take film of a street hustler's sleight-of-hand game takes its place in a rowdy crowd of onlookers. The camera stays focused on the man's fleet fingers while the audio is glued to his gift of gab: "Keep your eyes on that little red dot if you want to win cold cash money on the spot." Every bit the performer, the hustler makes us wonder whether the film itself might be a kind of shell game (with the seemingly raw immediacy of the shot concealing its artistic intentionality). - Max Goldberg
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Second Place
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One of several Kevin Jerome Everson pieces regarding African-American rodeo riders, SECOND PLACE brings us inside the big show. The jerkily pixilated view of a bucking bull offers an aesthetic equivalent of the cowboy's wild ride while the film's silence lends an unexpected repose to the contest. Whether anticipating a bull's blasting out of the gate or watching an old hand stretch out his back, Everson's camera is ever-attentive to the action at the edge of the frame. - Max Goldberg
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The Mayberry Practice Calf
2012
Radiating the radical simplicity of a Lumière actuality, THE MAYBERRY PRACTICE CALF shows an African-American cowboy roping a hunk of tire again and again. "Calf roping is a discipline," Kevin Jerome Everson told an interviewer. "People practice it, they know the language of it and they know how to do it." Everson's camera evinces a comparable degree of discipline, with a single long take functioning as a montage through the serial repetition of the cowboy's action. We may wonder if we're watching a loop but gradually our eyes are drawn to small variations. Practice makes perfect. - Max Goldberg
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2006
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Buba
1930 · ★ 6
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1987 · ★ 9.5
A tribute to the late Pat Schulz, an influential Canadian feminist.
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