Against the Grain
★ 6.3 · 2023 · 78m · Documentary
A glimpse at how genre film-focused home video companies have taken the charge in preserving, restoring, and releasing so many works which otherwise might have been lost to time.
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Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror
2021 · ★ 7.6
An exploration of the cinematic history of the folk horror, from its beginnings in the UK in the late sixties; through its proliferation on British television in the seventies and its many manifestations, culturally specific, in other countries; to its resurgence in the last decade.
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The Lot of Fun: Hollywood’s Fun Factory
2014 · ★ 7
A documentary about film producer Hal Roach.
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Django, Sartana, Trinita' et les autres…
2014 · ★ 8
French documentary on the Spaghetti Western genre, with numerous interviews.
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Not Quite Hollywood
2008 · ★ 6.8
As Australian cinema broke through to international audiences in the 1970s through respected art house films like Peter Weir's "Picnic At Hanging Rock," a new underground of low-budget exploitation filmmakers were turning out considerably less highbrow fare. Documentary filmmaker Mark Hartley explores this unbridled era of sex and violence, complete with clips from some of the scene's most outrageous flicks and interviews with the renegade filmmakers themselves.
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Making Apes: The Artists Who Changed Film
2019 · ★ 6.8
Fifty years after its release, the special effects makeup team behind Planet of the Apes reflect on making the iconic film.
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Lex Barker - Westernheld und Playboy
2023 · ★ 8
He is the most sought-after man in Europe in the 1960s. Lex Barker embodies the flawless hero in his films and, as Old Shatterhand, becomes a role model for generations of fans. Revered in Europe, misunderstood and almost forgotten in his native America. But who was this American who rode through Yugoslavia in a leather costume for the European audience? In 1973, Lex Barker died of a heart attack on the streets of Manhattan in New York. But no one recognizes the man who was Tarzan in Hollywood. Nobody knows him or cares about that he, as Winnetou's friend, is revered as an icon in Europe. Lex Barker's European western adventures are just a footnote in American film history. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his death, the documentary tells the story of one of the most beautiful men who ever flickered across Europe's cinema screens, for whom European cinema proved to be a stroke of luck and for whom a failed Hollywood career took him via Italy to Germany.
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A Life for Movies: Lotte Eisner
2021 · ★ 8.5
Born in Berlin in 1896, Lotte Eisner became famous for her passionate involvement in the world of both German and French cinema. In 1936, together with Henri Langlois, she founded the Cinémathèque Française with the goal of saving from destruction films, costumes, sets, posters, and other treasures of the 7th Art. A Jew exiled in Paris, she became a pillar of the capital's cultural scene, where she promoted German cinema.
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Yakuza Eiga, une histoire du cinéma yakuza
2009 · ★ 7
The history of the Yakuza Eiga at the TOEI studio is roughly outlined. Real Yakuza and also their connections to the movie business are discussed, and many important actors and directors of the genres are interviewed. Former real yakuza boss turned actor Noboru Ando, Takashi Miike, Sonny Chiba and many more get a chance to speak.
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Actor
2021
"Actor" is China's first documentary film to explore the virtues and skills of actors. The film takes the "Twenty-Two Big Movie Stars of New China" as the starting point. It will explore the film experience and artistic achievements of the older generation of artists, explore their insights and thinking about the profession of actors for more than half a century, and pay tribute to the century-old Chinese film with the classic film images they created.
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Yesterday's Witness
1976 · ★ 7
For the first 50 years of film history, the newsreel was a fixture in American movie theaters. From 1911 to 1967, these shorts proved an influential source of information – and misinformation – for generations of American moviegoers. Television news and public affairs programs became a great improvement over the scanty information offered by the newsreels. This documentary offers insight into a medium which has disappeared.
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