Michelangelo Eye to Eye
★ 6.2 · 2004 · 18m · Documentary
In this short documentary, Michelangelo Antonioni enters the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome to contemplate Michelangelo Buonarroti’s statue of Moses. The film consists of Antonioni’s silent observation of the sculpture and the surrounding space, recorded during a visit following the restoration of the monument.
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Film-Tract n° 1968
1968 · ★ 6.5
In the 1968 movement in Paris, Jean-Luc Godard made a 16mm, 3-minute long film, Film-tract No.1968, Le Rouge, in collaboration with French artist Gérard Fromanger. Starting with the shot identifying its title written in red paint on the Le Monde for 31 July 1968, the film shows the process of making Fromanger’s poster image, which is thick red paint flows over a tri-color French flag. —Hye Young Min
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1919
"All sounds travel in waves much the same as ripples in water." Educational film produced by Bray Studios New York, which was the dominant animation studio based in the United States in the years surrounding World War I.
More info →In den dierentuin van Antwerpen
1910 · ★ 10
The Antwerp Zoo covers a fair extent of ground, and was already in 1910 generally considered as an important one. A large number of views of birds and animals were taken and hand coloured. In those days, the monkey house was in for much attention. People found that the various comic incidents added a touch of whimsicality.
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Performing Animals; or, Skipping Dogs
1895 · ★ 4.8
A short black-and-white silent documentary film featuring one dog jumping through hoops and another dancing in a costume, which was considered lost until footage from an 1896 Fairground Programme was identified as being from this film.
More info →1/57: Experiment with Synthetic Sound (Test)
1957 · ★ 4.7
Mostly dark, rejecting images which are repeated. A stone wall, the chamber of a revolver which is, at first not recognizable, a close-up of a cactus. The duration of the takes emphasises the photographic character of the pictures, simultaneously with a crackling, brutal sound. (Hans Scheugl)
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Carmencita
1894 · ★ 5.2
The first woman to appear in front of an Edison motion picture camera and possibly the first woman to appear in a motion picture within the United States. In the film, Carmencita is recorded going through a routine she had been performing at Koster & Bial's in New York since February 1890.
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2011 · ★ 5
A medium-length film that takes the central place in the video installation "The Lady of Corinth". In both the medium-length film and the installation, Guerin delves into the relationship between cinema and painting based on Pliny the Elder's account of the invention of painting.
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The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat
1896 · ★ 7.1
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.
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Railway Station
1980 · ★ 4.7
Warsaw's Central Railway Station. 'Someone has fallen asleep, someone's waiting for somebody else. Maybe they'll come, maybe they won't. The film is about people looking for something.
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Roundhay Garden Scene
1888 · ★ 6.5
The earliest surviving motion-picture film, and believed to be one of the very first moving images ever created, was shot by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince using the LPCCP Type-1 MkII single-lens camera. It was taken on paper-based photographic film in the garden of Oakwood Grange, the Whitley family house in Roundhay, Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire (UK), 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. Roundhay Garden Scene is often associated with a recording speed of around 12 frames per second and runs for about 2 to 3 seconds.
More info →Clouds
1969
Clouds 1969 by the British filmmaker Peter Gidal is a film comprised of ten minutes of looped footage of the sky, shot with a handheld camera using a zoom to achieve close-up images. Aside from the amorphous shapes of the clouds, the only forms to appear in the film are an aeroplane flying overhead and the side of a building, and these only as fleeting glimpses. The formless image of the sky and the repetition of the footage on a loop prevent any clear narrative development within the film. The minimal soundtrack consists of a sustained oscillating sine wave, consistently audible throughout the film without progression or climax. The work is shown as a projection and was not produced in an edition. The subject of the film can be said to be the material qualities of film itself: the grain, the light, the shadow and inconsistencies in the print.
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Bugs!
2003 · ★ 6.3
Explore the extraordinary hidden world of insects, where a leaf weighs more than a car, rain drops feel like exploding hand grenades and a blade of grass soars like a skyscraper. Shot on location in the Borneo rainforest, Bugs! brings the beautiful and dangerous universe of its tiny stars up close and personal with cutting-edge technology that magnifies them up to 250,000 times their normal size.
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