The Original Mermaid
★ 9 · 2002 · 52m · Documentary
Story of Annette Kellerman, the international swimming vaudeville and silent screen star whose life story inspired the MGM classic Million Dollar Mermaid starring Esther Williams, which featured lavish Busby Berkeley scenes.
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The Danish female swimmers
1941 · ★ 7
Short film showing Ragnhild Hveger and 'Little Ravishing Inge' Sørensen in a little more intimate setting than normal. Gunnar 'Nu' Hansen interviewing the two girls 'glorious' show.
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Cold Refuge
2023
Cold Refuge is about the physical, psychological, and spiritual aspects of full immersion in the natural world: how, though it may seem counter-intuitive, swimming in cold water helps mitigate some of life’s most serious challenges. The film’s diverse film subjects include a wheelchair-bound, paralyzed swimmer who faces fear by diving off a high pier; a Black man who was told by whites when he was 13 that “Black people don’t swim” (it took him 30 years to try); a blind man who tethers himself to a sighted swimmer; a woman with aggressive breast cancer who “swims to chemo;” a lawyer who reduces courtroom stress in the open water; and a young woman who communes with her late mother in San Francisco Bay, where they both swam together. Along with swimmers’ stories of adversity and resilience, the film’s marine mammals, birds, artwork, and a variety of open-water locations create a visual meditation on what it means to escape our abstract digital world in favor of what’s real.
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Sports
1932
The film is about a protest provoked when the university decided to restrict access to sports facilities to athletes, cutting out all other students. This is, strictly speaking, not a Prokino film. It was produced by the Waseda University Film Circle, which was organized by Kawazoe Shiro. Feature film directors Yamamoto Satsuo and Taniguchi Senkichi were apparently students at Waseda at the time and participated in the production.
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0,03 seconds
2017 · ★ 5
A poignant insight into the world of sport, where talent, passion and endurance mean everything, but give no guarantee of success.
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A Bastard Child
2017
In 1909, in an undemocratic Sweden, a bastard child is born and given the name of Hervor. Her mother is unmarried, due to which she is called a "whore' and is driven from her home. Hervor grows up at shelters and orphanages, unwanted, rejected by society. As an adult she spends her life struggling for social justice. In old age she tells us her story. Director Knutte Wester brings his grandmother's memories to life thought hand-painted animated images and has us witness someone being rejected in order to unite others. A story that all too often still repeating itself.
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Prinzessinnenbad
2007 · ★ 5.8
A film about three teenagers - Klara, Mina and Tanutscha - from the Berlin district of Kreuzberg. The trio have known each other since Kindergarten and have plenty in common. The three 15-year-olds are the best of friends; they are spending the summer at Prinzenbad, a large open-air swimming pool at the heart of the district where they live. They're feeling pretty grown up, and are convinced they've now left their childhood behind.
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Whiteley
2017
A visual journey into the life and legacy of one of Australia's most celebrated artists, Brett Whiteley.
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Sydney: A Story of a City
1999 · ★ 9
Virginia, a young and adventurous woman, travels from England to Sydney, Australia, in search of her Australian ancestors.
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The Untold Story
1999
The Untold Story of the Suffragists of Newfoundland (1999) is a docu-drama celebrating the thirty year struggle by the women of Newfoundland to win the right to vote.
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1995
Alison Brown and Charlie Simonds plan this film at Britain's oldest naturist club, Spielplatz. It’s then off to the Greek Mediterranean and Crete to discover Kalypso Cretan Village. They meet up with friends, Jocelyne and Regis, to investigate why this resort has become so popular.
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Whatever Happened to Green Valley?
1974 · ★ 5
Green Valley was a housing commission estate in western Sydney, much maligned by the media of the day. The residents were hurt by the criticism but lacked access to the media to respond. Supplied with equipment by Film Australia, they used this film to present a different image of themselves and their daily lives. In so doing, they answered the question of "Whatever happened to Green Valley?" The core of this film is the work of half a dozen residents, co-ordinated by acclaimed filmmaker Peter Weir in one of his earliest film projects. Weir also acts as the moderator at a public forum that is included in the film.
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Full Tilt Boogie
1998 · ★ 6.4
A documentary about the production of From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and the people who made it.
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