Hollywood Without Make-Up

My Father's Camera

January 2000 •English

Home movies and their unique place in popular culture are the subject of My Father's Camera. Director Karen Shopsowitz weaves the history of home movies together with footage shot by her father--amateur filmmaker Israel Shopsowitz. Equipped with her dad's old Super 8 camera, Karen traces the history of home movies from the 1920s through to the amateur explosion of the '30s and '40s and beyond. She interviews a lively line-up of scholars and collectors, such as early members of the Toronto Film Club, a Japanese-American archivist who sees home movies as an expression of cultural diversity and a collector who hosts popular Webcasts that highlight new acquisitions.

Trópico de Capricórnio

November 2020 •Portuguese

The recovery of family videos is the resumption of a path: the massification of VHS brought new levels to family recordings. With the incorporation of sound, home videos gave way to commentaries, speeches and the filtering of sounds, giving rise to a documentation of the sounds of each era. In this first-person film, Juliana Antunes revisits, reframes and recombines the discordances between norm and desire in the memories of an LGBT girl in a Brazilian suburb.

Born in Evin

October 2019 •German

Follows filmmaker and actress, Maryam Zaree, on her quest to find out the violent circumstances surrounding her birth inside one of the most notorious political prisons in the world.

The Dance of Memory

March 2014 •English

Memory mechanisms are mysterious: we only see the stories we choose in order to construct our own reality. Every mark is a message in time, the invocation of an absence. To travel in the memory is to walk in time, zigzagging, a long road permeated by a dark, indecipherable logic… if we could choose seven moments to sum up our entire life, which ones would they be? The Dance of the Memory is a documentary-essay that guides us in that autobiographical search, where image and memory intertwine. It mixes archive material with an aesthetic and subjective tone.

Song 5

March 1964 •English

SONG 5: A childbirth song (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).

Our Godfather

April 2019 •English

The story of how Sicilian Mafia boss Tommaso Buscetta (1928-2000), the Godfather of Two Worlds, revealed, starting in 1984, the deepest secrets of the organization, thus helping to convict the hundreds of mafiosi who were tried in the trial held in Palermo between 1986 and 1987.

Time Theorem

May 2022 •Spanish

The director Andrés Kaiser combines hundreds of amateur films and photographs from the treasure trove of images belonging to his migrant grandparents creating a cinematic firework of analogies.

Will Work for Views: The Lo-Fi Life of Weird Paul

August 2017 •English

A film exploring the life of “Weird Paul.” After 30 years, 2000 videos, 800 songs, & 42 albums, he’s still not giving up on his dream.

Spring by the Sea

October 2019 •English

Alternating Philippines and Saudi Arabia as her home, the filmmaker uses personal home videos and present footage to tell the story of her family.

The Spider and the Fly

July 1938 •English

Few amateur films with sound were produced in the 1930s and fewer remain extant. A charming artifact that demonstrates the expressive possibilities and technical limitations of amateur talkies, "The Spider and the Fly" includes a backyard Labor Day gathering, a trip to the Riverview Amusement Park, and a homemade Halloween parade of witches and ghouls.

Aznavour by Charles

October 2019 •French

In 1948, French singer Charles Aznavour (1924-2018) receives a Paillard Bolex, his first camera. Until 1982, he will shoot hours of footage, his filmed diary. Wherever he goes, he carries his camera with him. He films his life and lives as he films: places, moments, friends, loves, misfortunes.

Los Felices

Invalid date •Spanish

A love letter to Mar del Plata made of images, times and a road trip. "The Happy Ones" is an experimental short documentary composed of past and present family footage. It portrays a place in the summer, the city of Mar del Plata, with a span of 20 years between past and present images (January 2000 and 2020). Despite the time that passed by, it's beaches, essence and people remain, always willing to keep dancing.

Me voy. Me voy

November 2021 •Spanish

December 31, 2015. The Valencian bookstore Valdeska closed its doors permanently after forty years of activity. The result of four years of monitoring and filming, these 31 minuts of run time are part of a book unread, unknown and undiscovered. "Me voy. Me voy" it's not the story of a bookstore, not the portrait of an exceptional bookseller, it's a will to attach the things in the filmed image, to make something lasting showing the moment of its disappearence.

Home Movies

July 2017 •English

In this home movie collection of gay men, memory serves as an act of hope, power, and above all, resilience.

Dust of America

July 2011 •French

A dream walk through the United States of America; a meditation on the thoughts and ideals of its inhabitants, as they are exposed in their silent but eloquent home movies.

My Uncle's Friend

August 2021 •Portuguese

The story of a LGBTQIA+ child told through old images from VHS tapes. The videos were recorded by Vicente's father between 1987 and 1993.

Window Water Baby Moving

August 1959 •English

On a winter's day, a woman stretches near a window then sits in a bathtub of water. She's happy. Her lover is nearby; there are close ups of her face, her pregnant belly, and his hands caressing her. She gives birth: we see the crowning of the baby's head, then the birth itself; we watch a pair of hands tie off and cut the umbilical cord. With the help of the attending hands, the mother expels the placenta. The infant, a baby girl, nurses. We return from time to time to the bath scene. By the end, dad's excited; mother and daughter rest. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.

La petite maison toujours dans la prairie

October 2024 •French

Nikita Kino

February 2003 •French

The film is a travelogue of sorts. Ostrovsky’s personal family footage meets the archives of Soviet propaganda footage. The result is a kind of Khruschev-era mix with a collage of Soviet music and a voice-over of my reminiscences of the Cold War era.

Home Movie

September 1974 •English

Filmmaker Jan Oxenberg narrates her own home videos, commenting on how her views towards lesbianism and femininity have evolved over time.