Meaning of Life

Land Without Bread

December 1933 •Spanish

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time. (Silent short, voiced in 1937 and 1996.)

Solitud de Cristo

June 2020 •Spanish

Visions of Europe

May 2004 •English

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Sprinters

January 2008 •English

A visually striking and meditative study of a team of athletes, including British Olympic finalists Jeanette Kwakye and Sarah Claxton, filmed over the two months leading to the start of the 2007 outdoor season. Sprinters is an intimate and arresting portrayal of the frequently brutal world of top level athletics, revealing the mental and physical barriers confronted by the runners as they pursue their dreams, and a world in which agony, ecstasy, winning and losing are separated by a hundredth of a second.

We go nowhere

January 2008 •Dutch

Armed with a camera and eighteen clean pairs of underwear, Josefien Hendriks hitchhikes The Netherlands and askes passengers questions about faith, friendship, love and death.

Vacation in Sylt

January 1957 •German

Vacation in Sylt is a black and white compilation film about Heinz Reinefarth, a Nazi Party member, high SS police leader of Warthe, and later mayor (1951-1964) of Westerland/Sylt.

EMIC

March 2015 •English

An Interstellar x Google Play collaboration. Building off the themes of Interstellar, this short film weaves submissions from people around the world into a story celebrating the human experience on Earth. Directed by David Brodie and creative directed by Angus Wall, the film will serve as a time capsule that shows future generations what life on Earth was like, should we leave this planet.

Slaměná krása

December 2023 •Czech

V útvare

January 2014 •Slovak

Se habla de Gabriel

September 2020 •Spanish

Documentary essay based on portraits of five women, their different ways of living motherhood, challenges and particularities.

Jaba

January 2006 •Hungarian

Zoli earns his livelihood abroad by skinning chinchillas in a Danish fur factory. The film begins with the story of Zoli's return to the periphery, to the small Hungarian village of Jaba. Zoli's family, settled Romas, struggle to earn their living by hiring themselves out as day-laborers. For Zoli, Jaba has no work and no prospects, so he kills time and waits. Standstill. "Jaba" tells the story of survival in one of Europe's poorest regions.

Germany - Handle with Care!

January 1947 •English

This "March of Time" entry examines the many problems, both human and economic, that faced the Allies in their respective zones of Germany -- USA, England and Russia -- following the end of World War II, and the Allied occupation of what was left of the country following the Nazi reign of Adolf Hitler. The Cold War issues had not yet fully surfaced, so this entry, with fleeting glances into each Zone of the time, traced what economic recovery had been made by the end of 1946, and how the average German citizen of 1946 was living...or getting by.

Huacal City

January 2008 •Spanish

The world is made of boxes. We live in them, we move within them, we see the world through them and we wind up in them in the end. Huacal City introduces us to the empty containers market at the Supply Center in Mexico City, where every day thousands of wooden boxes are bought, sold and repaired.

Chris Cree Brown: Electronic Composer

January 1980 •English

“Sonic artist” Chris Cree Brown discusses composing with new media and how he orchestrates particular sounds into formal compositional structures. Some sounds are made instrumentally, while others are recorded from his environment. In 1980 few classically-trained musicians in New Zealand experimented with synthesized sound and the gloriously large and sturdy equipment Brown uses to create his music will be of sure anthropological interest to many musos. The documentary was recorded with no script to capture the true art of creation.

Living in a Reversed World

January 1958 •English

Fascinating -- and unintentionally funny -- experiments at Austria's famed Institute for Experimental Psychology involve a subject who for several weeks wears special glasses that reverse right and left and up and down. Unexpectedly, these macabre and somehow surrealist experiments reveal that our perception of these aspects of vision is not of an optical nature and cannot be relied on, while the unfortunate, Kafkaesque subject stubbornly struggles through a morass of continuous failures.

Le Paris des mannequins

October 1963 •French

A photoshoot on the roofs and in the streets of Paris, under the astonished eyes of the inhabitants.

Donner la parole

January 2008 •French

Documentary Short

Which Is Scary

August 1991 •English

A set of seven portraits consisting of personal accounts from the lives of gays and lesbians. The narration includes stories about coming out, bashing, cross-dressing and AIDS.

The Wages of Sin

November 2003 •English

Second part of a three-part documentary series on the making of Once Upon a Time in the West, Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone's masterpiece, released in 1968. (Preceded by An Opera of Violence; followed by Something to Do With Death.)

Something to Do with Death

November 2003 •English

Third part of a three-part documentary series on the making of Once Upon a Time in the West, Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone's masterpiece, released in 1968. (Preceded by The Wages of Sin.)