Not Bad at All

A Personal Journey Through Cinema History with Thomas Pollock

July 2016 •English

Covering over 100 years of cinema, this is a journey of discovering and exploring the magic of cinema from a personal perspective. Looking at the changes and developments of cinema Thomas explains how film has deeply affected his life as a person and a filmmaker.

I, Apostate

November 2018 •English

A fantasia of post-indoctrination, immigration, and iconography. A pageant of wanderers and searchers: Mormon missionaries, a pioneer, polygamists, scouts, hunters, church-goers, and an aspiring prophet walk and walk and walk. A pilgrimage of memory, history, ancestry, and place.

Golden Seniors

January 2023 •French

The adventure of five seniors who engage in an intense training of their mind. For the purpose of a scientific study, the impact of meditation on aging is evaluated.

Capturing the Friedmans

May 2003 •English

An Oscar nominated documentary about a middle-class American family who is torn apart when the father Arnold and son Jesse are accused of sexually abusing numerous children. Director Jarecki interviews people from different sides of this tragic story and raises the question of whether they were rightfully tried when they claim they were innocent and there was never any evidence against them.

Rize

January 2005 •English

A documentary film that highlights two street derived dance styles, Clowning and Krumping, that came out of the low income neighborhoods of L.A.. Director David LaChapelle interviews each dance crew about how their unique dances evolved. A new and positive activity away from the drugs, guns, and gangs that ruled their neighborhood. A raw film about a growing sub-culture movements in America.

A Delicate Balance

November 2018 •French

A Delicate Balance explores the life and dreams of young dancers at the dawn of adolescence. A tender and captivating documentary in which the students of the Quebec Superior Ballet School tell each other with candid lucidity.

Notes on the Circus

May 1967 •English

The short film is a montage of sped up clips of The Ringling Brothers Circus in action set to a musical track. The film is separated into four segments, each segment which focuses on different acts within the circus. The later segments often incorporate clips from earlier segments, mostly as background to the featured acts. The speed of the clips match the tempo of the soundtrack music.

Half Sour

April 2014 •English

A group of young skateboarders find direction in their lives when they move to New York and start a pickle business.

Man Yuk: A Portrait of Maggie Cheung

January 1997 •

Experimental short made by Olivier Assayas for Fondation of Contemporary Art and starring Maggie Cheung.

Maniac Summer

December 2009 •French

Maniac Summer consists of images and sounds recorded in Paris in the summer of 2009. It is a sprawling triptych without a beginning or end and with no specific subject or topic. The camera is positioned in front of a window and left running. It observes movements, registers noises coming from the street or nearby park, captures Chantal Akerman going about her business in her apartment: smoking, working, talking on the telephone. Fragments from the artist’s everyday life are featured in the installation’s central video, while the adjoining panels are more symbolically charged; in them, various images from the former have been isolated, modified and repeated. These abstract afterimages act as a kind of memory, looking back to the images in the installation’s centrepiece as so many shadows of its reality.

Genova Genova

April 1984 •French

A song of love to the city of Genoa. The film wanders the streets of the city center and explore the beautiful cemetery and then climb the hills which offer an amazing view over the old town crossed by a highway and port.

Expiration

July 1976 •

Short experimental film.

My Favorite Child

February 2007 •English

The story of Dwight Core, Jr. and his family, following up the events of the home documentary "Think of Me First as a Person", shot decades ago by his father Dwight Core, Sr. and portraying the love a boy with Down syndrome shares with his four sisters, but also a heartache common to the era's disabled: leaving home for an institution. The little boy, Dwight Core, Jr., grew into a tall, 48-year-old man who enjoyed coloring and watching television in the living room of the Ocean View section of Norfolk, Virginia home he shared with one of his sisters, Cindy Klingler. In 2007, filmmaker Roger M. Richards brought the story of Dwight Core, Jr. to the present, documenting him as a grown man and the continuing love and devotion of his sisters to their brother.

Thoughts and Visions of a Severed Head

January 1991 •French

The theme of death is heavily interwoven in Smolder’s surreal salute to Belgian painter Antoine Wiertz, a Hieronymus Bosch-type artist whose work centered on humans in various stages in torment, as depicted in expansive canvases with gore galore. Smolders has basically taken a standard documentary and chopped it up, using quotes from the long-dead artist, and periodic statements by a historian (Smolders) filling in a few bits of Wiertz’ life.

Buebe gö z'Tanz

May 2012 •German

42nd Street: River to River

November 2009 •English

An impressionistic, graphic history of one of the world's most infamous streets: Manhattan's 42nd Street. Likened to a DNA strip of New York City, the street has ranged from the glamorous to the derelict, housing everything from peep shows to such international institutions as the United Nations. The documentary is an exploration of the street's expansion from the farmland where Washington bivouacked his troops to the flashy, commercial center that it is today. With historical information, musical performances and personal narratives, the film traces the rise, subsequent dilapidation, and eventual resurgence of a street that has come to represent a place where, notoriously, anything may and has happened.

Alvoroço Nas Escolas

May 2009 •Portuguese

This is a mix of documentary and fiction. Making of the project carried out by the producer ALVOROÇO FILMES with the support of the MUNICIPAL MUNICIPAL DE ALVORADA and SMED.

Decoupling 脱钩

April 2024 •Chinese

A "Chinese" father reflects on the changing relationship of China and US during his trip to Beijing to retrieve his 3-year-old "American" daughter who has been stranded because of the recent "decoupling" of the two countries. Born in China and living in the American Midwest, filmmaker Yinan Wang attempts to unpack his own experience of how a transnational migrant family deals with the distress caused by identity, nationalism, and geopolitics.

Untitled Al Gore Documentary

August 2000 •English

An intimate look at Al Gore and his family during the former Vice President's 2000 campaign

Doreen

January 2024 •English

A heartfelt look at the life of a wonderful person and the legacy she has left behind, looking into her love, patience, kindness and the grief of her passing.