40 Days to Learn Film

The Birth of the Genre

November 1967 •Estonian

The film summarizes the origin and development of animated film at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries

The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat

June 1896 •French

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.

Toil And Trouble: Making 'Macbeth'

September 2014 •English

A new documentary on the Criterion Collection edition of Roman Polanski's 1971 adaptation of Macbeth featuring interviews with the director, producer Andrew Braunsberg, assistant executive producer Victor Lownes, and actors Francesca Annis and Martin Shaw.

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.

Sex and Buttered Popcorn

January 1989 •English

Actor Ned Beatty hosts a look at the genre known as "exploitation" films. Interviews with some of the producers and directors of these films are shown, along with scenes from and trailers for some of these films.

The Treasure of His Youth: The Photographs of Paolo Di Paolo

October 2021 •English

The life of the legendary Italian photojournalist Paolo Di Paolo through his photographs, which capture the essence of a fascinating and turbulent Italy, the one inhabited by Anna Magnani and Pier Paolo Pasolini, a country that no longer exists.

Hollywood Singing and Dancing: A Musical History

October 2008 •English

The history of Hollywood musical movies, from the very beginning until the 21st century, hosted by Shirley Jones.

Im Reich Des Squatters

April 2020 •German

Berlanga!!

October 2021 •Spanish

How does the vision of the brilliant Spanish filmmaker Luis García Berlanga (1921-2010) remain relevant in a time whose popular culture has little to do with his own? Since to understand the secrets of an artist it is essential to know the person behind, his family, his friends, his collaborators, as well as prestigious filmmakers and actors trace a collective portrait of a creator as singular as he is universal.

Making Dazed

March 2005 •English

This documentary reunites the cast of the 1993 film "Dazed and Confused", and features behind-the-scenes footage from the making of the film. A decade after the hit comedy's release, director Richard Linklater reunited the cast -- Ben Affleck, Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey and Adam Goldberg -- to celebrate the ten year anniversary of the film that helped launch their careers. Now you can watch the cast look back on the movie that changed their lives and on the decade that has passed since.

Abbas Kiarostami: The Art of Living

January 2003 •English

Through an interview with Kiarostami in the Aran Islands and interviews with film critics and scholars at Cannes, the director examines Kiarostami's themes and methods. The director also profiles Kiarostami as a poet and a photographer.

The Cinema According to Bertolucci

February 1976 •Italian

Documentary on the filming of Novecento by Bernardo Bertolucci

The American Night of Dr. Lucio Fulci

November 1994 •Italian

A testament of the greta B-movie director Lucio Fulci, whose films inspired great director like Quentin Tarantino. Lucio Fulci gift a long meditation about moviemaking fascinating for his sincerity, irony e clearness, about his filmmaking and his particular career.

Twilight

May 2021 •English

Feeling lost, a holidayer takes a vacation, only to discover a world that is as banal as it is hyper-real. A found-footage essay film. A home-movie. A music video. An experimental documentary about the fantasy of air travel. Taking a tour of the global centres of accumulation - New York, Dubai, Burning Man - Twilight documents the unreal, the mundane and the spectre of ecological collapse.

Oblivion

October 2024 •Russian

A lone passenger is reflected in the windows of a train crawling through layers of textures towards Minsk. During his absence, the city has not changed: all the streets are frozen, long-gone voices can be heard in the empty rooms and around the corner you can find yourself in a video game from your childhood.

Pineapple

May 2020 •Romanian

A short made during quarantine. - "I feel like I'm coming out of hibernation. I did not learn anything, I did not developed personal growth, nor qualities. I was smart for one day and read challenging stuff, and then for three days watched persisently TV series. I couldn't write. I found a handful of indispensable people. I didn't really understand much of this whole quarantine story; but I'm analytically only retroactive, so maybe it's going to happen. This movie made me feel alive for a few days."

Ozu: Passageways

December 2012 •English

People constantly appear walking through passageways in the films of Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu (1903-63). His art resides in the in-between spaces of modern life, in the transitory: alleys are no longer dark and threatening traps where suspense is born, but simple places of passage.

Bienvenido Mr. Heston

November 2016 •Spanish

Spain, 1961. Life in the small village of Torrelobatón, in the province of Valladolid, was turned upside down when the cinematic magic circus of a future Hollywood blockbuster, produced by Samuel Bronston, the rogue mogul of his own film empire, came to town: its inhabitants became participants and witnesses of the shooting of “El Cid,” a film directed by Anthony Mann, starring mythical actors Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren. Those days, legends came alive.

Notes on an American Film Director at Work

January 2008 •English

Filmmaker Jonas Mekas follows his friend, film director Martin Scorsese, and his cast and crew, through various locations during the shooting of his film The Departed, released in 2006.