Mad About English!

The amazing story of 1,000,000,000 people and their MAD MAD MAD rush to learn English! China 's love affair with the English language has reached feverish proportions. With half a million or more visitors descending on Beijing for the Games, can the Chinese pull it off with their newly-acquired English? Mad About English! follows the inspiring and heart-warming efforts of a city preparing to host the world by learning a once-forbidden tongue.

2008-01-01 | en

Another Romance of Celluloid: Electrical Power

This short begins at Boulder Dam (now Hoover Dam). The electricity generated here by the Colorado River is sent to Hollywood, where movie studios need it to make movies. After a tour of the MGM studios' power plants, we see short advertisements for upcoming MGM releases.

1938-12-31 | en

School of Babel

They just arrived in France. They are Irish, Serbs, Brazilians Tunisians, Chinese and Senegalese ... For a year, Julie Bertuccelli filmed talks, conflicts and joys of this group of students aged 11 to 15 years, together in the same class to learn French.

2014-03-12 | fr

Stay Maybe? We Think We Made a Film

An Asian film crew’s attemptsat making a film while navigating the strict laws of filming in the UK. They don’t have a budget or enough preparation, all they have is a shared passion to create. Stay Maybe is a comparison of cultures, at times sublimely political and desperately hilarious; it is made by and for the people who are divided by language but united by cinema; a film about filmmaking – blurring the lines between fiction and reality.

2020-12-30 | en

Talkers

The three speakers represent two of the dialects, with the most common one - the middle dialect spoken in Riga and central parts of Latvia - not featured in the film. In intimate surroundings, a farmer, a schoolteacher, and a herder of ostriches talk about perceived differences between Latvian speakers, and about language policy and their lives.

2016-11-08 | lv

Cry Rock

The wild beauty of the Bella Coola Valley blends with vivid watercolor animation illuminating the role of the Nuxalk oral tradition and the intersection of story, place and culture.

2010-10-03 | en

How to Build an Igloo

This classic short film shows how to make an igloo using only snow and a knife. Two Inuit men in Canada’s Far North choose the site, cut and place snow blocks and create an entrance--a shelter completed in one-and-a-half hours. The commentary explains that the interior warmth and the wind outside cement the snow blocks firmly together. As the short winter day darkens, the two builders move their caribou sleeping robes and extra skins indoors, confident of spending a snug night in the midst of the Arctic cold!

1949-01-01 | en

Secret of the Waterfall

The confluence of words and movement propels this multi-layered collaboration by Atlas, choreographer Douglas Dunn, and poets Anne Waldman and Reed Bye. Dunn's athletic choreography is performed to the rhythms, cadences, and associative meanings of the poets' "cascade of words," which function as music. Atlas introduces narrative references, ironically staging the dance in unexpected locations, including domestic interiors and vehicles. In a self-referential deconstruction that punctures the theatrical illusion, the poets are seen reading their texts and interacting as self-conscious performers within the dance. Atlas and his collaborators intersect the language of words with the language of the body.

1983-01-01 | en

Baseball: The Pete Rose Way

Pete Rose instructs children in the fundamental mechanics of playing baseball.

1986-04-23 | en

Twice Upon a Time

This short satirical film takes us to Stereoville, a city where citizens must literally double up in their efforts to deal with the community’s 2 official languages. In Stereoville, each speaker of one language is tied to a speaker of the other, back-to-back. Into this two-stepping society stumbles a character whose very existence causes considerable consternation among locals: an unattached individual with command of both languages.

1979-01-01 | en

Beyond Razor Sharp

Learn more about: - Knife Terminology - Common Mistakes - Sharpening Fundamentals - Finding the right angle -Establishing a burr -Sharpening scissors, hook blades, and serrations - Knife care and maintenance ... and see more bonus footage

2014-08-28 | en

Thima it

2021-01-01 | fr

The Science of Language

Five scientists (Carol Padden, Victor Ferreira, Martin Monti, Ellen Bialystok, Greg Hickok) explore the question of what language is, from investigations on bilingualism and its relation with neuroplasticity to what it means to have an impairment when using sign language.

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Lon Marum

A TV-hour length documentary film depicting the relationship between language, culture, place, music, tradition, and magic on an active volcano, in the Pacific nation of Vanuatu, on the island of Ambrym.

2012-01-01 | en

School Vandalism

Explores school vandalism by re-creating a true incident involving four youths. Discusses motives and consequence of vandalism.

1972-01-01 | en

It Ain't Necessarily So

It Ain't Necessarily So captures a budding Japanese jazz singer and her biracial vocal instructor who struggle to agree on the proper way to sing Gershwin’s “I Loves You Porgy.” Humor is no stranger to jazz singers Eiko Katayama and Kazue Hiraoka who star alongside Masa Fox, their English teacher. "Master at capturing hyper-awkward moments... brilliantly explore how representations of culture and identity ain’t necessarily how they appear." --Wilda Wong, San Diego Asian Film Festival

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An A to Z of English

From A for accent to Z for zero - everything you wanted to know about the English language.

1995-01-01 | en

International Magic Presents The Derren Brown Lecture

International Magic Presents: The Derren Brown Lecture is an 80-minute lecture DVD of close-up mentalism and subsequent discussion of various aspects of Brown's performance. Again, this product is not intended for general consumption but is directed at magicians and mentalists only.

1999-04-01 | en

Comprehensive School

The joys of 1960s modern education - as seen at a not-exactly-typical local comp.

1962-03-13 | en

The Nightingale Sings

The movie explores the origin of the Ukrainian language and persecution of those who defended its authenticity. Using examples of other countries, creators of the film prove that a nation cannot exist without a language.

2019-11-05 | uk