Rummaging for Pasts (2001)

Wealth of a Nation

"This film explores how freedom of speech — including dissent — is afforded to all Americans, and shows freedom of expression in art, music, dance, architecture, and science. The film also emphasizes the importance of the individual’s contribution to the whole of society and demonstrates how a productive and creative society is formed by the open and respectful exchange of ideas. The film was written, produced, and directed by William Greaves" (National Archives).

The Wild Child

In 1798, a feral boy is discovered outside the town of Aveyron, France. Diagnosed as mentally impaired, he is relegated to an asylum. A young doctor named Jean Itard becomes convinced that the boy has normal mental capacity, but that his development was hindered by lack of contact with society. He brings the boy home and begins an arduous attempt at education over several years.

PROTOTYPE

As a major storm strikes Texas in 1900, a mysterious televisual device is built and tested. Blake Williams’ experimental 3D sci-fi film immerses us in the aftermath of the Galveston disaster to fashion a haunting treatise on technology, cinema, and the medium’s future.

Golden Door

The story is set at the beginning of the 20th century in Sicily. Salvatore, a very poor farmer, and a widower, decides to emigrate to the US with all his family, including his old mother. Before they embark, they meet Lucy. She is supposed to be a British lady and wants to come back to the States. Lucy, or Luce as Salvatore calls her, for unknown reasons wants to marry someone before to arrive to Ellis Island in New York. Salvatore accepts the proposal. Once they arrive in Ellis Island they spend the quarantine period trying to pass the examinations to be admitted to the States. Tests are not so simple for poor farmers coming from Sicily. Their destiny is in the hands of the custom officers.

The Baby of Mâcon

Set halfway through the 17th century, a church play is performed for the benefit of the young aristocrat Cosimo. In the play, a grotesque old woman gives birth to a beautiful baby boy. The child's older sister is quick to exploit the situation, selling blessings from the baby, and even claiming she's the true mother by virgin birth. However, when she attempts to seduce the bishop's son, the Church exacts a terrible revenge.

Super Size Me

Morgan Spurlock subjects himself to a diet based only on McDonald's fast food three times a day for thirty days without exercising to try to prove why so many Americans are fat or obese. He submits himself to a complete check-up by three doctors, comparing his weight along the way, resulting in a scary conclusion.

Discovering Buñuel

Luis Bunuel, the father of cinematic Surrealism, made his film debut with 'Un Chien Andalou' in 1929 working closely with Salvador Dali. Considered one of the finest and controversial filmmakers with, 'L’Age d’Or' (1930), attacking the church and the middle classes. He won many awards including Best Director at Cannes for 'Los Olvidados' (1950), and the coveted Palme d’Or for 'Viridiana' (1961), which had been banned in his native Spain. His career moved to France with 'The Diary of a Chambermaid' with major stars such as Jeanne Moreau and Catherine Deneuve.

The Last Emperor

A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

Adventures of Casanova

Casanova, a young patriot in 18th-century Sicily, upon learning that his father and sister have been murdered, returns to Palermo and engages in guerilla tactics against the forces of the Governor. Lady Bianca, the Governor's daughter, is in love with one of the patriots, Lorenzo, and desires to escape from the palace. Her lady-in-waiting, Zanetta, enlists the aid of Casanova and he rescues them and takes them to the partisan's camp. The rebels are victorious. Lady Bianca makes plans to marry Lorenzo, and Casanova and Zanetta have similar plans.

Operation Mincemeat

In 1943, two British intelligence officers concoct Operation Mincemeat, wherein their plan to drop a corpse with false papers off the coast of Spain would fool Nazi spies into believing the Allied forces were planning to attack by way of Greece rather than Sicily.

Panta Rhei

In 1952, Haanstra made Panta Rhei , another view of Holland through the eyes of a painter and filmmaker. Its poetic images of water, skies and clouds reflect Haanstra's own moods.

I Vicerè

In late 19th-century Sicily, the noble Uzeda family—whose lineage dates back to the ancient viceroys that ruled those lands—fights to preserve its waning power in the face of the newly unified Italian regime.

December Hide-and-Go-Seek

"Ryuta is 5 years old. Even though he is my son, I sometimes wonder what this small person is to me. Even though I see his joys and sadnesses and know the feel of his warmth on my skin when I hold him, there are moments when my feelings for him become vague and blank." - Takashi Ito

The Tigris Expedition

Explorer Thor Heyerdahl and his ten-man crew sailed their reed boat, the Tigris, over routes he believes were followed by Sumerian traders 5,000 years ago. The film goes beyond science to focus on the man, Heyerdahl, in an effort to explain what motivates him to risk his life in the search for knowledge.

In continuo

"In continuo" uses slaughterhouse imagery to present the warlike nature of man, first depicting the cleaning and mechanical preparations for the slaughterhouse and then the killing, however, the animal slaughter itself isn’t shown.

The Best of Youth

After a fateful encounter in the summer of 1966, the lifepaths of two brothers from a middle-class Roman family diverge, intersecting with some of the most significant events of postwar Italian history in the following decades.

Men Behind the Sun

The film is a graphic depiction of the war atrocities committed by the Japanese at Unit 731, the secret biological weapons experimentation unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. The film details the various cruel medical experiments Unit 731 inflicted upon the Chinese and Soviet prisoners at the tail-end of the war.

Gravity and Me: The Force That Shapes Our Lives

Professor Jim Al-Khalili investigates the amazing science of gravity. As well sculpting our universe, gravity also affects our weight, height and even the rate at which we age.

The Way Things Go

Artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss create the ultimate Rube Goldberg machine. The pair used found objects to construct a complex, interdependent contraption in an empty warehouse. When set in motion, a domino-like chain reaction ripples through the complex of imaginative devices. Fire, water, the laws of gravity, and chemistry determine the life-cycle of the objects. The process reveals a story concerning cause and effect, mechanism and art, and improbability and precision, in an extended science project that will mesmerize the mind.

Mirror

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

Dreams of the Past

A film about peace, love and war. Dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the end of the Civil War in Russia. The film takes place at the end of the summer of 1917, when Russia and the whole world were at a crossroads between two eras. None of the people could even imagine how much his life would change in the very near future. In a strange way, the atmosphere of the film echoes our current reality and what is happening in Russia today. According to the form of visualization, the film belongs to experimental mockumentary cinema. To give greater authenticity to what is happening on the screen, the shooting was carried out on black-and-white negatives of 16 and 35 mm, hand-operated cameras were used and the material was developed in manual spiral tanks. The documentary chronicle of the Kolchak army of 1919 and the White army in the Far East of 1922 is embedded in the finale of the film.

Mind Games - The Experiment

Can exercise sharpen the brightest minds? In this ground-breaking experiment, four world-class gamers, competing in eSports, Chess, Mahjong and Memory Games, put this to the test.

Experimenter

Yale University, 1961. Stanley Milgram designs a psychology experiment that still resonates to this day, in which people think they’re delivering painful electric shocks to an affable stranger strapped into a chair in another room. Despite his pleads for mercy, the majority of subjects don’t stop the experiment, administering what they think is a near-fatal electric shock, simply because they’ve been told to do so. With Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s trial airing in living rooms across America, Milgram strikes a nerve in popular culture and the scientific community with his exploration into people’s tendency to comply with authority. Celebrated in some circles, he is also accused of being a deceptive, manipulative monster, but his wife Sasha stands by him through it all.

The Hedge Theater

Filmed in Rome in the 1980s, the work draws on Borromini’s Baroque architecture and Il Sassetta’s St. Martin and the Beggar. Beavers contrasts winter’s subdued light with the verdant growth of spring, constructing a precise montage in which image and sound form a poetic dialogue.

The Ground

Interweaving stonework and filmmaking, Beavers evokes memory through hammer strokes and chisel sounds that shape both image and rhythm. In this dialogue of repetition and variation, the film carves out a space where emptiness itself gains form, allowing vision beyond sight.

The Suppliant

Filmed in 2003 while staying in a Brooklyn Heights apartment, the work centers on a small Greek statue revealed in shifting morning and afternoon light. Beavers weaves these images with views of the East River and Manhattan Bridge, later completing the film in 2010 as a meditative elegy for his friend Jacques Dehornois.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

In 1971, Stanford's Professor Philip Zimbardo conducts a controversial psychology experiment in which college students pretend to be either prisoners or guards, but the proceedings soon get out of hand. Based on a true story.

The Unofficial Science of Home Alone

Comedians James Acaster, Guz Khan and Alex Brooker have all been obsessed with the classic 1990 comedy "Home Alone" ever since they were kids. But there's one big burning question that all "Home Alone" fans need answering: would The Wet Bandits have survived Kevin's traps in real life? Well, it's time to find out!

Taris

Short documentary directed by Jean Vigo about the French swimmer Jean Taris. The film is notable for the many innovative techniques that Vigo uses, including close ups and freeze frames of the swimmer's body.

Lake

Lake gazes down at a still body of water from a birds-eye view, while a group of artists peacefully float in and out of the frame or work to stay at the surface. As they glide farther away and draw closer together, they reach out in collective queer and desirous exchanges — holding hands, drifting over and under their neighbors, making space, taking care of each other with a casual, gentle intimacy while they come together as individual parts of a whole. The video reflects on notions of togetherness and feminist theorist Silvia Federici’s call to “reconnect what capitalism has divided: our relation with nature, with others, and our bodies.”

À propos de Nice

What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Côte d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.

The Weavers of Nishijin

The Weavers of Nishijin captures the process of traditional textile manufacture in Nishijin.

George: The Story of George Maciunas and Fluxus

In 1961 Lithuanian American artist and impresario George Maciunas established the avant-garde art movement Fluxus. George details the rise of Fluxus following a sensationalized tour of “concerts” in Europe in 1962, and continuing in New York for most of the 1960s and ’70s. During this time Maciunas was converting the dying industrial buildings of Soho into a network of artists’ lofts, creating one of the first official real estate co-ops of artist-owned buildings. Maciunas’s life and legacy—as recounted by artists of his generation, including Yoko Ono and Jonas Mekas—ignited debates that remain pivotal to artists working today.

Freakonomics

Some of the world's most innovative documentary filmmakers will explore the hidden side of everything.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One

In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?

The Raft

In 1973, five men and six women drifted across the Atlantic on a raft as part of a scientific experiment exploring the origins of violence and sexual attraction. Nobody expected what ultimately took place on that 3-month journey. Through archive material and a reunion of the surviving members of the expedition, this film tells the hidden story of the project.

2012: Time for Change

2012: Time For Change is a documentary feature that presents ways to transform our unsustainable society into a regenerative planetary culture. This can be achieved through a personal and global change of consciousness and the systemic implementation of ecological design.

My Body

Oscar, not quite a child anymore, scavenges for scrap metal for his father. He spends his life in improvised landfills among what remains of leftovers. Worlds apart, yet close-by, there is Stanley. He tidies the church in exchange for a monetised hospitality, picks fruits, herds sheep: anything that keep his foreign body busy. Oscar, the young Sicilian, and Stanley the Nigerian don’t seem to have much in common. Except for the feeling of being thrown into the world, to suffer the same refusal, the same overwhelming wave of choices imposed on them by others.

Frank Zappa - Freak Jazz, Movie Madness & Another Mothers

After disbanding the original Mothers of Invention in '69, Frank Zappa unleashed a second incarnation of the band by '70. This film focuses on the sophomore Mothers and this often-overlooked period in Zappa's career. Featuring rare footage, exclusive interviews, and contributions from many who worked with him, which all at once provide for the first film to tackle this phase in the Zappa legend

Good Morning, Mr. Orwell

In his book "1984", George Orwell saw the television of the future as a control instrument in the hands of Big Brother. Right at the start of the much-anticipated Orwellian year, Paik and Co. were keen to demonstrate satellite TV's ability to serve positive ends-- Namely, the intercontinental exchange of culture, combining both highbrow and entertainment elements. A live broadcast shared between WNET TV in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, linked up with broadcasters in Germany and South Korea, reached a worldwide audience of over 10 or even 25 million (including the later repeat transmissions).