3.9
In the darkroom, 50 unexposed film strips were laid across a surface, upon which a frame of "La sortie des ouvrier de l'usine Lumière" was projected. The stringing together of the individual developed sections make up the new film, which reads the original frame like a page from a musical score: within the strips from top to bottom and sequentially from left to right.
7.5
Few films can claim as much influence on the course of cinema history as CHRONICLE OF A SUMMER. The fascinating result of a collaboration between filmmaker-anthropologist Jean Rouch and sociologist Edgar Morin, this vanguard work of what Morin termed cinéma- vérité is a brilliantly conceived and realized sociopolitical diagnosis of the early sixties in France. Simply by interviewing a group of Paris residents in the summer of 1960—beginning with the provocative and eternal question “Are you happy?” and expanding to political issues, including the ongoing Algerian War—Rouch and Morin reveal the hopes and dreams of a wide array of people, from artists to factory workers, from an Italian émigré to an African student. CHRONICLE OF A SUMMER’s penetrative approach gives us a document of a time and place with extraordinary emotional depth.
7.4
This early feature from Chris Marker is a key touchstone in the evolution of his distinctive essayistic style, in which he combines footage shot in the barren reaches of Siberia with his typically idiosyncratic musings. Animated mammoths, a humorous comparison of communist and capitalist values, and even a “commercial” for reindeer all feature in this alternately witty and philosophical travelogue that reveals as much about the history and culture of its subject as it does about the inner workings of its maker’s mind.
7
An experimental meditation on Times Square's marquees and iconic advertising that captures the concurrently seedy and dazzling aspects of New York's Great White Way.
8.6
Ten years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, filmmaker Alain Resnais documented the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek in NIGHT AND FOG (NUIT ET BROUILLARD), one of the first cinematic reflections on the Holocaust. Juxtaposing the stillness of the abandoned camps’ empty buildings with haunting wartime footage, Resnais investigates humanity’s capacity for violence, and presents the devastating suggestion that such horrors could occur again.
4
This exploitation classic purports to expose the secrets of the 1960s lesbian underworld.
Through the discerning lens of a Bahujan feminist filmmaker operating within the upper-caste Indian film industry, the film delves deep into critical themes of liberty, equality, fraternity, social justice, exclusion, and marginalised representation.
A passionate declaration of love for the cinema and poetry of Iran, which also offers a frank view of the precarious situation for critics of the regime and shows the uncompromising daily struggle of Iranian women against their oppression.
A meandering brook of moments from two afternoons spent with Vinod Kumar Shukla, his wife and son at their home in Raipur, saunters between the mingling geographies of past, present and future, drifting in and out of pauses—to ponder, to reflect, to reminisce, and to share.
Chaityabhumi, where Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s last rites were held, holds vital significance for the Dalit community. This musical film captures the December 6 commemoration, witnessing how the community honours the day and the political relevance it holds for their identity in contemporary India.
