7.4
This witty, charming, and unusual documentary chronicles one of the most enduring rivalries in nature: man versus rat in their endless struggle to control New York City. The war is fought on every front—in sewer and subway, tenement and skyscraper alike. RAT captures the real-life horror and humor as Gotham meets the invading vermin. Marvel at the resilience of these rodents, while hearty New Yorkers share tales of battle and, in some cases, defeat. The cameras go on patrol with the city’s famed exterminators, then behind walls, through pipes, and deep into the New York underground to reveal the hidden world of these most cunning of creatures.
7.4
The 1992 presidential election was a triumph not only for Bill Clinton but also for the new breed of strategists who guided him to the White House—and changed the face of politics in the process. For this thrilling, behind-closed-doors account of that campaign, renowned cinema verité filmmakers Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker captured the brainstorming and bull sessions of Clinton’s crack team of consultants—especially James Carville and George Stephanopoulos, who became media stars in their own right as they injected a savvy, youthful spirit and spontaneity into the process of campaigning. Fleet-footed and entertaining, THE WAR ROOM is a vivid document of a political moment whose truths (“It’s the economy, stupid!”) still ring in our ears.
7.4
Kazuo Hara’s interest in iconoclastic figures living in opposition to mainstream society led him to begin work on A DEDICATED LIFE, an intimate, fly-on-the-wall portrait of the controversial writer Mitsuharu Inoue, a sometimes charming, sometimes combative, often frustrating novelist esteemed as one of postwar Japan’s literary lions. The project, however, soon spins off into unexpected directions, first when Inoue is diagnosed with terminal cancer, then when Hara begins to discover that the writer’s talents for fiction extend to his own life, the details of which he has been fabricating for decades. As the ailing author confronts his mortality and races to complete his final works, Hara begins digging into Inoue’s past in an attempt to separate the man from the myth, resulting in a unique, layered portrait of a complex figure whose very life was an extension of his art.
7.4
WILD WHEELS is filmmaker Harrod Blank’s comic and revealing exploration of art cars —customized automobiles that reflect the individualistic spirit of their drivers. Traveling across the U.S. in his own wildly decorated VW bug, Blank discovers a memorable array of real-life characters obsessed with transforming their cars into mobile works of art. The result is an engaging and irresistibly eccentric deep dive into the heart of a truly unique, all-American subculture.
7.4
Christo and Jeanne Claude's first grand-scale urban project, wrapping the oldest bridge in Paris - the same bridge where Christo courted Jeanne-Claude. A love story set in the heart of Paris: between a refugee artist and a French General's daughter; between a 400-year-old bridge and the people of Paris.
7.4
In this ruminative cross-pollination of film and photography, Agnès Varda uses a mysterious still image that she took in the late fifties—of a nude man (the photographer Guy Bourdin, a friend of hers) and a toddler on a rocky beach, flanked by a dead goat with a swelling belly in the foreground—as the springboard for a contemplation on the passing of time and the subjectivity of meaning in art.
7.4
This galvanizing documentary tells the story of individuals who have dared to change the world for the better, and of Tennessee’s world-renowned Highlander Folk School (now Highlander Research and Education Center), the place that for over ninety years has taught them how to achieve this change. Whether fighting for civil rights, labor reform, or stopping the ravaging of communities by strip mining and toxic-waste dumping, the Highlander community has been active in some of the most significant American social movements of the last century. Rich in the language and music of the South, YOU GOT TO MOVE is about people’s discovery within themselves of the courage and ability to confront reality and change it.
7.4
his 1978 documentary is Les Blank’s celebration of the spirit and social traditions of New Orleans, featuring Mardi Gras and St. Patrick’s Day celebrations as well as musical performances by Allen Toussaint, Kid Thomas Valentine, Professor Longhair, and others.
7.4
In 1970, a British film crew set out to make a straightforward literary portrait of James Baldwin set in Paris, insisting on setting aside his political activism. Baldwin bristled at their questions, and the result is a fascinating, confrontational, often uncomfortable butting of heads between the filmmakers and their subject, in which the author visits the Bastille and other Parisian landmark and reflects on revolution, colonialism, and what it means to be a Black expatriate in Europe.
7.4
A deeply moving tribute to the Texas songster, Mance Lipscomb, considered by many to be the greatest guitarist of all time.
7.4
Restored by the Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata in association with Ciné-Tamaris and The Film Foundation. Restoration funding provided by the Annenberg Foundation, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and The Film Foundation.
7.4
Restored by the Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata in association with Ciné-Tamaris and The Film Foundation. Restoration funding provided by the Annenberg Foundation, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and The Film Foundation.
7.4
MEET MARLON BRANDO is a delightful, unusually candid portrait of the legendary actor during a tongue-in-cheek confrontation with the press. While television journalists interview him about his most recent film, he counters their futile questions with wit and insight. A man unwilling to sell himself, Brando shines in one of his most revealing performances.
7.4
In his short documentary Vive le Tour, Louis Malle presents his energetic evocation of the Tour de France. This, Humain, trop humain, and Place de la République, Louis Malle's three French-set documentaries, reveal, in an eclectic array of ways, the director's eternal fascination with, and respect for, the everyday lives of everyday people.
7.4
As if you need any more reasons to visit the beautiful south of France, Agnès Varda celebrates the splendor of this area in a short documentary funded by the French Tourism Office. In this cheeky little film, Varda highlights the importance of tourism to the region with shots of sunbathers soaking in rays and the attractions that will occupy visitors of all ages.
7.4
Lionel Rogosin’s landmark of American neorealism chronicles three days in the drinking life of Ray Salyer, a part-time railroad worker adrift on New York’s skid row, the Bowery. When the film first opened in 1956, it exploded onto the screen, burning away years of Hollywood artifice, jump-starting America’s postwar independent-film scene, and earning an Academy Award nomination for best documentary. Developed in close collaboration with the men Rogosin met while spending months hanging out in neighborhood bars, ON THE BOWERY is both an indispensable document of a bygone Manhattan and a vivid and devastating portrait of addiction.
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.
7.3
Errol Morris burst out of the gate with this brilliant debut feature, about two pet cemeteries in Northern California and the people involved with them. Such a description, however, can hardly do justice to the captivating, funny, and enigmatic GATES OF HEAVEN, a film that is about our relationships to our pets, each other, and ourselves. Both sincere and satirical, this is an endlessly surprising study of human nature.
7.4
This groundbreaking, long-suppressed look at the effects of war on returning veterans was among the first films to tackle the issue of post-traumatic stress disorder (or as it was then called, “shell shock” or “battle fatigue”). Shot at Mason General Hospital in Brentwood, Long Island, at the end of World War II, LET THERE BE LIGHT follows seventy-five former soldiers suffering debilitating psychological trauma who, in the film’s most dramatic scenes, are given sodium pentothal to recall their horrific experiences in the war. Considered too disturbing and controversial for exhibition, this landmark documentary was suppressed by the military for decades until it finally premiered in New York in 1980.
7.4
In 1945, the free world rejoiced over the defeat of fascism. But the sense of peace was short-lived, and as the Cold War began, the United States entered a period of national paranoia and political repression. In response, boundary-pushing publisher and producer Barney Rosset and director Leo Hurwitz joined forces to create STRANGE VICTORY. This rarely seen, stylistically bold documentary equals the visual brilliance of landmark works like BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN and I AM CUBA while delivering an extraordinary cry for equality and justice. Skillfully combining real-life footage of World War II combat, postwar refugees, and the Nuremberg trials with powerful dramatic reenactments, Hurwitz weaves an extraordinary cinematic portrait of postwar American fascism. How could it be, the film asks, that servicemen returning home from defeating a racist and genocidal enemy found a United States plagued by prejudice, Jim Crow, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, and xenophobia?
7.4
Jean Vigo was twenty-five when he made this, his debut film, a silent cinematic poem that reveals, through a thrilling and ironic use of montage, the economic reality hidden behind the facade of the Mediterranean resort town of Nice. The first of Vigo’s several collaborations with cinematographer Boris Kaufman (Dziga Vertov’s brother and a future Oscar winner), À PROPOS DE NICE is both a scathing and invigorating look at 1930 French culture.
7.1
Founded in 1958 to produce aviation engines, the once prosperous, now abandoned Chengdu Engine Group, known as Factory 420, awaits its destiny. Sold for millions to real estate developers, it will be transformed into an emblem of China’s new market economy: a complex of luxury apartment blocks called 24 City. Constructed around eight dramatic interviews, punctuated by snippets of pop songs and poetry, along with beautifully shot footage of the demolition, 24 CITY attempts to understand the complexity of the social changes sweeping across China by exploring both the factory’s physical destruction and its powerful symbolic echo of a half century of Communist rule.
7.3
SEARCHING FOR MR. RUGOFF is accompanied by The Cinema 5 Story, a series of films distributed by the legendary Cinema 5.
7.3
This portrait of renowned percussionist and founding pioneer of avant-garde jazz Milford Graves finds him exploring his kaleidoscopic creativity and relentless curiosity. The film draws the viewer through the artist’s lush garden and ornate home, into the martial arts dojo in his backyard and the laboratory in his basement—all just blocks from where he grew up in the housing projects of South Jamaica, Queens. Graves tells stories of discovery, struggle, and survival, ruminates on the essence of “swing,” activates electronic stethoscopes in his basement lab to process the sound of his heart, and travels to Japan to perform at a school for children with autism. Oscillating from present to past and weaving intimate glimpses of the artist’s complex cosmology with blistering performances, MILFORD GRAVES FULL MANTIS is cinema full of fluidity, polyrhythm, and intensity, embodying the essence of Graves’s music.
