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Babies (2010)

September 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Original title: Bébés
Year: 2010
Runtime: 79 minutes
Country: France
Language: English | Japanese | Mongolian
Subtitles: English (.srt)
Genre: Documentary

Director: Thomas Balmes

Cast:
Bayar … Himself
Hattie … Herself
Mari … Herself
Ponijao … Himself

Plot/Synopsis:

Filmmaker Thomas Balmes offers an adorable glimpse at the first phase of life in this film following four newborn babies through their first year of life. Ponijao, Bayar, Mari, and Hattie were born in Namibia, Mongolia, Japan, and California, respectively. By capturing their earliest stage of development on camera, Balmes reveals just how much we all have in common, despite being born to different parents and raised in different cultures.

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Babies (Bébés) [2010]
Uploaded by: wordskill

Filed Under: Documentary, France, Movies

Beat of Freedom (2010)

August 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Original title: Zew wolności
Year: 2010
Runtime: 1 hour, 12 minutes
Country: Poland
Language: Polish | English
Subtitles: English (.srt) [embedded in MKV] for sections not in English
Genre: Documentary | Music

Director: Leszek Gnoinski, Wojciech Slota

Plot/Synopsis:

Directed by Leszek Gnoiński and Wojciech Słota, the film chronicles the rock movement from the 50s until the fall of communism, as narrated by acclaimed British rock journalist Chris Salewicz. The film features plenty of archival footage of some of the most iconic festivals and influential bands that worked to provide a voice for those without one under the communist regime, as well as present-day interviews with many of the musicians. Amongst the featured bands you’ll find such names as Czesław Niemen, Maanam, Brygada Kryzys, Perfect, Republika, and Lady Pank.

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[DOCU] Beats of Freedom (2010)
Uploaded by: ommae

Filed Under: Documentary, Music, Poland

Confession (1998)

June 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Original title: Povinnost
Year: 1998
Runtime: 260 minutes
Country: Russia
Language: Russian
Subtitles: French | English | German | Italian | Spanish (.sub/.idx)
Genre: Semi-documentary in 5 parts

Director: Aleksandr Sokurov

Cast: Sergei Bakai (Ship Commander)

Plot/Synopsis:

The first two episodes of ‘Povinnost’ are the most documentary-realist of the five. The naval ship is based out of Murmansk, a northwestern city of the former USSR on the Kola Gulf of the Barents Sea. Murmansk is a leading freight and fishing port and the largest city north of the Arctic Circle. The first two episodes give us a detailed look into the sailor’s daily and periodic routines: cooking, eating, folding clothes, bathing, washing their clothes, cleaning the ship, medical examinations and bedtime preparations.
Things take a turn for the abstract in the third episode. Most of the third episode takes place outside the ship and consists of panning shots looking through a blizzard, shots of the ship cutting through water, extreme long shots of the bundled-up sailors transporting wood and coal to a barren outpost and a soundtrack that whistles with wind and amplified ambient sounds.

Appearing in this third episode is the film’s clearest political allusion. Over the image of the bundled-up sailors we hear the captain’s voice-over asking: why are they [the sailors] doing this? The tyrant is no longer here. This image, which recalls the Siberia and gulags of Stalinism, is reinforced by several other references or allusions to prison. For example, the sailors are often seen wearing horizontal, striped black and white shirts that look like prison uniforms. In another episode the captain is asked by a visiting captain whether captains would make good prisoners?

The routine health inspections are reminiscent of prison procedure for new inmates. The sailors wait in a crowded room until they are called in five at a time and then strip searched, front and back. And lastly, there is a shower scene that contains explicit homo-eroticism, a reality of prison life (a sailor sits just inside the shower room ogling, giggling and making eye contact with the other showering sailors). Through all the orders, work and duty, the sailors remain calm, reticent and accepting of everything, with no sign of any protest.

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Povinnost (1998) Confession
Uploaded by: guattadeli

Filed Under: Documentary, Russia/USSR

Berlin: A Symphony of a Big City (1927)

May 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Original title: Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt
Year: 1927
Runtime: 1 hr 12 mins.
Country: German
Language: Silent
Subtitles: N/A
Genre: Documentary

Director: Walter Ruttmann

Cast:
Paul von Hindenburg … Himself (uncredited)


Plot/Synopsis:

This release is part of the Treasures of the Weimar Republic Series.
Also included on this DVD is Opus 1 1922, 10 min., a rare example of the German avant-garde cinema. Director Walther Ruttmann’s hand-colored film is an exploration of the geometry of movement.

Walter Ruttman’s famous documentary about one day in the life of the great city of Berlin. A groundbreaking movie that unleashed a series of imitations, derivations and other forms of hommage. The montage of moving images creates both atmosphere and narratives, without recurring to words – written or spoken.

At once an invaluable photographic record of life in Weimar Berlin and a timeless demostration of the cinema’s ability to enthrall on a purely visceral level, This orchestral film is a classic of Weimar cinema. A lyrical portrait of a bustling metropolis in late Spring begins with daybreak. Slowly the city awakens with signs of activity. Faithful commuters, morning delivery trucks and cross-town buses start to make their way through this urban center. Eventually, the city’s a pulsating organism teeming with activity and moving to the rhythm of its own daily schedule. But as the day comes to an end, the city shuts down and goes to bed so that it may meet tomorrow morning anew.

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Berlin: A Symphony of a Big City (1927)
Uploaded By : dstead

Filed Under: Documentary, Germany

Into Great Silence (2005)

April 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Original title: Die große Stille
Year: 2005
Runtime: 1 hr 42 mins.
Country: France | Switzerland | Germany
Language: English | French | Latin
Subtitles: English (hardcoded)
Genre: Documentary

Director: Philip Gröning

Cast:
N/A


Plot/Synopsis:

Nestled deep in the postcard-perfect French Alps, the Grande Chartreuse is considered one of the world’s most ascetic monasteries. In 1984, German filmmaker Philip Gröning wrote to the Carthusian order for permission to make a documentary about them. They said they would get back to him. Sixteen years later, they were ready. Gröning, sans crew or artificial lighting, lived in the monks’ quarters for six months—filming their daily prayers, tasks, rituals and rare outdoor excursions. This transcendent, closely observed film seeks to embody a monastery, rather than simply depict one—it has no score, no voiceover and no archival footage. What remains is stunningly elemental: time, space and light. One of the most mesmerizing and poetic chronicles of spirituality ever created, INTO GREAT SILENCE dissolves the border between screen and audience with a total immersion into the hush of monastic life. More meditation than documentary, it’s a rare, transformative theatrical experience for all. ~ from Zeitgeist website

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Into Great Silence (2005)
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Filed Under: Documentary, France, Germany, Switzerland

Triumph of the Will (1935)

April 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Original title: Triumph des Willens
Year: 1935
Runtime: 1 hr 50 mins.
Country: Germany
Language: German (English Commentary)
Subtitles: English (.srt)
Genre: Documentary

Director: Leni Riefenstahl

Cast:
Adolf Hitler:
Martin Bormann:
Otto Dietrich:
Sepp Dietrich:
Josef Goebbels:
Hermann Göring:
Jakob Grimminger: Blood Flag Bearer
Rudolf Hess:
Reinhard Heydrich:

Plot/Synopsis:

Triumph of the Will is one of the most important films ever made. Not because it documents evil–more watchable examples are being made today. And not as a historical example of blind propaganda–those (much shorter) movies are merely laughable now. No, Riefenstahl’s masterpiece–and it is a masterpiece, politics aside–combines the strengths of documentary and propaganda into a single, overwhelmingly powerful visual force.
Riefenstahl was hired by the Reich to create an eternal record of the 1934 rally at Nuremberg, and that’s exactly what she does. You might not become a Nazi after watching her film, but you will understand too clearly how Germany fell under Hitler’s spell. The early crowd scenes remind one of nothing so much as Beatles concert footage (if only their fans were so well behaved!).
~ AMG

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Triumph of the Will (1935)
Uploaded By : dstead

Filed Under: Documentary, Germany

Television Under the Swastika (1999)

April 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Original title:
Year: 1999
Runtime: 55 mins.
Country: Germany
Language: Germany (English Commentary)
Subtitles: English (hardcoded)
Genre: Documentary

Director: Michael Kloft

Cast:
Eugen Hadamovsky: Himself – Reich broadcasting director, accompanies Goebbels (archive footage)
Adolf Heuser: Himself – boxes Schmeling (archive footage)
Kurt Hinzmann: Himself – former production supervisor
Joseph Hoppe: Himself – Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin / German Museum of Technology, Berlin
Fritz Janek: Himself – TV reporter, with Ley (archive footage)
Heinz Riek: Himself – Former TV reporter
Hans-Gunter Voigt: Himself (Bundesfilmarchiv / German Federal Film Archives)

Plot/Synopsis:

This 1999 documentary draws upon long-buried footage that originated in Nazi Germany, to convey an astonishing truth: from 1935 to 1944, Hitler’s Third Reich eked out a historical first by establishing the world’s premier network television broadcasts – broadcasts characterized by such programs as sporting events, man-on-the-street interviews, evening newscasts and racially-themed segments. Hitler’s minions initially planned to distribute some ten thousand television sets to the populace, in order to facilitate their goals, though World War II erupted and impeded these plans. In addition to this, the presence of television cameras on the streets interrupted the fluidity and cohesiveness of Nazi propaganda by inadvertently catching things that Nazi officials didn’t particularly want the public to see; moreover, Hitler perceived propaganda as television’s highest goal, which cheapened the medium and made it painfully obvious and sinister. In relaying its tale, this program combines historical commentary with clips from 250 rolls of Nazi television film that surfaced in Germany during the late 20th century. ~ Nathan Southern, AMG

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Television Under the Swastika (1999)
Uploaded By : dstead

Filed Under: Documentary, Germany, Movies