Scerbanenco Noir

A Simple Adventure Story: Sam Peckinpah, Mexico and The Wild Bunch

2005

A documentary crew returns to the shooting locations of Sam Peckinpah's legendary western to reflect on the film and the way it impacted their lives.

Calligraphie Japonaise

1958

In a comparative study between different forms of calligraphy, the film traces parallels between modern Japanese painting and traditional Japanese writing.

Robert Altman on 'Rashomon'

2002

Interview with director Robert Altman about "Rashomon."

Castro's Secret Reef

2016

Cuba's enforced isolation has resulted in the unlikeliest of marine reserves: a huge, rambling archipelago known as Jardines de la Reina, or "Gardens of the Queen." Stretching around 140 miles along the southern coast of Cuba, it's one of the longest barrier reef systems in the world. Get an up-close look at Fidel Castro's diving playground, a forgotten ocean paradise unseen for half a century, and witness exotic species rarely seen elsewhere in the region. It's the lost jewel of the Caribbean, but how long can this pristine wilderness survive?

City of Ghosts

2017

With unprecedented access, this documentary follows the extraordinary journey of “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently”—a group of anonymous citizen journalists who banded together after their homeland was overtaken by ISIS—as they risk their lives to stand up against one of the greatest evils in the world today.

Nachtvlinder: De Laatste Dagen van Priscilla

2013

Patagonie Force 10

1983

A team of 12 men, 5 sailors, a doctor, a writer, a film crew, and 3 mountaineers, Jean-Marc Boivin, Thierry Leroy, and Dominique Marchal, set off by sailboat from Mar del Plata in Argentina to reach Riso Patron in Chile, via the Strait of Magellan, the Patagonian Channels, and Falcon Fjord. Their goal is to climb Riso Patron and then make the first crossing of the Campo de Hielo Sur glacier, or Hielo Continental Patagónico, to meet up with the sailors in Puerto Williams on Navarino Island in Chile, a village at the end of the world. After three attempts and an accident for Leroy, who was repatriated, they gave up, crossed the glacier and rejoined the boat, to set off for Cape Horn to climb the South face, knowing that the weather was good one day a month... On January 20, 1983, Jean-Marc Boivin and Dominique Marchal succeeded in making the first ascent of the South face of Cape Horn.

Impressions de New York

1956

(auto-translation: LA CINÉMATHÈQUE FRANÇAISE ) Using a subjective camera, set to music by Bela Bartók and text by Arthur Rimbaud, François Reichenbach offers a highly singular vision of the American megalopolis. (MIFF:) These are no ordinary travel notes brought back from America by filmmakers; they are not enthusiastic records of skyscrapers and crowds. but disturbing aspects of a hallucinatory world of concrete and metal, glaring light and haunting shadow. The film is notable for its dramatic use of colour, and music from Bela Bartok's ballet "The Miraculous Mandarin". (a-t:) F.B. confides in his memoir 'Le monde a encore un visage' (1981): "When I went to New York for the first time, I'd brought along a Bell & Howell 16mm camera whose instructions I hadn't read. I didn't know how to use the film, and inadvertently loaded some rolls that had already been printed, which resulted in these strange superimposed images. A well-known process that I had reinvented by accident".

The Nightlife of the Cities of the World. Moscow

1994

Beyoncé & Solange Knowles

2023

Beyoncé and Solange Knowles are the most successful pair of sisters in pop history. But while Beyoncé is being systematically built up into a megastar by her parents, her younger sister Solange has to fight for recognition from her family. It takes a long time for her to step out of her sister's shadow musically. A double portrait of two unequal exceptional artists.

In Silence and Clamour

2023

In a motionless train in which they live, going nowhere. But here, nowhere is a place, a precious place, a large, beautiful building with stone walls overgrown with ivy, looking out over fields, sky and total silence.

Jaime Urrutia: La fuerza de la costumbre

2011

Documentary about spanish singer and composer Jaume Urrutia.

Titanic's Final Mystery

2012

The sinking of the RMS Titanic remains one of the most enduring and mysterious tragedies of the 20th century. For decades, investigators and amateurs alike have floated theories for why it occurred and who was to blame for the extraordinary loss of life, but no one answer could fully explain what happened. Until now. To mark the 100th anniversary of the infamous disaster, Smithsonian Channel will premiere Titanic's Final Mystery. The two-hour special investigates a century of theories and uncovers astonishing new forensic evidence that proves the most likely theory for the case.

Tax Shelter Terrors

2017

The first feature-length documentary that fully explores how the toxic social and political Canadian context after 1968 created some of the most nihilistic and imaginative Canadian cult films of the 1970s and 80s and beyond.

Nas: Time Is Illmatic

2014

Time Is Illmatic is a feature length documentary film that delves deep into the making of Nas' 1994 debut album, Illmatic, and the social conditions that influenced its creation.