On Cinema
From Akerman to Vertov, ON CINEMA is our collection that takes you to the creative center of the 20th Century’s own, great art-form.
Many of these films are love songs to the form made by great filmmakers -- from Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville on French Cinema or Nagisa Oshima on Japanese Cinema, to Chris Marker on Andrei Tarkovsky.
Ross McElwee contributes his eccentric and visionary take on TV, Nanni Moretti a tragicomic drama on an Italian filmmaker’s’ daily life, and exclusively on OVID, Florence Strauss in the series THE LAST TYCOONS takes us on an intimate tour through the rich and otherwise unexplored world of French film producing. What do they say? ACTION!
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Rock Hudson's Home Movies
Directed by Mark Rappaport • Documentary • With Eric Farr • 1992 • 63 minutes
Rock Hudson’s Home Movies is a provocatively entertaining and hugely influential film essay from Mark Rappaport (From the Journals of Jean Seberg). It uses a collage of film clips from throughout Hudson’s career, and a...
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Trespassing Bergman
Directed by Jane Magnusson, Hynek Pallas • Documentary • With Ang Lee, Laura Dern, Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott • 2015 • 107 minutes
A group of filmmakers visit Ingmar Bergman's house on the remote Swedish island of Faro to discuss his legacy, and the art of filmmaking. Ingmar Ber...
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From the Journals of Jean Seberg
Directed by Mark Rappaport • Documentary • With Mary Beth Hurt • 1995 • 97 minutes
From the Journals of Jean Seberg is a profoundly illuminating exploration of Jean Seberg’s career from the brilliant filmmaker Mark Rappaport (Rock Hudson’s Home Movies). Mary Beth Hurt (The Age of Innocence) por...
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David Holzman's Diary
Directed by Jim McBride • Drama • With Eileen Dietz, Kit Carson • 1967 • 73 minutes
David Holzman's Diary is one of the most influential films of the 1960s, an "ingenious puzzle movie" (Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader) that charts the self-destruction of a media-saturated youth. As news from the Viet...
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100 Years of Japanese Cinema
Directed by Nagisa Oshima • Documentary • With William B. White, Nagisa Oshima • 1996 • 52 minutes
The forces and themes that have shaped his nation's cinema drive Nagisa Oshima's forceful and erudite essay. Based entirely on archive footage, it considers the rediscovery of Daisuke Ito's Chuji's...
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Dark Star: H. R. Giger's World
Movie + 1 extra
Surrealist artist H. R. Giger (1940–2014) terrified audiences with his Oscar-winning monsters in Ridley Scott's ALIEN. Sci-fi, horror, music, album covers, tattoos and fetish art have been influenced by his dark, intricate paintings and sculptures depicting birth, death and sex. Both a mesmerizin...
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Michael H. profession:director
Directed by Yves Montmayeur • Documentary • With Michael Haneke, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert, Juliette Binoche • 2013 • 92 minutes
In 25 years, Michael Haneke established himself as one of the most important directors in cinema history. From his early work to Oscar ...
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Blowback: The 9/11 Wars in Global Film
Directed by Terence McSweeney, George Lee • Documentary • 2019 • 30 minutes
For a huge number of people around the globe the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have become "America's story". Films like the Academy Award-winning The Hurt Locker (2009) and the commercially successful and culturally impa...
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Decasia
Directed by Bill Morrison • Documentary • 2002 • 67 minutes
Bill Morrison created DECASIA entirely with decaying, old found footage, melded to the music of Bang on a Can's Michael Gordon, performed by the 55 piece basel sinfonietta. The result is a delirium of deteriorated film stock, a moving a...
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Dykes, Camera, Action!
Directed by Caroline Berler • Documentary • 2019 • 61 minutes
Lesbians didn't always get to see themselves on screen. But between Stonewall, the feminist movement, and the experimental cinema of the 1970s, they built visibility and transformed the social imagination about queerness. Filmmakers B...
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What We Left Unfinished
Directed by Mariam Ghani • Documentary • 2021 • 71 minutes
The story of five unfinished films from the Communist era in Afghanistan, and the people who went to crazy lengths to make them - bringing together newly rediscovered and restored footage with new footage shot in the same locations, and ...
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Mia Madre
Directed by Nanni Moretti • Drama • With Margherita Buy, John Turturro • 2016 • 107 minutes
Acclaimed Italian auteur Nanni Moretti finds comedy and pathos in the story of Margherita, a harried film director (Margherita Buy, A Five Star Life) trying to juggle the demands of her latest movie and a...
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This is Nollywood
Directed by Franco Sacchi • Documentary • 2007 • 56 minutes
First came Hollywood, then Bollywood and now Nollywood, Nigeria’s booming film industry, which released 2000 feature features in 2006 alone. Where else can you shoot a full-length dramatic film for $10,000 in 7 days? Until recently litt...
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Prism
Directed by Eléonore Yameogo, An van. Dienderen, and Rosine Mbakam • Documentary • 2021 • 78 minutes
Is the technology of photography and motion pictures inherently racist?
For PRISM, Belgian filmmaker An van. Dienderen invited Rosine Mbakam, from Cameroon, and Eléonore Yameogo from Burkina Fas...
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How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (And Enjoy It!)
Directed by Joe Angio • Documentary • With Spike Lee, Mario Van Peebles, St. Clair Bourne, Gil Scott-Heron • 2005 • 85 minutes
Melvin van Peebles’ remarkable life story reveals an artist and a man whose groundbreaking impact on film, politics and pop culture remains, forty-five years after the r...
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The Great Flood
Directed by Bill Morrison • Documentary • 2013 • 80 minutes
The Mississippi River Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in American history. In the spring of 1927, the river broke out of its earthen embankments in 145 places and inundated 27,000 square miles. Part of its legacy was ...
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Color Adjustment
Directed by Marlon Riggs • Documentary • 1991 • 88 minutes
An essential companion to Ethnic Notions, Color Adjustment explores black representation in the age of primetime television. Deconstructing cultural touchstones from Amos ’n’ Andy to The Jeffersons to The Cosby Show, this cogent and prov...
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An American in Sophiatown: The Making of Come Back, Africa
Directed by Lloyd Ross • Documentary • 2007 • 52 minutes
An American in Sophiatown puts Come Back, Africa into the context of the time it was made ( 1957-1958) - recreating the sense of danger, the intrigues which were necessary to make the film under the nose of the apartheid regime. We come to...
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One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich
Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • With Andrei Tarkovsky • 2000 • 55 minutes
ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF ANDREI ARSENEVICH is renowned French filmmaker Chris Marker's homage to his friend and colleague, Andrei Tarkovsky, who died in 1986.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of th...
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The Last Bolshevik
Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 1998 • 116 minutes
Based on the life and work of the Russian film director Alexander Medvedkin (1900-1989), THE LAST BOLSHEVIK is a tribute from one filmmaker to another. An archeological expedition into film history that reveals new cinematic treasures, ...
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Dziga And His Brothers
Directed by Evgeny Tsymbal • Documentary • With Denis Kaufman, Mikhail Kaufman, Boris Kaufman • 2002 • 54 minutes
The fascinating and tumultuous lives of Mikhail, Boris and Denis Kaufman (better known as Dziga Vertov) are the focus of this powerful documentary. Using rare archival footage from R...
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In the Mirror of Maya Deren
Directed by Martina Kudlácek • Documentary • With Miriam Arsham, Stan Brakhage, Chao Li Chi, Rita Christiani, Maya Deren • 2002 • 104 minutes
With In The Mirror Of Maya Deren, documentary filmmaker Martina Kudlácek has fashioned not only a fascinating portrait of a groundbreaking and influential...
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Notes on Marie Menken
Directed by Martina Kudlacek • Documentary • 2007 • 97 minutes
Martina Kudlacek, director of the critically acclaimed "In the Mirror of Maya Deren," brings us the story of Marie Menken (1909-1970), one of New York's outstanding underground filmmakers, who inspired and worked with renowned artist...
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The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear
Directed by Tinatin Gurchiani • Documentary • 2013 • 101 minutes
A filmmaker puts out a casting call for young adults, aged 15- to 23. The director wants to make a film about growing up in her home country, Georgia, and find commonalities across social and ethnic lines. She travels through citie...