Quartet for the End of Time

A music documentary about Olivier Messiaen's transcendent masterpiece, that he composed in a World War II prison camp, and debuted there on January 15, 1941. This film was completed on the 75th Anniversary of that historic premiere, and features "The President's Own" United States Marine Band Ensemble performing in rehearsal and at The Phillips Collection, in Washington, D.C. (Note by H. Paul Moon)

Feeler

16mm film by Paul Clipson, and music by Sarah Davachi. Filmed in New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Brisbane, Krakow, Sidney, Portland, Napa, Oakland and San Francisco.

Undocumented in the Pandemic

With The Marshall Project and the Pulitzer Center, a look at one immigrant mother’s struggle to keep her children safe and housed, with her husband detained by ICE in a facility where COVID is spreading. Also in this two-part hour, Love, Life & the Virus.

Land Without Bread

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time. (Silent short, voiced in 1937 and 1996.)

Thoughts and Visions of a Severed Head

The theme of death is heavily interwoven in Smolder’s surreal salute to Belgian painter Antoine Wiertz, a Hieronymus Bosch-type artist whose work centered on humans in various stages in torment, as depicted in expansive canvases with gore galore. Smolders has basically taken a standard documentary and chopped it up, using quotes from the long-dead artist, and periodic statements by a historian (Smolders) filling in a few bits of Wiertz’ life.

Meg's Jaw - A film essay

This is Meg. She has TMJ and not a lot of time to work on it.

Hay Que Ser Paciente

Romanian

A fantastic short documentary that explores an event that is staged in a cave in one of the oldest forests in Romania. The premise of the film - that people are bored and need something to do or perform is beside the point - there are people in Romania who will move an entire orchestra into a cave in the forest and thousands of people will arrive to watch a classical performance there. Breathtaking and fun at the same time.

Magritte or the Object Lesson

The surrealist painter René Magritte questions the objective reality and emphasizes the arbitrariness of the relationship between an object, its image and its name: the evocation of mystery consists of images of familiar things gathered or transformed in such a way that they no longer conform to our ideas, whether naive or wise.

Mer Océane

Documentarian Richard Lavoie follows the artists of the Mer Océane symposium which took place on La Grave, in the Magdalen Islands, in 1998.

Grandma Moses

1950 short film portrait of the octogenarian folk artist. Nominated for an Oscar in the category "Best Short Subject, One-reel".

Gadgets Galore

This Warner Bros. short reviews in an often humorous way the impact of the automobile on the United States. By 1900, the horseless carriage was beginning to have an impact. Early adopters were often the object of attention by large curious crowds. There were many car manufacturers and the quality of their product varied considerably. Traffic jams, pollution and automobile racing were only a few of the outcomes.

3rd Ave. El

Impressionistic picture of the Third Avenue Elevated Railway in Manhattan, New York City, before it was demolished. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2010.

Cityscape

From La Région Centrale (1971), Snow orchestrates new patterns of movement that exchanges the focus on landscape with the cityscape of Toronto.

Another Young Couple

Another Young Couple — borne out of a camera test for If Beale Street Could Talk, James and I asked my friends Essence and Jihaari, newly transplanted to LA to allow us into their home for an afternoon tea about their lives and loves, apart and together. We were migrating to the Alexa 65 for Beale Street and wanted to see for ourselves how that large-format sensor would affect intimate portraiture within lived spaces… in particular the faces and spaces of Black folk.

Bolaño, Up Close and Personal

Generously included as a bonus DVD alongside the 502-page Bolaño salvaje, a book of essays about and reminiscences on the Chilean novelist/poet published by the Barcelona-based Editorial Candy. Bolaño cercano [a difficult to translate title approximating something like Bolaño, Up Close and Personal], which offers up a sympathetic portrait of Bolaño as a loving family man and tireless reader and writer and teases with ever so brief glimpses of his personal library and countless spiral notebooks filled with rough drafts of his novels and poetry and even comic book-like drawings and illustrations.