Okay for Sound

This short was released in connection with the 20th anniversary of Warner Brothers' first exhibition of the Vitaphone sound-on-film process on 6 August 1926. The film highlights Thomas A. Edison and Alexander Graham Bell's efforts that contributed to sound movies and acknowledges the work of Lee De Forest. Brief excerpts from the August 1926 exhibition follow. Clips are then shown from a number of Warner Brothers features, four from the 1920s, the remainder from 1946/47.

Film Is Not a Sausage: Borowczyk and the Short Film

A documentary about Walerian Borowczyk's short films and animation, featuring his collaborators from that time.

Blow Ups: Borowczyk's Works on Paper

A visual essay about Walerian Borowczyk's works on paper.

The Voice That Thrilled the World

This short traces the history of sound in the movies, beginning with French scientist Leon Scott's experiments in 1857. Featured are snippets from early sound pictures.

Obscure Pleasures: A Portrait of Walerian Borowczyk

During a hospital stay in 2001, the Polish painter, sculptor and filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk compiled a handwritten list of the objects and animals that were featured in his films. While he had used both encyclopedias and dictionaries to order chaos in his own films, this list saw Borowczyk putting his own life in order.

Actors of Sound

Since the 1930’s, sound gurus referred to as Foley artists have recreated the sounds that infuse a film with life. During a film’s post-production, Foley artists recreate sound that will match the moving image on-screen, using whatever objects are at their fingertips, from hundreds of pairs of old shoes to clunky old tools and squeaky mattresses. But how will Hollywood’s low-tech sound artists survive as digital technology consumes modern movie-making?

Sonic Sea

The devastating impact of industrial and military ocean noise on whales and other marine life.

Absence of Me

Hundreds of boxes left by the famous uruguayan musician and political activist Alfredo Zitarrosa (1936-1989) who run away the dictatorship in the 70s, have not been touched since his death 27 years ago. Now his wife and daughters are trying to save the memories, tapes, music and sound recordings that the boxes contain to the posterity.

Melody of Noise

The film accompanies musicians who have devoted themselves to new, uncharted sounds with a great deal of passion. They build new instruments and work with quotidian noises. In the process, the ostensible noise often becomes sound. An adventurous journey of discovery into the realm of noises and sounds, rhythms and stillness. Together with people who listen closely and without reservation. A film that aims to engage viewers to listen with their eyes and see with their ears. Astonishingly sublime.

Soundtracker

Pure sound unaltered by human hands is becoming increasingly difficult to find. Gordon Hempton is an Emmy Award-winning sound recordist who has spent the last 30 years trying to find and record the vanishing sounds of nature in an attempt to capture a disappearing sensory experience. Filmmaker Nick Sherman observes Hempton in the wilderness for 30 days and uncovers an obsessive artist on a quest for perfection in this obscure medium. Hempton’s natural ability to locate and articulate himself through sound has a contagious energy and gives his work a transportive quality. Soundtracker is a fascinating meditation on the world’s changing landscape and the things we may be leaving behind in the service of progress.

KanZeOn

An unusual documentary exploring sound. Unique elements of Japanese culture are revealed through ancient rituals and extraordinary musical spectacles. A young Buddhist priest whose family has been serving a temple for the past 500 years is also a DJ and beat-boxer. A drum teacher takes part in a costume performance of a 700-year-old ghost story. A female performer plays the Sho, a rare bamboo instrument that is believed to imitate the call of the mythical phoenix. The core ideas explaining the magical potential of sound that permeates all parts of the film are presented in the tradition of Shingon Buddhism. These beliefs are explored through following Buddhist chanting lessons for student priests at Shuchiin University in Kyoto.

The Concentration Universe: Making Goto, Isle of Love

A documentary about Borowczyk's 'Goto, Isle of Love' and its creation, featuring key cast and crew members.

O Som, ou Tratado de Harmonia

film about the desire of listening. An intermingling of voices from childhood, dreams, history, sex and politics. A visual essay about the universe of sounds. What is sound? What is the sound experience? Sound placed and replaced as Energy. Nothing more should be said. The final conclusion, while the spectator flies over an infinite sea, talks about spreading fragility open. That is the Sound.

Parc Central

"Central Park" is composed of 11 films that offer a visual, sound and poetic journey through 11 cities crossed by the artist. Fascinated by the city, space and urbanism, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster has been developing the concept of "tropical modernity" for several years, starting from the cohabitation and the confrontation between architecture and vegetation. It is around this research that she designed "Central Park" 11 films : - Kyoto (1998) - Taipei (2000) - Buenos Aires (2003) - Los Glaciares (2003) - Hong Kong (2000) - Encore Tapei (2000) - White Sands (2003) - Brasilia (1998) - Paris (1999) - Shangai (2003) - Rio de Janeiro (2000)

Ballad of Imprisonment: Making Blanche

A documentary about the making of Walerian Borowczyk's 'Blanche'.

Everybody's Cage

In “Everybody’s Cage”, German film artist Sandra Trostel turns John Cage and his approach to art into a tangible fascination, without giving in to explain just a single bit of it.

How Does Sound Sound?

"Toot!" "Tick!" "Chirp!" Onomatopoeia is introduced in this "soundsational" adventure. To learn the importance of sound in the world, Peter and Jessica accept Figment's invitation to go with him into Soundspace where they unlock the power of words and the magic of their imaginations. By journey's end, our intrepid explorers learn that language and sound have rhythm—and that the five senses may be used to explore the world around us.

Listen

Despite living in a doomed country that hangs by a thread, Joud, a handsome sound engineer meets and falls in love with strong and free-spirited Rana. The young lovers, from completely different social and religious backgrounds, are drawn closer to each other, but a drastic turn of events gets between them and Rana suddenly slips away. As her parents forbid Joud from seeing her, the young man determined to see her again, finds new means of communicating with her by convincing Marwa, her sister, to download his voice messages and secretly play them to Rana

A Quiet Place

A family is forced to live in silence while hiding from creatures that hunt by sound.

Plane Crazy

Referred as the actual first Mickey Mouse short. Inspired by Lindbergh's flight from New York to Paris, Mickey builds a plane to take Minnie for a trip.

Film Is Not a Sausage: Borowczyk and the Short Film

A documentary about Walerian Borowczyk's short films and animation, featuring his collaborators from that time.

Fantozzi in Heaven

One by one, with a sweet but inexorable rate, Ugo's colleagues, go to a better life. When Ugo is attending at one of the innumerable funerals, he and the priest remain involved in an accident. The doctor says that Ugo as only one week left to live

Girls Fight Club

The best women's wrestling competition of all time...and if you think it's fake you're in for a big surprise See LEGENDARY Mixed Martial Arts fighters coach their teams to victory in the cage! aka Chuck Lidell's Girl's Fight Club

Gay ?

"I'm gay, I'm a fag, I'm proud and I really love sex."

Little Robinson Crusoe

Left an orphan by the death of his father, Mickey Hogan sails for Australia to live with relatives, but he is shipwrecked and stranded on an island inhabited by cannibals who worship him as a war god.

The Eyes Have It

A nine-year-old boy named Charlie McCarthy is sent by his teacher to an eye doctor. The lad has been complaining about headaches and has missed a lot of school. The doctor, with the help of a nurse, conducts an examination. They learn that when the boy isn't at school, he does a lot of fishing. In the course of the exam, the doctor recommends glasses, and Charlie convinces the doc to accompany him on a trip.

Medidas Extremas

Betty Takes a Hand

Discovering that her father, Peter Marshall, had been defrauded by a business partner named James Bartlett, Betty goes to Los Angeles to visit her aunt, Mrs. Hamilton Haines, whose late husband had a hand in ruining Peter. Tom, Bartlett's son, has arranged a yachting trip for Mrs. Haines and her daughter Ida, and Ida, deciding that her cousin is too pretty to come along, persuades Betty to stay behind. Tom, on the way to the yacht after a quarrel with his father, passes the Haines mansion and, noticing a sign advertising room and board, stops. Meeting Betty who is posing as Miss Haines, Tom moves in and falls in love with his landlady. When Betty accidentally meets Tom's father, the old man is so captivated that he offers her $5,000 to marry his son. After Tom and Betty are married, when both fathers discover their in-laws' true identities they are first indignant but later are reconciled.

Des Hommes Dans Le Ciel

BBC Wildlife - Wolf, Adler

Oh, It Hertz!

A "musician" explores how sound can be used for healing, as a weapon, and how the Nazis attempted to control the world by manipulating global audio standards.

The Bogeyman

When 10-year-old Nemo's mother suddenly dies, the boy is forced to go live with his maternal uncle's family. They are cordial and treat him well, but his 12-year-old cousin, Iván, begins to tease and tell him stories about the Bogeyman and how he'll come and get him if he doesn't behave. At first young Nemo doesn't believe the stories, insisting that Iván is just making things up...

King Arthur's Britain

By examining the mysterious figure of King Arthur, British archaeologist and bestselling author Francis Pryor disputes the belief that Britain reverted to anarchy after the Romans left in 410 A.D., sinking into the Dark Ages until the Anglo-Saxon invaders restored order. The truth, he says, is far more complicated. In this three-part series, he uncovers the continuous culture that was not destroyed by outside invaders, but rather strengthened by them. Travel with him as he makes ancient history come alive at the scenes of bloody battles and key archaeological sites that reveal the clues to this new view of early Britain.

Khovanshchina

The last and arguably finest opera of Modest Mussorgsky is captured in one of its most powerful interpretations in this 1989 recording from the Vienna State Opera, conducted by Claudio Abbado. A moody opera that is thematically broad at times and intimately personal in others, "Khovanshchina" tells the story of the 17th-century clash between Russian conservatives and Peter the Great's reformists. Among the singers is renowned basso Nicolai Ghiaurov and Paata Burchuladze, as well as Anatoly Kocherga, Ludmila Semtchuk, and Heinz Zednik.

Dance of the Weed

A clumsy yokel of a male weed courts a delicate female flower ballerina by trying to dance with her.

SHE/HER

Kongko, a male figure who is going through second puberty, is met with Jaka a.k.a Mira, who has a background job as an effeminate man, in a small bathroom. They find comfort in sincere conversations amidst the chaos of their own lives.

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

A biography of Ian Dury, who was stricken with polio at a young age and defied expectations by becoming one of the founders of the punk-rock scene in Britain in the 1970s.