Silent Witnesses

The Life and Works of Richard Wagner

May 1913 •German

This biographical portrait of composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883), feature-length and lavishly produced, was released in conjunction with the centennial of his birth. It's an outstanding achievement in many respects. Naturally it looks primitive by modern standards, but contemporary viewers should bear in mind that it was made at a time when the motion picture industry was still in its infancy, and feature films were still a novelty. The very notion of a silent movie about a composer may seem odd, but Wagner is an ideal choice, simply because his life was so tempestuous and dramatic. Wagner's personality was operatic, while his tumultuous love life unfolded like a soap opera. He knew great success and abysmal failure, luxury one day and poverty the next. He participated in the wave of revolutions that swept Europe in the late 1840s, and had to flee Germany under threat of arrest.

Scrap

January 2017 •English

A metallic cacophony resounds as Eric hunts for, and labours through, abandoned scrap. The sun beats down as his pick-up truck rumbles through the day.

Selbstportrait 1

January 2005 •English

Two in Love

October 1965 •Russian

Sergei, an aspiring musician, accidentally meets a deaf-mute girl, Natasha, and falls in love with her. He has to change a lot to prepare himself for a new relationship with a different and very vulnerable person. Natasha is like an alien or an alieness with whom Sergei has to find a completely new language to speak. Natasha tries hard to understand his musical world. The problem is that Natasha lost her hearing during the war and associates sounds with fear and pain. Even a symphony concert is torture for her.

María

October 1922 •

María tells the tragic love story of María, a beautiful young woman, and her half brother Efraín, a handsome young man from Valle del Cauca. They both fall in love and live their romance on the farm "El Paraíso", in Valle del Cauca, but not everything is rosy, since Efraín must go to Bogotá because of study reasons leaving María with pain in her soul. Some time later, María becomes ill and Emma tells her brother about the situation.

Plastic Jesus

January 1971 •

Tom is a young guy from Zagreb, completely without money, trying to make films in Belgrade. He somehow manages to survive with a help of women. He doesn't believe in anybody, respects no one and is in constant conflict with the ruling system and order. After being left by a silly American girl, Tom binds with a woman whose husband is abroad. When she kicks him out, he moves in with her husband's sister, who later kills him in the attack of jealousy. All this is shown in the context of major historical events prior to 1968. with lots of archive footage of world leaders.

Molly Bawn

December 1916 •English

Molly Bawn. British silent drama movie. Directed by Cecil M Hepworth. Starring Alma Taylor, Stewart Rome an Violet Hopson. adaptation of the1878 Irish novel of the same name by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford. Molly Bawn the novel by M. W. Hungerford contains her most famous idiom: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." It is also referenced in chapter 8 of James Joyce's Ulysses.

Dual Citizens

May 2024 •English

Three Nicaraguan-American artists from the Washington D.C. Metro area discuss growing up in two cultures and how it influences their art.

The Dancing Girl

January 1915 •English

Drusilla Ives, a young Quaker girl living on an isolated island, leaves to become the servant of the spendthrift Duke of Guisenberry in London, who is the Lord of her village. She finds that she is attracted to the bustling city's night life, and when the duke discovers that she is a fine dancer, he helps her turn professional. In short order she becomes known as Diana Valrose, the city's favorite dancer. Unfortunately, her strict father and her Quaker fiancee, John Christison, back on the island find out about her newfound fame and career and strongly disapprove--her father places a curse on her and her boyfriend marries her sister Faith. Complications ensue.

Collage

May 2021 •French

Considerations on collage as a cognitive act in artists’ cinema. A pedagogical film adrift: 35mm photographs and other materials collected over the last fifteen years by artist Stefano Miraglia meet a text written by Baptiste Jopeck and the voice of Margaux Guillemard.

The Half-Way Girl

August 1925 •English

When her traveling theatrical group goes broke, Poppy, an actress in the troupe, finds herself stranded in Singapore. She's reduced to working in a bar in the seedy part of town as a "hostess", where she meets a down-on-his-luck Englishman. While drunk he gets into a fight, and is forced to kill his opponent in self-defense. The girl helps him escape and goes to Sam, a shady plantation owner, to try to get them out of Singapore. However, Sam has his own plans for Poppy, and they don't include potential rivals for her affections.

Cowardice Court

June 1919 •English

A feud in the Adirondack Mountains develops when Randolph Shaw will not give up a shack and its acreage adjoining the estate of Lord Cecil Bazelhurst, whose wife, the former Evelyn Banks of Jersey City, married him for his title and now wants to get rid of Randolph's ugly shack. When Randolph meets Cecil's sister Penelope, a romance begins which is furthered after one of the Bazelhurst servants shoots Randolph in the arm for trespassing and Penelope, who earlier had looked upon the feud as a joke, runs away to Randolph's house and accepts his engagement proposal. Cecil and his men pursue Penelope, but are frightened away by Randolph's men and are forced to spend a miserable stormy night in the woods. The next day everyone becomes reconciled when Lady Evelyn realizes that the desired property will now be in the family, and Randolph offers Cecil and his men dry, if ill-fitting, garments to wear.

Daisies

December 1966 •Czech

Two teenage girls embark on a series of destructive pranks in which they consume and destroy the world around them.

Switzerlanders

May 2020 •German

A cinematic time capsule with over 1,400 hours of submitted material from all regions of Switzerland gives unknown insights about the life of Swiss people in the politically and socially turbulent summer of 2019.

The Fog

January 1923 •English

Nathan Forge, romantic son of a cruel businessman, publishes in a local newspaper a poem about a girl who once befriended him. The girl, a student in a nearby school, reads the poem and recognizes herself. Years pass, and Nathan goes through various hardships, including an unhappy marriage, imprisonment, and the war. Then in Siberia, working for the International Red Cross, he meets the girl who is the subject of his poem and thus achieves happiness. A lost film.

King of the Jews

March 2000 •English

King of the Jews is a film about anti-Semitism and transcendence. Utilizing Hollywood movies, 1950's educational films, personal home movies and religious films, the filmmaker depicts his childhood fear of Jesus Christ. These childhood recollections are a point of departure for larger issues such as the roots of Christian anti-Semitism.

Animal Charm: Golden Digest

January 1996 •English

Animal Charm makes videos from other people's videos. By compositing TV and reducing it to a kind of tic-ridden babble, they force television to not make sense. While this disruption is playful, it also reveals an overall 'essence' of mass culture that would not be apprehended otherwise. Videos such as Stuffing, Ashley, and Lightfoot Fever upset the hypnotic spectacle of TV viewing, revealing how advertising creates anxiety, how culture constructs "nature" and how conventional morality is dictated through seemingly neutral images. By forcing television to convulse like a raving lunatic, we might finally hear what it is actually saying.

Between Science and Garbage

April 2004 •English

A whirlwind of improvisation combines the images of animator Pierre Hébert with the avant-garde sound of techno whiz Bob Ostertag in this singular multimedia experience, a hybrid of live animation and performance art.

A Quiet Man

February 2021 •French

From the 17th floor of an office building, Pierre is staring out a colleague that is here for hours.

Return

Invalid date •English

A young woman was buried alive with the intention of killing, but she survived by chance. hears the cries of her little girl and fights to stay alive for her daughter. But this incident will enlighten a new worldview for her.