The Ozu Diaries

North Bergen, North Bergen

December 2022 •English

Footage shot in and around North Bergen, New Jersey presented in a minimalist series of fixed camera angles and long-takes accompanied by the ambient noise of city streets.

A Train Arrives at the Station

January 2016 •English

“This film was a gift to me. I make no claims for it, nor do I offer any apologies. It comes from work on The Thoughts That Once We Had. There was one shot we had to cut whose loss I particularly regretted. It was a shot of a train pulling into Tokyo Station from Ozu’s The Only Son (1936). So I decided to make a film around this shot, an anthology of train arrivals. It comprises 26 scenes or shots from movies, 1904-2015. It has a simple serial structure: each black & white sequence in the first half rhymes with a color sequence in the second half. Thus the first shot and the final shot show trains arriving at stations in Japan from a low camera height. In the first shot (The Only Son), the train moves toward the right; in the last shot, it moves toward the left. A bullet train has replaced a steam locomotive. So after all these years, I’ve made another structural film, although that was not my original intention.”

I Lived, But...

October 1983 •Japanese

An extremely lovely tribute to Ozu, on the 20th anniversary of his death. It uses a combination of footage from vintage films and new material (both interviews and Ozu-related locations) shot by Ozu's long-time camera-man (who came out of retirement to work on this). Surprisingly (or perhaps not), it focuses less on Ozu's accomplishments as a film-maker than on his impact on the lives of the people he worked with..

Cement

January 1949 •Czech

Vodní energie

January 1952 •Czech

Round the Island

January 1956 •English

The pleasures of sailing off the Isle of Wight are described by Uffa Fox, while Ralph Wightman tells of the peaceful life of its farms and villages.

The Travel Game

January 1958 •English

A light and somewhat satirical look at the problems and pleasures of Continental holiday travel. A passenger on the Hook Continental Express from Liverpool St. imagines the possible destinations of his fellow passengers.

V.H.S.

Invalid date •Russian

An unpicked pilot for a web-series, Pavel Grinyov explains the VHS culture of late USSR and post-Soviet nineties and the phenomenon of voiceover translation. Main example provided is a voiceover translation of Back to the Future (1985) by Vasiliy Gorchakov.

Earth to America

November 2005 •English

Tom Hanks is the host of this show with a comic approach to raise awareness concerning the environment.

Los Xey: A Real Movie Story

March 2024 •Spanish

The incredible story of Los Xey, a musical group born in San Sebastián, Spain, in 1940, which achieved and maintained an extraordinary worldwide success until its dissolution in 1961.

La damnation de l'or noir: L'histoire brûlante du pétrole sur un siècle

January 2003 •French

Mon Clown

March 2008 •French

Documentary from French TV channel Canal+ about Marion Cotillard's road to the Oscar for her performance as French singer Édith Piaf in the 2007 film 'La Vie en Rose', also featuring behind-the-scenes footage from the film.

The First Saturday in May

January 2007 •English

Follows six diverse trainers as they jockey for position along the 2006 Kentucky Derby trail.

Heroin King of Baltimore: The Rise and Fall of Melvin Williams

January 2013 •English

Baltimore City officials asked drug kingpin Melvin Williams to stop the riots happened following Martin Luther King's assassination. After helping the authorities out, Williams was then labeled a threat, framed and incarcerated by a hypocritical society.

The Hidden Hand: Alien Contact and the Government Cover-up

September 2013 •English

The Hidden Hand is a controversial Award-winning documentary that explores the possibility of an extraterrestrial presence here on Earth. The film takes a keen look at a spectrum of topics like alien abduction, human/alien hybridization, the military's reverse-engineering of alien technology and the government cover-up of anything related to extraterrestrials. Is preoccupation with E.T.'s a form of cultural madness, or is something really going on? How would E.T. contact change the religious and political institutions of our society? The Hidden Hand is full of riveting interviews with experts and experiencers alike: Whitley Strieber, Dr. Edgar Mitchell, the 6th astronaut on the moon, Paul Hellyer, a former Canadian Defence Minister, Richard Dolan, Jim Marrs, Linda Moulton Howe, Col. John Alexander, Lyn Buchanan, Clifford Stone, Nassim Haramein, David Icke, Dr. Roger Leir, Graham Hancock and Paola Harris, among others. The shadowy world of UFOs is suddenly brought to light.

El campo para el hombre

January 1975 •Spanish

"El campo para el hombre" was a politically militant documentary about the small holdings of land in the north of Spain and the large estates in the south of the country. This film portrays the exploitation and misery of the Spanish peasants, but also their class-consciousness and their will to fight for their rights and freedom. The film was shot in the late years of Franco's dictatorship, so it was made in secrecy (the directors were connected to the Spanish Communist Party).

Another Side of the Forest

May 1974 •English

Developments in the Canadian forestry industry during the 1970s are shown being carried out both as lab experiments and in the field to protect and conserve the country's vast forests. These include turning a Newfoundland bog into woodland, fostering British Columbia seedlings that withstand mechanical planting, inoculating Ontario elms against the bark beetle, devising ways of controlling fire, and more.

American Blackout

August 2013 •English

What if the Doomsday Preppers were right all along? Hacking into urban infrastructures isn't science fiction anymore - it's in the news every day. A 90-minute docu-drama, "American Blackout" reveals in gritty detail the impact of what happens when a cyber attack on the United States takes down the power grid. The question is: when the lights go out, what do we do next.

Imagine the Sound

August 1981 •English

An examination, shown through both interviews and performances, of the avant-garde free jazz movement which reigned during the 1960s.

Wähle das Leben

May 1963 •German

A documentary film created using authentic footage that shows the terrifying effects of nuclear weapons, using Hiroshima as an example.