Caicedo (with Pole)

Nanook of the North

June 1922 •English

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

Admiral Cigarette

August 1897 •English

Late 1800s cigarette advertisement produced by Thomas Edison Manufacturing.

Barry & Joan

November 2021 •English

A joyful insight into the creative world of Barry and Joan Grantham, two British eccentrics who have kept the skills of vaudeville alive for over seventy years. Since becoming stage-struck lovers in 1948, Barry and Joan have taught, danced and acted alongside the greats of British film and theatre. They are the last of the golden generation of vaudeville, eager to pass their legacy on to future generations.

Railway Station

January 1980 •Polish

Kieslowski’s later film Dworzec (Station, 1980) portrays the atmosphere at Central Station in Warsaw after the rush hour.

Vaudeville Days

December 1942 •English

A narrator provides very brief info on the beginnings and history of Vaudeville while Vaudeville acts are staged by impersonators and contemporary performers.

R. F. Outcault Making a Sketch of Buster and Tige

March 1904 •English

Buster Brown creater R.F. Outcault sketches his creation. Part of the Buster Brown series for Edison film studio.

The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat

June 1896 •French

A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

September 1927 •German

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

Tornado Alley

March 2011 •English

Tornado Alley documents two unprecedented missions seeking to encounter one of Earth’s most awe-inspiring events—the birth of a tornado. Filmmaker Sean Casey’s personal quest to capture the birth of a tornado with a 70mm camera takes viewers on a breathtaking journey into the heart of the storm. A team of equally driven scientists, the VORTEX2 researchers, experience the relentless strength of nature’s elemental forces as they literally surround tornadoes and the supercell storms that form them, gathering the most comprehensive severe weather data ever collected.

Kings of Comedy: Masters of the Silent Screen

December 2007 •English

A documentary about some of the comedians of the silent era featuring clips from their films and biographical information.

Powers of Ten

June 1977 •English

A scientific film essay, narrated by Phil Morrison. A set of pictures of two picnickers in a park, with the area of each frame one-tenth the size of the one before. Starting from a view of the entire known universe, the camera gradually zooms in until we are viewing the subatomic particles on a man's hand.

Solarmax

July 2000 •English

Solarmax is a 40-minute giant-screen documentary that tells the story of humankind's struggle to understand the sun. The film will take audiences on an incredible voyage from pre-history to the leading edge of today's contemporary solar science.

In the Land of Giants and Pygmies

January 1925 •English

IN THE LAND OF GIANT PYGMIES, a diary of Aurelio Rossi's 1925 trek into the immense Belgian Congo, preserves a long-gone-Colonial-era wonder at natural resources, "primitive" tribes, customs and costumes in Europe's cast African possessions, and implies that the "dark continent" could benefit from the "civilizing" influences of home.

Film-Tract n° 1968

June 1968 •French

In the 1968 movement in Paris, Jean-Luc Godard made a 16mm, 3-minute long film, Film-tract No.1968, Le Rouge, in collaboration with French artist Gérard Fromanger. Starting with the shot identifying its title written in red paint on the Le Monde for 31 July 1968, the film shows the process of making Fromanger’s poster image, which is thick red paint flows over a tri-color French flag. —Hye Young Min

The Dawn of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk

September 2007 •English

Film historians, and survivors from the nearly 30-year struggle to bring sound to motion pictures take the audience from the early failed attempts by scientists and inventors, to the triumph of the talkies.

Las Hurdes, país de leyenda

January 1922 •Spanish

An account of the journey that King Alfonso XIII of Spain made to the impoverished shire of Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in the region of Extremadura, in 1922.

Finlandia

October 1922 •Finnish

A documentary from Erkki Karu, one of the earliest pioneers of Finnish cinema: This government-produced propaganda film introduces the nature, sports, military, agriculture and capital of Finland.

Clouds

December 1969 •English

Clouds 1969 by the British filmmaker Peter Gidal is a film comprised of ten minutes of looped footage of the sky, shot with a handheld camera using a zoom to achieve close-up images. Aside from the amorphous shapes of the clouds, the only forms to appear in the film are an aeroplane flying overhead and the side of a building, and these only as fleeting glimpses. The formless image of the sky and the repetition of the footage on a loop prevent any clear narrative development within the film. The minimal soundtrack consists of a sustained oscillating sine wave, consistently audible throughout the film without progression or climax. The work is shown as a projection and was not produced in an edition. The subject of the film can be said to be the material qualities of film itself: the grain, the light, the shadow and inconsistencies in the print.

Ventanas

December 2015 •Spanish

Carmencita

March 1894 •

The first woman to appear in front of an Edison motion picture camera and possibly the first woman to appear in a motion picture within the United States. In the film, Carmencita is recorded going through a routine she had been performing at Koster & Bial's in New York since February 1890.