Heart of Maguey

A Space of Our Own - The Lanka Comic Con Documentary

August 2018 •English

A Documentary about the Lanka Comic Con, history of how it started, and its community.

Stop for Bud

December 1963 •Danish

Stop for Bud is Jørgen Leth's first film and the first in his long collaboration with Ole John. […] they wanted to "blow up cinematic conventions and invent cinematic language from scratch". The jazz pianist Bud Powell moves around Copenhagen -- through King's Garden, along the quay at Kalkbrænderihavnen, across a waste dump. […] Bud is alone, accompanied only by his music. […] Image and sound are two different things -- that's Leth's and John's principle. Dexter Gordon, the narrator, tells stories about Powell's famous left hand. In an obituary for Powell, dated 3 August 1966, Leth wrote: "He quite willingly, or better still, unresistingly, mechanically, let himself be directed. The film attempts to depict his strange duality about his surroundings. His touch on the keys was like he was burning his fingers -- that's what it looked like, and that's how it sounded. But outside his playing, and often right in the middle of it, too, he was simply gone, not there."

Gingers

December 2013 •English

Redheads. Fire crotches… This film collects samples of their testimonials and their body hair and skin. About being different genetically, about gay gingers, doubly in a minority, from Ireland to Israel to Brazil. A film made especially for ginger lovers.

Anonymous

January 2017 •English

A short film about the changing face of London Soho and the implications of gentrification on Mimi, an aging transvestite.

Wieviel Fernsehen für Ihr Kind?

January 1981 •German

Short educational film about television

Fallas 37: el arte en guerra

March 2013 •Spanish

In November 1936, a few months since the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, the government of the Second Republic moves to Valencia. In this situation, several Valencian artists and intellectuals decide to build four fallas — satirical plasterboard sculptures created to be burnt — to mock fascism.

Cómo empezar una película sobre Javier Aguirre

May 2013 •Spanish

People on the Road

June 1960 •Polish

A portrait of a traveling circus.

Goya

October 1950 •Italian

Presents life in 18th century Spain as the painter Francisco de Goya showed it to us.

Land Without Bread

December 1933 •Spanish

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.)

Daybreak Express

January 1953 •English

Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording "Daybreak Express", this is a five-minute short of the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated subway station in New York City.

Circus

January 2022 •Estonian

We all carry hell with us. The filmmaker’s hell exists on a canvas, which he studied carefully in childhood. The mystical picture has many names: Circus, Hell, Game at the Arena. Decades later he finds the painting again. The film unravels as loose ponderings about the plight of being an artist and touches upon the filmmaker’s personal demons. Can he see the painting in a new light?

One Summer in Austin: The Story of Filming 'A Scanner Darkly'

December 2006 •English

A unique documentary that interlaces archival interviews with author Philip K. Dick with chats featuring cast and crew. Discussed are the origins of the story, parallels the cast and crew sees to the goings-on in today's world, and adapting the story for film, modern audiences, and its unique look.

Breakdowns of 1938

December 1938 •English

Flubs and bloopers that occurred on the set of some of the major Warner Bros. pictures of 1938.

The Presence

January 1965 •Hungarian

Two old men enter an abandoned synagogue, look at the decay around them, and pray.

The First Emperor of China

January 1989 •English

This historical drama tells the story of Qin Shihuang, who unified China’s vast territory and declared himself emperor in 221 B.C. During his reign, he introduced sweeping reforms, built a vast network of roads and connected the Great Wall of China. From the grandiose inner sanctum of Emperor Qin's royal palace, to fierce battles with feudal kings, this film re-creates the glory and the terror of the Qin Dynasty, including footage of Qin's life-sized terra cotta army, constructed 2,200 years ago for his tomb.

Le cortège de la mi-carême fait sa sortie annuelle

January 1913 •French

Short documentary on a carnival procession.

Perfect Image?

January 1989 •English

Two actresses take us through a series of 'raps' and sketches about what it means to be beautiful and black.

Una vuelta a Mallorca en camello

January 2013 •English

The real story about the camel ride around Mallorca, that journalist Miguel Vidal and painter Gustavo Peñalver did in 1964. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. This is one of them.

Round About Hollywood

May 1931 •English

This short travelogue depicts snippets of locations in Hollywood, California, most of them as seen from the streets. Considerable time is taken showing the kinds of architecture of private homes. There are images of various important buildings, and a depiction of the Hollywood Bowl. Finally, there is a sequence revolving around the premiere of the film “Dirigible” (1931) at the famed Chinese Theatre.