Samsara

3000 Miles

April 2007 •English

A group of professional skateboarders and their friends take part in the Gumball 3000 rally, an 8 day race around the world from London to Los Angeles.

Chronos

May 1985 •English

Carefully picked scenes of nature and civilization are viewed at high speed using time-lapse cinematography in an effort to demonstrate the history of various regions.

Naqoyqatsi

September 2002 •English

A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.

Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty

June 1938 •German

Part two of Leni Riefenstahl's monumental examination of the 1938 Olympic Games, the cameras leave the main stadium and venture into the many halls and fields deployed for such sports as fencing, polo, cycling, and the modern pentathlon, which was won by American Glenn Morris.

Microcosmos

September 1996 •French

A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.

Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations

April 1938 •German

Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, Riefenstahl covers twenty-one athletic events in the first half of this two-part love letter to the human body and spirit, culminating with the marathon, where Jesse Owens became the first track and field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympics.

Sans Soleil

March 1983 •French

A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.

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.

Baraka

September 1992 •English

A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.

Koyaanisqatsi

April 1983 •English

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.

Con Traje y Sin Zapatos

Invalid date •Spanish

Fata Morgana

February 1972 •German

Shot under extreme conditions and inspired by Mayan creation theory, the film contemplates the illusion of reality and the possibility of capturing for the camera something which is not there. It is about the mirages of nature—and the nature of mirage.

Powaqqatsi

April 1988 •English

An exploration of technologically developing nations and the effect the transition to Western-style modernization has had on them.

Acasă, My Home

January 2020 •Romanian

In the wilderness of the Bucharest Delta, nine children and their parents lived in perfect harmony with nature for 20 years – until they are chased out and forced to adapt to life in the big city.

Once Upon a Time in Venezuela

March 2020 •Spanish

Once upon a time, the Venezuelan village of Congo Mirador was prosperous, alive with fisherman and poets. Now it is decaying and disintegrating—a small but prophetic reflection of Venezuela itself.

Life in a Day

January 2011 •English

A documentary shot by filmmakers all over the world that serves as a time capsule to show future generations what it was like to be alive on the 24th of July, 2010.

The Truth About Healthy Eating

January 2016 •English

We spend millions of dollars each year on products we're told are good for us, but does the science behind this industry raking in multi-millions really back up the claims?

Glass

June 1958 •Dutch

This short documentary, shot in the glass factories of Leerdam and Schiedam, demonstrates how glass blowers do their work. But thanks to the superbly edited ballet of working hands and the sequence of mechanical motions of the engines, is it especially a cinematic tour de force. That the industry can’t do without man’s involvement is shown in the scene where we hear the voice of Haanstra himself counting the bottles on the conveyor belt, until one bottle breaks…

Lili

February 2024 •Polish

A heartwarming story about a precautious, 8-year-old girl exploring the world with her globetrotting father and growing up in an unconventional family.

Point of No Return

November 2017 •English

Point of No Return takes you behind the headlines of the first solar-powered flight around the world—where two courageous pilots take turns battling nature, their own crew, and sometimes logic itself, to achieve the impossible. Not just to make history, but to inspire a revolution.