Documentaries

What is experimental film, and why is it called that? Artists and poet working in celluloid since before WWI have always found themselves in a no man's land. Excluded both from the art world and from the film industry, they bodly created a grassroots network for making and showing their films. They also created a profound body of work that continues to influence our culture. I wanted to share a few of the films I love and introduce you some of the free, radicals artists who made them.

A series of brief interviews produced by filmmaker David Lynch shot over 70 days across 20,000 miles of the United States featuring hundreds of different Americans.

Regen is an experimental documentary film directed by Joris Ivens in 1929. It can be defined as a cinematic-poem. In 2021 Breve Storia Del Cinema restored the film with a new score composed by Nikolas Labrinakos.

Travelling Fields focuses on a particular phenomenon occurring through a change of perspective and animated camera movements, as a way of redefining a place and its geography. Sections of the landscape are documented by moving the camera upside/down, one frame at the time, along a track. The film moves between different topographies and locations in the Kola Peninsula, Northern Russia

British comedy duo Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant send their simple and closed-minded friend Karl Pilkington on a trip around the world to experience a variety of people and cultures.

Tight close-ups show a slowly revolving, glistening, lightly textured surface. Water drips. Bubbles coalesce. An orchestra plays. What is the mysterious surface? Suddenly, it bursts!

About a refugee boy who lives in hiding, constantly afraid of being exposed.

We were abducted my mother, father, sister and me. Then they killed my parents and separated me from my sister. I was five. Abuk tells us in a low voice. I stayed with one of the men who kidnapped us and took care of his goats. Slaves is about Abuk, nine, and Machiek, fifteen. Like thousands of other children they were taken from southern Sudan by government sponsored militia in Sudan and used as slaves. They were later liberated by the organization CEAWC (Committee for the Eradication of Abduction of Women and Children) now in South Sudan headed by James Aguer. This took place before South Sudan was a nation of its own. Slaves is based on an interview made in 2003 and is the second film in a series of animated documentaries with and about children in difficult and dangerous situations.

Eddie Murphy in a stand-up performance recorded live. For an hour and a half he talks about his favourite subjects: sex and women.

An Israeli film director interviews fellow veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to reconstruct his own memories of his term of service in that conflict.

Danish soldiers are sent to Afghanistan in 2009 for 6 months, to help stabilize the country against the Taliban. They're stationed on Armadillo military base in Helman province. Unlike other war movies, this is the real deal - no actors.

Anders and Harri are best friends. They share an interest in music. Anders is also very fond of trains. They decide to go to Getå, where the biggest train-accident in Sweden took place in 1918. Suddenly there is music in the air. A film about friendship, fears, trains.

A look at tightrope walker Philippe Petit's daring, but illegal, high-wire routine performed between New York City's World Trade Center's twin towers in 1974, what some consider, "the artistic crime of the century".

After General Motors closes its factory in Flint, Michigan, eliminating 35,000 jobs, filmmaker Michael Moore undertakes a quixotic quest to interview General Motors' chairman, Roger B. Smith.

Filmmaker Michael Moore explores the roots of America's predilection for gun violence.

Michael Moore's view on what happened to the United States after 9/11 and how the Bush Administration allegedly used the tragic event to push forward its agenda for unjust wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A documentary comparing the highly profitable American health care industry to other nations, and HMO horror stories including shotgun deaths.

A documentary about the everyday lives of ordinary Parisians, done in the style of cinéma vérité.

Three perfectly true stories about lying. In three episodes based on documentary interviews we meet the burglar who, when found out, claims to be a moonlighting accountant, the boy who finds himself lying and confessing to a crime he didn't commit and the woman whose whole life has been a chain of lies.

Four people get to tell the story of their "first time", an animated film based on documentary interviews. Contemporary stories and some even from the 1920's range from comedy to tragedy and are remembered with nostalgia, embarrassment or even horror.