Above the tip of Cape York, beyond the northernmost point of the Australian continent, are the Torres Strait Islands. The economy here is based on home gardens and pearlshell fishing. The culture, with its basis in music, dancing, and ceremony, provides a striking contrast to that of mainland Australia. This film, shot in the late 1960s, shows how strongly old traditions still affect Torres Strait Islander people, even though they also have most of the trappings of modern life.

This film looks at small coastal shipping in New Zealand. It focuses on life on the coaster; loading and unloading the ship, situations in ports, a storm at sea, and some dramatic incidents. Complete commentary in rhythmical verse supplied by Selwyn Toogood.

A docudrama that traces the story of Cecil Holmes, a young radical filmmaker at New Zealand's National Film Unit, who was fired because he was a member of the Communist Party.

The story of the carpenters’ dispute of 1949, in which the Communist-led Carpenters Union was de-registered by Peter Fraser’s Government in cahoots with the Federation of Labour.

Documentary short about Hans Bellmer.

160 cameramen simultaneously filmed the 356th day of the war along the entire front line, as well as in the rear. The film that was released on the country's screens became a cast, a snapshot of the country's face at the moment of its deadly battle with the enemy.

A homage to Dusky Maiden images as well as a playful take on the low art of velvet painting, Sima Urale’s Velvet Dreams provides a tongue-in-cheek exploration of Pacific Island stereotypes. Part detective story, part documentary, an unseen narrator goes in search of a painting of a Polynesian princess that he has fallen in love with. Along the way, he meets artists, fans, and critics of the kitsch art genre, as well as the mysterious Gauguin-like figure of Charlie McPhee.

Kevin McManus, a man at war with his wife and his life, seeks refuge in the peace of the Christchurch Public Art gallery, but instead is driven to psychic meltdown by the haunting bird-people in Bill Hammond's extraordinary painting The Fall of Icarus. Shaken by his experience, McManus decides to go in search of Hammond's pictures and explanations of them. The artist's unavailability restricts him to questioning and observing those whose lives have also been affected by Hammond's paintings.

One of the few tinted silent films in the Archives New Zealand holdings, this film was part of a series completed by the NZ Government Tourist and Publicity Department. This episode depicts weaving with harakeke and the creation of a piupiu.

This is a portrait of a man and of a country, as he travels through it. He is a travelling salesman, and travels through Switzerland selling cosmetics to beauty parlors.

At the age of 75, Gabriel Pitteloud is one of the few chimney masons who create handcrafted fireplaces in cut stones. For the man who, for 40 years, has been making the stones sing, the profession has distilled into a philosophy of life.

When visionary Jewish immigrant Jacques Bolsey invents the Bolex in the 1920's, he puts the first home movie camera in the hands of everyday folks, fomenting a film revolution that still inspires artists to this day. Nearly a century later, Alyssa Bolsey uncovers his long lost archive and journeys to discover the man behind the machine through his personal and professional struggles.

The work of child psychologist Jean Piaget has been influential in the areas of child development and education. In this film made shortly before his death, he discusses his ideas, attempts to clarify misunderstandings about them, and explains some of his classic experiments with children which are recreated. He also explains his theory of knowledge.

A chef's life is upended when a jet-setting, champagne-sipping, hotel-hopping woman claims to be his long-lost mother. This documentary reveals the untold story.

Dorian Supin’s third documentary film of Arvo Pärt steps closer to the composer, showing him in a domestic setting as a composer, husband, father, and grandfather. The title “Even if I lose everything” refers to an entry in Arvo Pärt’s musical notebooks, which the composer browses in the film, together with Immo Mihkelson. The musings and recollections inspired by the notes in these journals, in parallel with domestic scenes, shed light on the composer’s life and creative philosophy, painting a personal, in-depth picture of Arvo Pärt. The film’s soundtrack includes excerpts from Pärt’s works.

A documentary that pretends to be a fictional film. About the work and the life of a man, a man called Pierre Henry at the beginning of the film and who ends up calling himself "someone".

This film is a journey inside the tradition of bespoke tailoring in the city of Naples. It's a story that wants to celebrates the people and their craft. There are some key words to this documentary: excellence, dignity, beauty, work, elegance, passion. Shots of Naples for connoisseurs.

In a remote village, whose name roughly means "a cold place", this film looks for warmth in encounters. The Ukrainian village of Stuzhytsya is situated in the Carpathian Mountains in the border triangle between Poland and Slovakia. The three elderly female protagonists - a farmer, a post office clerk and a biologist - are firmly rooted in a place where hardly any young people are left in 2019, the year of Zelensky's election victory. Over time, the film crew also becomes, at least temporarily, a valued part of the village community.

"Muras," or "The Heritage," is a short film by Tolomush Okeev.

During World Word II, the difficult construction of a railroad through the Boom ravine at Kant-Rybachie. One of the construction workers then takes a train ride along the road he helped build.

The film was shot between 4 and 7 July 1914 during the Tartu firefighters' anniversary celebrations. We can see the lineup, Russian Orthodox priest blessing the men, Lutheran priest blessing the men, parade, demonstrations, and in the end, a festive dinner.

Though the title of the film has not survived, the title cards have remained intact. The film takes its audience on a tour of the newly built theatre building, designed by Finnish architects Armas Lindgren and Wivi Lönn. The two-winged landmark was built as an opera house and a concert hall. At the end of the film, the actors and actresses of the time are showing off for the cameraman. Whether Johannes Pääsuke is the author of this film is questionable. It is possible the Parikas brothers, photographers from Tallinn, actually shot the film.

In the film, one can see the Czarist town life at its peak. The film, with a positivist take, seems to be shot in the early spring of 1912. One must appreciate the views seen in the film since most of the buildings were either destroyed in the war, demolished, or re-built.

Snow-covered streets in Tartu. Snow removal. Views from a moving train of the snowplows and snow removal.

The White Flower Day in Tartu, organized to support tuberculosis patients, takes place on May 3, 1913 at Raeplats, where white paper daisies that can be pinned to the chest are sold and donations are collected.

Film about historical and architectural monuments. Views of Tartu (ruins of the Cathedral, Inglisild, etc.), Vooremäe hillfort, ruins of Helme, Härgmäe, Karksi castles, Tarvastu church, views of Viljandi (castle ruins, lake), views of Paide (church, castle ruins, etc.), views of Narva (Ivangorod, Puusild, Hermann Castle, Joala waterfall, Kreenholm factory), rafting logs on the Narva River.

With a few exceptions, the film consists of picturesque vistas, as referred to in the title. What brings the snapshots to life is the beauty of nature — the springtime Southern Estonian landscape. The film introduces Vällamägi, Haanja, the 318-metre Munamäe Hill, Lake Vaskna, River Võhandu, and the ruins of the Vastseliina Bishop Castle. The end with the church of Räpina is somewhat out of context.

The film footage consists of three parts: a Farman-type biplane flying in the sky (colored brown 00:28-00:44); a landed biplane from which the pilot and a female passenger climb out (colored brown frames 00:44-01:46); the pilot chatting with journalists and the young lady approaching the biplane (reddish frames 01:46-02:31).

'Journey Through Setomaa' is about the historic Estonian region Setomaa, presently in Põlva and Võru Counties of South Eastern Estonia and Pechorsky District and Pskov Oblast of Russia. The film travels through Petseri Monastery, religious occasions, church in Värska, spring fair, Crucession, Easter customs, crop harvesting in Matsuri, brick factory in Saboldi, Võõpsu hamlet, and seto folk dancing. The piece is considered to be the first Estonian ethnographic film.

Two unemployed friends have a fresh idea: they want to stage Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' in Grand Theft Auto. But even in a virtual world, reality intrudes in a wild and trippy film shot entirely inside the ultra-violent video game.

A denouncing piece that plays with the forms of advertising to denounce the repressive brutality of the Latin American governments but also the inaction of a certain part of the left.

Simple title cards link ten home movies shot at Maine's Windy Ledge Farm, at a neighbor's place, and visiting the Brownes in Chocorua, New Hampshire. We watch an uncle mow, farm hands haying with the White Mountains in the background, various young children playing, a lad holding his cat while carrying milk cans on a yoke, a pointer stalking a cat, the annual burning of brush and rubbish, and a montage of chores and relaxation on the farm. The last shot is of spring, a flag in the background. The films are sweet and straightforward, with clear black and white images.

Handheld skate video meets hardcore social realism in a sensational film with the energy of a three-chord punk song and an unruly group of street kids in front of the camera, shot over 10 wild years of their young lives.

The film is dedicated to the nation’s most revered poet Akaki Tsereteli’s trip to Racha-Lechkhumi in 1912.

A documentary comedy about a couple who figures out their summer plan: biking through France for three months, following the diary of Andrzej Bobkowski, a Polish writer, who did the exact same bike trip back in the 1940’s. They film their research first but end up questioning who they are for each other. Life could be so beautiful if there wouldn’t be fears, wrong expectations, and all kinds of frustrations. A road trip about a couple fighting for who they want to be told with a lot of humor.

Mexico revisited, seen in short takes, from the point of view of the women.

The picture tells about the mass famine that engulfed 35 provinces of Soviet Russia in the early 1920s with a total population of approximately 90 million people. The Volga region, Ukraine, Bashkiria, Kazakhstan and Western Siberia suffered the most. The film tells not only about this disaster and its causes, but also about how citizens of different countries tried to help the hungry.

This polyphonic film by the Belgian film artist about the history of Europe and art is an unforgettable, sensual journey between memory and nightmare. To a meditative, threatening soundtrack, we hear a series of monologues by poets and crazy people, mothers and children. Meanwhile, the image forces the eye to reflect on what and where.

Nothing Like Before delves into the creation of the Clube da Esquina Album (Brazil, 1972). Considered by many music critics one of the best albums of all time, it presented to the world musicians like Milton Nascimento, Lô Borges, Toninho Horta, Beto Guedes and Wagner Tiso.

Wang Bing is chinese and films terrible things such as poverty, injustice, the horror of Maoist repression and does it with empathy and respect . In this portait, facing us and the camera, Wang Bing speaks with us about China and his own cinema.

A confrontation between two church buildings, which could hardly be more different, but also a dialogue between two concepts of church and community: the Protestant Grundtvig’s Church in Copenhagen and the Catholic Cathedral in Orvieto.

Kinshasa and its inhabitants are in darkness. They wait and struggle to get access to light. Between hope, disappointment and religious faith, Tongo Saa is a subtle and fragmented portrait of a population that, despite the challenges, is sublimated by the beauty of Kinshasa's nights.

After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Libuše Jarcovjáková, a young female photographer, strives to break free from the constraints of Czechoslovak normalization and embarks on a wild journey towards freedom, capturing her experiences on thousands of subjective photographs.

An extraordinary journey through the material that makes up our habitat: concrete and its ancestor, stone. Victor Kossakovsky raises a fundamental question: how do we inhabit the world of tomorrow?

Thousands of royal artifacts of Dahomey, a West African kingdom, were taken by French colonists in the 19th century for collection and display in Paris. Centuries later, a fraction returned to their home in modern-day Benin. This dramatized documentary follows the journey of 26 of the treasures as told by cultural art historians, embattled university students, and one of the repatriated statues himself.

Every year in northern Canada, polar bears migrate to Hudson Bay to hunt seals. From October to November, while waiting for the ice pack to form, they take up residence on the outskirts of the town of Churchill. Hunted for a long time and now the stars of safaris, the bears have become a tourist attraction and therefore a considerable source of income for Churchill.

Every Tuesday, Mallarmé received guests, and people flocked to his house to hear him. Renoir, Gide, Claudel, Henri de Régnier, Barrès, Debussy and Valéry were among those who listened to these evenings. In their diaries or correspondence, the American poet Sadakitchi Hartman, Mallarmé's son-in-law Edmond Bonniot, and the French poet Jean de Tinan evoke the Master, standing in front of the tiled stove, recounting repartees, aphorisms, judgements, anecdotes, sentences and memories. A documentary mixing photos, objects, drawings, engravings and real shots attempts to restore the place, the small dining room, its furniture, and the ritual of the evenings with the chairs that are brought in, the punch that is offered, the tobacco that is smoked. Jean-Paul Fargier once again brings together these prestigious listeners in the setting he has reconstructed.

Gagauzia is a region of the most unknown country in Europe, Moldova. A place, most people are eager to leave. Some stay though. Vasili was left behind. His wife went to work in Turkey 6 years ago. Their son Sergei hasn't heard from her ever since. Anna cannot leave behind her past, cannot leave behind her roots. And Manjul never wanted to leave in the first place. He finds freedom in this restricted place.

In the periods 1940-1941 and 1944-1991 Bessarabia was under Soviet occupation. This documentary details the atrocities committed by the communist authorities against the local population.

The documentary Moldova 89-91 presents the thread of events through which the neighboring state gained its independence with the collapse of the USSR. Thus, the film features politicians such as former presidents Mircea Snegur and Vladimir Voronin and former Deputy Prime Minister Iurie Rosca, along with many other witnesses and participants in the events of the formation of the Republic of Moldova as an independent state. And, of course, each of them has its own version of history.

Between the Pyrenees and the Atlantic ocean, there are powerful rivers. But corn fields dry them up, and dams are blocking salmons. Human activity upsets the hydrologic circule, and river's biodiversity.

A flight under Prague’s Railway Bridge in July 1919 and its tragic consequences: the death of the director of the cinematographic department of the YMCA in Prague.

Documentary about repressive violence in colonial Guyana.

Small nightly monochrome silent landscapes to observe and enter another time to feel how everyday transforms through the gaze.

An artistic love ode to the town of Santa Fe in the form of a day in the life of this western art community in its creative heyday. Scenes from a time when Santa Fe still had vestiges of the Old West.

A pack of strays – seven dogs and one woman live in the shadows of Moscow. Hidden from the totalitarian authorities, two species share their existence on the verge of disappearance. They are straying in constant restlessness through a savage landscape where the city is cracking. Shot from the animal’s point of view, patterns of mutual dependence and taming begin to blur.

Berlin and Beirut were occupied, destructed, divided, reconstructed and today people still say "East and West" in both cities. Through the whole film Berlin and Beirut become one city. One space. A space where you feel the weight of the past and the lightness of life sharing with Myrna her stories, adventures and memories.

The fourth part of a series by Indian painter and director Velu Viswanadhan on the elements is a multilayered portrait of his country in images and sounds, without commentary and rich in nuances and metaphors.

Skopje earthquake happened on July 26, 1963, which killed over 1,070 people, injured between 3,000 and 4,000 and left more than 200,000 people homeless. About 80 percent of the city was destroyed.

A 9-year-old Iranian girl plans to sue her parents after their bitter divorce in a lively and bittersweet film directed by her aunt. A lively contribution to the great Iranian tradition of films about the world of children.

In the Darhat valley of northern Mongolia, the horses of the nomadic tribes are disappearing. Bandits are stealing them to sell to Russian abattoirs for just a few rubles. But Shukhert, a crime-fighting Darhat horseman, is relentlessly pursuing them to the Taiga mountain range of Mongolia, on the border with Siberia.

"What are you fighting for?" Armed simply with this question, Arthur MacCaig goes to Northern Ireland to confront Irish Republicans. The result is an inside look at the ghettos of Belfast. The Jackets' Green calls no one to arms, but offers simple portraits of a few men and women most often represented as fanatical zealots. As they speak candidly about their cause, it becomes difficult to continue branding them as "terrorists."

A short film by the Manaki brothers that documents the celebration of Epiphany in Bitola.

A short film by the Manaki brothers which documents a Wedding in Bitola.

A short film by the Manaki brothers which documents a celebration with slogans in Greek.

In 1975 French Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Pierre Dominique Gaisseau traveled to Panama to make a film on the indigenous island-dwelling Kuna people. Accompanied by his wife and their daughter, Gaisseau lived with the Kuna for a year, gaining their trust and filming their most intimate ceremonies. He promised to share the resulting film with the community, but that never happened. Fifty years later, the Kunas are still waiting to discover “their” film, now a legend passed down from the elders to the new generation. One day, a hidden copy is found in Paris…

Parisian taxi drivers Ahmed, Jean Jacques, and Madame Tang document La Base - a gigantic transit hub isolated on the outskirts of Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport - reappropriated by the drivers to become a rich microcosm of community life, a refuge facing the decline of their trade and the fast-changing world.

David Brinkley hosts this shattering two-hour documentary about the trial of the man whose role in deporting the Jews of Europe for extermination made him the target of a 15-year manhunt by Israeli agents. Rare videotapes of the trial, exclusive interviews with courtroom witnesses, prosecutors, and others recount the emotionally explosive proceedings.

Details the history of the of post-war Japanese Marxist radicals and the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s.

Many years ago an old woman in a village decided to transform her house into The Museum of Antiquities of All Species. She lives in her museum surrounded by the fantastic world she created with her writings, her creations and imaginations.

The footage of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein crawling out of a hole in the ground in 2003 is iconic. Now, 20 years later, the man who dug that hole tells the fantastical story of how he, an ordinary farmer, hid the deposed president beneath a flowerbed in his garden for eight months. On camera, he talks about the day his house was selected as a hideaway for this wanted man, hunted by 150,000 US soldiers. The Iraqi farmer had no choice but to assume the role of presidential hairdresser, physician and bodyguard—and something akin to a friendship seems to have grown between them as they ate together and helped wash each other’s backs.

Nobuyoshi Kikuchi has devoted his life to books. Over the course of his career, he has designed more than 15,000 book covers. Even in the digital age, he still works with a ruler, scissors, and pencils, creating unique fonts, and being meticulous about the properties of the chosen paper. He enjoys the personal exchange with authors, a good cup of coffee, and a stroll through the flea market. Nanako Hirose presents a fascinating portrait of a seemingly old-fashioned personality – but maybe it is exactly this kind of personality which can give an inspiration to reflect on the really valuable things in life?

Short film about the upgrades and technological improvements on the British railways.

Documentary about the golden generation of Romanian football and its achievements, especially at the 1994 world cup.

A man forms an unlikely friendship with a wild otter while living in the remote Shetland Islands.

While her father was in his deathbed, she and her nieces were playing in the rain.

Iwate Prefecture, Ohasamacho. In the foothills of Mt. Hayachine, the kagura (devotional dance) offered to the mountain goddess by the mountain priests is still performed today nearly unchanged from mediaeval times. This dance, which has been handed down along several lines of succession in the villages of Take and Otsugunai, has its origins in prayer. Take’s kagura and Otsugunai’s kagura are said to be closely related. The film shows the people who lovingly continue to perform these two types of dance and the transition from ancient tradition to modern life. Even from the first moment that director Haneda was charmed by Hayachine’s kagura, the mountain villages that were home to the gods had already begun to disappear

A documentary film about the leader of the band "Зоопарк" (Zoo Park) Mike Naumenko.

From different places in Peru, a group of ancient operators prepare the projection of a movie in which they themselves are the protagonists: former operators, ticket takers and administrators will reveal their most intimate and unforgettable experiences linked to the old cinemas that they grew old with them.

From Venice to Illiers, a journey into the memory of Proust. Freely intersperses documentary language with fiction, embodied in the figure of a visitor in search of the places and faces that Proust loved, from the Illiers-Combray of his childhood to the longed-for Venice that he never got to know.

Belgradian parades and everyday street scenes.

Horror in the Andes is a behind-the-scenes documentary that follows the process of making a horror movie in Ayacucho, Peru. Directed by audio-visual anthropologist Martha-Cecilia Dietrich, it explores how Andean filmmakers use the horror genre as a means to revive stories of a pre-colonial past. Appropriating a global cinematic language to tell local (hi)stories, Horror in the Andes pays testament to the craft of filmmaking and its community.