Chaplin Today: Limelight (2003)
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While silent-film star Charlie Chaplin may have charmed American audiences with the onscreen antics of his lovable "Tramp" character, the actor's private life was marred by a series of public scandals that eventually pushed him into exile. In addition to his penchant for much younger women, Chaplin was unjustly hounded by Senator Joe McCarthy's notorious anti-Communist witch hunts, for which the U.S. revoked his visa in 1952. A bitter and disenchanted Chaplin responded by moving his family to Switzerland, where he remained until his death in 1977. This documentary chronicles Chaplin's life and career during those so-called "forgotten years" (during which he became a prolific and highly respected film-score composer) through previously unreleased archival footage and intimate interviews with his friends and family, including his children Geraldine, Michael, and Eugene.
A chronicle of the production problems â including bad weather, actors' health, war near the filming locations, and more â which plagued the filming of Apocalypse Now, increasing costs and nearly destroying the life and career of Francis Ford Coppola.
Brilliant, long in-the-works story of the life and art of the world's greatest comedian and the cinema's first genius, Charlie Chaplin. Produced, written and directed by renowned film critic Richard Schickel.
AMERICAN MOVIE is the story of filmmaker Mark Borchardt, his mission, and his dream. Spanning over two years of intense struggle with his film, his family, financial decline, and spiritual crisis, AMERICAN MOVIE is a portrayal of ambition, obsession, excess, and one man's quest for the American Dream.
The Go-Go Boys tells the inside story of two Israeli-born cousins, the late Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who in pursuit of the âAmerican dreamâ turned the Hollywood establishment upside down. Together they produced more than 300 films and founded the most powerful independent film company in the world, Cannon Films, which was responsible for Israeli and mainstream, Hollywood-blockbuster, action/exploitation hits during the duoâs 1980s hey day, starring the likes of Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Charles Bronson. Up close and personal, and with the complete cooperation of the filmâs subjects, the film examines the complex relationship between two contradictory personalities, whose combined force fueled their successes and eventual split. A film about filmmaking and two dogged, exceptional characters with modest origins taking on the big boys.
This historical and critical look at slasher films, which includes dozens of clips, begins with "Halloween," "Friday the 13th," and "Prom Night." The films' directors, writers, producers, and special effects creators comment on the films' making and success. During the Reagan years, the films get gorier, budgets get smaller, and their appeal wanes. Then, "Nightmare on Elm Street" revives the genre. Jump to the late 90s, when "Scream" brings humor and TV stars into the mix. Although some criticize the genre as misogynistic (Siskel and Ebert), most of the talking heads celebrate the films: as long as there are teenagers, there will be slasher films, says one.
Explores the making of Charles Chaplin's first "talkie" Diktatorn (1940) and draws many things that between Chaplin and Hitler had in common. The film contains colour home movie footage of the film's production which where shot by Charles' brother Sydney. These never before seen films were discovered by his daughter Victoria while looking though an old suitcase she found in the basement. The raw footage gives us an alternate insight to Chaplin's classic film which started production years before Adolf Hitler was seen as a major threat in the western world.
The film offers a comprehensive examination of the exploitation of animals in modern society.
Since the invention of cinema, the standard format for recording moving images has been film. Over the past two decades, a new form of digital filmmaking has emerged, creating a groundbreaking evolution in the medium. Keanu Reeves explores the development of cinema and the impact of digital filmmaking via in-depth interviews with Hollywood masters, such as James Cameron, David Fincher, David Lynch, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Steven Soderbergh, and many more.
A documentary series examining the film making methods and techniques of Charles Chaplin. Featuring previously unseen footage from Chaplin's private film archive.
Documentary about the early career of Charlie Chaplin.
Kirby Dick's provocative documentary investigates the secretive and inconsistent process by which the Motion Picture Association of America rates films, revealing the organization's underhanded efforts to control culture. Dick questions whether certain studios get preferential treatment and exposes the discrepancies in how the MPAA views sex and violence.
A feature documentary on formative personal and professional experiences in the life of writer J.D. Salinger
Documentary about the National Film Registry, featuring clips of films that have been included in the registry, as well as interviews with members of the National Film Registry Board.
Yael Hersonski's powerful documentary achieves a remarkable feat through its penetrating look at another film-the now-infamous Nazi-produced film about the Warsaw Ghetto. Discovered after the war, the unfinished work, with no soundtrack, quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record, despite its elaborate propagandistic construction. The later discovery of a long-missing reel complicated earlier readings, showing the manipulations of camera crews in these "everyday" scenes. Well-heeled Jews attending elegant dinners and theatricals (while callously stepping over the dead bodies of compatriots) now appeared as unwilling, but complicit, actors, alternately fearful and in denial of their looming fate.
The Death of 'Superman Lives': What Happened? feature film documents the process of development of the ill fated "Superman Lives" movie, that was to be directed by Tim Burton and star Nicolas Cage as the man of steel himself, Superman. The project went through years of development before the plug was pulled, and this documentary interviews the major players: Kevin Smith, Tim Burton, Jon Peters, Dan Gilroy, Colleen Atwood, Lorenzo di Bonaventura and many many more.
This dryly funny mockumentary about the lost work of a pioneering New Zealand film genius is probably one of the best examples of the faux-documentary genre. In fact, it was so successful that when it originally aired on New Zealand television, hundreds of viewers bought the premise hook, line, and sinker. If you didn't know any better yourself, it's entirely possible you might be duped into believing the extremely tall tale of one Colin MacKenzie, an ambitious filmmaker who made the world's first talking movie (years before The Jazz Singer), invented color film, and created a huge biblical epic that would put Cecil B. DeMille and D.W. Griffith to shame. Filmmaker Peter Jackson (Heavenly Creatures) shrewdly inserts himself into the film via his documentation of the "discovery" of McKenzie's lost epic, which for years was preserved in a garden shed.
"Touring makes you crazy," Frank Zappa says, explaining that the idea for this film came to him while the Mothers of Invention were touring. The story, interspersed with performances by the Mothers and the Royal Symphony Orchestra, is a tale of life on the road. The band members' main concerns are the search for groupies and the desire to get paid.
The American comedian/actor delivers a story about the alternative Hip Hop scene. A small town Ohio manâs moves to Brooklyn, New York, to throw an unprecedented block party. Filmed with inspiration from the 1973 documentary Wattstax.
Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus were two movie-obsessed cousins from Israel who became Hollywoodâs ultimate gate-crashers. Following their own skewed version of the Great American Dream, they bought an already low-rent brand â Cannon Films â and ratcheted up its production to become so synonymous with schlock that the very sight of its iconic logo made audiences boo throughout the 1980s. And yet who could have foreseen how close they came to nearly taking over Hollywood and the UK film industry?
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The Jews of Poland (invaded by Germany in 1939) are depicted as filthy, evil, corrupt, and intent on world domination. Street scenes are shown prejudicially, along with clips from Jewish cinema of the day and photos of Jewish celebrities, while the narrator "explains" the Jewish problem. The climax and resolution of the film is Hitler's 1939 announcement that the Jewish race will meet its "annihilation" (Vernichtung).
The Los Angeles punk music scene circa 1980 is the focus of this film. With Alice Bag Band, Black Flag, Catholic Discipline, Circle Jerks, Fear, Germs, and X.
In this crazy, chaotic gospel of chance, aspiring filmmakers Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert set out to search for a subject for their underground movie, leading them to discover, mentor, and manage the iconic band known as The Who and create rock 'n' roll history.
âIâm mad as hell, and Iâm not going to take it anymore!â Who among us has not wanted to open their window and shout that at the top of their lungs? Seriously, who? Because weâre looking for those people. Weâre looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldnât be the only ones that get heard; and who believe that the only time itâs appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on someone is when that person is actually Hitler. Or Charlie Chaplin in certain roles.
A documentary on Woody Allen that trails him on his movie sets and follows him back to Brooklyn as he visits his childhood haunts.
Documentary film that examines the rise and fall of the Third Reich, incorporating puppetry, rear-screen projection, and a Wagnerian score into a singular epic vision. The director, who grew up under Nazi tyranny, ruminates on good and evil and the rest of humanity's complicity in the horrors of the holocaust.
Conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton were once the cream of the sideshow crop. Taught to sing and dance at an early age, the winsome duo ascended through the early 20th-century vaudeville circuit as a side attraction (working alongside Bob Hope and Charlie Chaplin as well as a memorable turn in the Tod Browning classic "Freaks") before a cascade of unscrupulous management and harsh mistreatment brought their careers (and lives) tumbling down. This engrossing glimpse into a bygone era is filled with fascinating interviews and rare archival footage.
In this fascinating Oscar-nominated documentary, American guitarist Ry Cooder brings together a group of legendary Cuban folk musicians (some in their 90s) to record a Grammy-winning CD in their native city of Havana. The result is a spectacular compilation of concert footage from the group's gigs in Amsterdam and New York City's famed Carnegie Hall, with director Wim Wenders capturing not only the music -- but also the musicians' life stories.
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Chaar Sahibzaade is the first photo realistic' 3D animation film in S-3D on Sikh history. It is the real story of the sacrifices of the four sons of Guru Gobind Singh ji (tenth guru of Sikhs)- Baba Ajit Singh ji, Baba Jujhar Singh ji, Baba Zorawar Singh ji and Baba Fateh Singh ji.
A documentary about the White family of Boone County, West Virginia. The 1991 documentary The Dancing Outlaw focused on Jesco White, a famous mountain dancer. This film focuses on the other members of his family.
This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life eventâthe arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbafâas the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves.
About a filmmaker not only revisiting, but also recreating (not in a conventional sense) one of his first films, The Perfect Human / Det perfekte menneske (1967)
A compilation of trailers and scenes from crime, horror and sci-fi films.
Matthew Sweet explores his rules of 1940s and 50s American film noir thrillers: *Choose a dame with no past and a hero with no future *Use no fiction but pulp fiction *See America through a stranger's eyes *Make it any colour as long as it's black *It ain't what you say, it's the way that you say it.
Documentary on the director's meeting with Castro.
One of the most ambitious and exciting theories ever proposedâone that may be the long-sought "theory of everything," which eluded even Einsteinâgets a masterful, lavishly computer-animated explanation from bestselling author-physicist Brian Greene, when NOVA presents the nuts, bolts, and sometimes outright nuttiness of string theory.
Werner Herzogâs documentary film about the âGrizzly Manâ Timothy Treadwell and what the thirteen summers in a National Park in Alaska were like in one manâs attempt to protect the grizzly bears. The film is full of unique images and a look into the spirit of a man who sacrificed himself for nature.
Aspiring filmmakers Mel Funn, Marty Eggs and Dom Bell go to a financially troubled studio with an idea for a silent movie. In an effort to make the movie more marketable, they attempt to recruit a number of big name stars to appear, while the studio's creditors attempt to thwart them. The film contains only one word of dialogue, spoken by an unlikely source.
Vietnam veteran "Four Leaf" Tayback's memoir, Tropic Thunder, is being made into a film. Director Damien Cockburn canât control the cast of prima donnas. Behind schedule and over budget, Cockburn is ordered by a studio executive to get filming back on track, or risk its cancellation. On Tayback's advice, Cockburn drops the actors into the middle of the jungle to film the remaining scenes. Unbeknownst to the actors and production, the group have been dropped in the middle of the Golden Triangle, the home of heroin-producing gangs.
A film about the troubled and controversial life of the master comedy filmmaker.
In October of 1994 three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary. A year later their footage was found.
In Paris, a young American who works as a Michael Jackson lookalike meets Marilyn Monroe, who invites him to her commune in Scotland, where she lives with Charlie Chaplin and her daughter, Shirley Temple.
A quirk in time and space gives a failed filmmaker the chance to reshape his destiny when he visits his peculiar alma mater.
A Russian countess stows away in the stateroom of a married U.S. diplomat bound for New York.
Milos, a retired porn star, leads a normal family life trying to make ends meet. Presented with the opportunity of a lifetime to financially support his family for the rest of their lives, Milos must participate in one last mysterious film. From then on, Milos is drawn into a maelstrom of unbelievable cruelty and mayhem.
City Lights is the first silent film that Charlie Chaplin directed after he established himself with sound accompanied films. The film is about a penniless man who falls in love with a flower girl. The film was a great success and today is deemed a cult classic.
Due to a revolution in his country, King Shahdov comes to New York - almost broke. To get some money he goes to TV, making commercials and meets the child from communist parents. Due to this he is suddenly a suspected as a communist himself and has to face one of McCarthy's hearings.
Considered one of Charlie Chaplin's best films, The Kid also made a star of little Jackie Coogan, who plays a boy cared for by The Tramp when he's abandoned by his mother, Edna. Later, Edna has a change of heart and aches to be reunited with her son. When she finds him and wrests him from The Tramp, it makes for what turns out be one of the most heart-wrenching scenes ever included in a comedy.
A criminal duo learns of Charlie Chaplin's death and decides to steal his coffin to hold for a ransom.
Two years after the terrifying events that occurred in Woodsboro, Sidney is now attending Windsor College in Cincinnati with long time friend Randy. Meanwhile, Gale Weathers best selling book on Sidney's life has now been made into a major motion picture. When two college students are killed in a theatre while watching the new film "Stab," Sidney knows deep down that history is repeating itself.
Charlie, a wandering tramp, becomes a circus handyman and falls in love with the circus owner's daughter. Unaware of Charlie's affection, the girl falls in love with a handsome young performer. Charlie's versatility makes him star of the show when he substitutes for an ailing tightwire walker. He is discharged from the company when he protects the girl from her father's abuse, but he returns and appeals to the handsome performer to marry the girl. After the wedding the father prevails upon them to rejoin the circus. Charlie is hired again, but he stays behind when the caravan moves on.
A clerical mistake results in a bumbling film extra being invited to an exclusive Hollywood party instead of being fired.
Semi-true story of the Hollywood murder that occurred at a star-studded gathering aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht in 1924.
A group of POWs in a German prison camp during World War II play the German National Soccer Team in this powerful film depicting the role of prisoners during wartime.
Chaplin plays two totally opposite roles in his first "talkie," giving a superb display of his boundless talent for both inspired comedy and powerful drama. One of his masterfully drawn characters is a Jewish barber facing the constant threat of storm troopers and religious persecution. The other is the great dictator, Hynkel, a brilliant lampoon of Adolph Hitler that is awesome proof of Chaplin's pantomime genius. The movie's famous highlight comes in its final scene, when Chaplin steps out of character and addresses the camera with an eloquent plea for the triumph of reason and humanity over mindless militarism.
Two actors, as their make up is applied, talk about the size of their parts. Then into the film: Laurence Sterne's unfilmable novel, Tristram Shandy, a fictive autobiography wherein the narrator, interrupted constantly, takes the entire story to be born. The film tracks between "Shandy" and behind the scenes. Size matters: parts, egos, shoes, noses. The lead's girlfriend, with their infant son, is up from London for the night, wanting sex; interruptions are constant. Scenes are shot, re-shot, and discarded. The purpose of the project is elusive. Fathers and sons; men and women; cocks and bulls. Life is amorphous, too full and too rich to be captured in one narrative.
The Tramp struggles to live in modern industrial society with the help of a young homeless woman.
The mostly true story of the legendary "worst director of all time", who, with the help of his strange friends, filmed countless B-movies without ever becoming famous or successful.
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