"Why films endure, Why films perish. How Satyajit Ray's films did both."30 August 2003Factual70 mins
Satyajit Ray’s masterpiece the Apu Trilogy is widely considered one of the most important works in cinema history. In 1992, Ray was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Oscar. But when film-preservationist David Sheppard volunteered to go to Bengal, he found the original negatives in a terrible state. “It’s hard to think of another world-class filmmaker”, says Sheppard, “whose oeuvre hangs by such a thin thread!” The Song of the Little Road tells the story of how a master’s body of work came so close to disintegration, and why Ray’s films move audiences so deeply across time and cultural boundaries. Three icons – director Martin Scorsese, producer Ismail Merchant, and music composer Ravi Shankar – illustrate stirringly what makes a masterpiece.
In 1999, 11-year-old Nisha Platzer lost her older brother, Josh, to suicide. Twenty years later, her search for a specialized medical treatment leads her to the door of someone who was once exceptionally close to Josh.
Timo Novotny labels his new project an experimental music documentary film, in a remix of the celebrated film Megacities (1997), a visually refined essay on the hidden faces of several world "megacities" by leading Austrian documentarist Michael Glawogger.
Documentary Sublime Thirst looks at the paradox of scarcity and lack in nature and human fulfilment. A team of philosophers, physicists, theologians, anthropologists, psychologists and economists reveal lack as a universal code of being, the 'perpetuum mobile' behind everything in our universe.
Art historians and critics talk with Philip Guston about his ideas and new work of the 1970's. Filmed during the making of "Philip Guston: A Life Lived.
Young, inexperienced heroes, the Roma girl Darja and the "white" boy Vítek, nicknamed Ken by his friends, fall in love at a drunken dance with the intensity of their first adolescent love, unaware of the world they live in and how a mere name or skin color can arouse hatred and a desire for revenge in others.
A small town is overrun by ankle-biting-blood-sucking DWARF Vampires. Things get complicated when the vertically-challenged coffin-creepers get their itty-bitty hands on a sword with the blood of the last slain Tall Vampire.
A satire about the dictatorship period in Brazil, in which communist militants try to steal the soccer World Cup Trophy from the players Pelé and Carlos Alberto Torres.
In Santiago, Chile, the schoolteacher Luisa proposes a debate about sex with the parents of her students with the intention of giving classes about sex education to the youngsters.
Spike Lee's filmmaking career is examined in this partial making-of for the film 25th Hour (2002). Interviews with cast members from this film and his past successes give us an idea what kind of dedicated person he truly is.
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Have you watched The Song of the Little Road yet? What did you think about it?
