The Golden Years

Modernism, Inc.: The Eliot Noyes Design Story

The life and work of influential mid-century architect and designer Eliot Noyes, who is best remembered as the man behind IBM's landmark design program in the 1950s and 1960s.

Objectified

A feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them.

A Trip to Paramountown

Documentary short film depicting the filmmaking activity at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood, featuring dozens of stars captured candidly and at work.

Our Holiday

This short compilation film not only celebrates Czechoslovakia’s most beautiful holiday resorts, but also emphasises the greater availability of local recreational sojourns in the new socialist order. It portrays touring as an ideal way of spending a holiday in the home country.

Personalities

In this "Romance of Celluloid", MGM showcases performers whose careers are just starting. Excerpts from their recently released films are included. The narrator says that moviegoers will have to decide whether these fledgling actors and actresses have that certain quality that made superstars out of MGM players Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and Lana Turner.

Day Job

An animated documentary that follows the lives of the over-qualified young staff of a local bowling alley.

Strike: The Greatest Bowling Story Ever Told

Bill Fong is passionate about bowling. When he's not working at the bowling shop he's studying YouTube videos, playing 20 games a week as a member of four active leagues, and memorizing the characteristics of each of the 48 lanes at his regular bowling alley. Yet despite all of Bill's determination, he has yet to achieve his dream of going pro. One seeming ordinary night all may change for this underdog as Fong begins to get strike after strike, nearing the ever elusive 'perfect series,' a feat only achieved 21 times since 1895. The achievement would be historical, the first for Texas and the first by an Asian-American. A perfect series could be just the thing to launch Bill into the pros but will he be able to make it or buckle under the pressure?

The Hollywood You Never See

The making of Cleopatra (1934), showing pre-production, DeMille directing a scene, and the addition of music to the soundtrack.

Céline Dion – Céline Parle D'elle(s)

Grand Prix: Challenge of the Champions

A short making of feature about the 1966 John Frankenheimer movie Grande Prix

ABBA-dabba-doo

This first documentary about the pop group ABBA was made around the time of the release of their fourth album 'Arrival'. It contains unique archive footage filmed at the secret location where they made the record, concert footage, specially made promotional videos, photos from the group members' private collection and interviews in Swedish with each of them: Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. Stig was also interviewed briefly and was shown playing and singing part of Tivedshambo on acoustic guitar.

The Song of Styrene

Le chant du Styrène is a 1958 French documentary film directed by Alain Resnais. The film was an order by French industrial group Pechiney to highlight the merits of plastics.

Pour bien filmer

Promotional short film to reveal the potential of the new Paillard-Bolex camera.

American Maker

Portrays all Americans as makers, with a rich tradition of pride in workmanship and satisfaction of needs.

Rams

For over fifty years, legendary designer Dieter Rams has left an indelible mark on the field of product design with his iconic work at Braun and Vitsoe, and his influence on Apple. So at 86 years old, why does he now regret being a designer? This is a design documentary, but it’s also a rumination on consumerism, materialism, and sustainability. Dieter's philosophy is about more than just design, it’s about a way to live.

R.F.D. Greenwich Village

A look at Greenwich Village, produced by the Cotton Producers Institute.

Bowlingtreff

The “Bowlingtreff” is a bowling alley situated right in the centre of Leipzig opened in July 1987. At that time the quality of life in Leipzig and the whole GDR got worse. Houses collapsed because of poor conditions, public life and amusement was on a very low level. The “Bowlingtreff” was not merely an urban entertainment centre but a revolution in those days. Built with the help of hundreds of volunteers without permission of the state authorities in Berlin the building expresses a free and international architecture known as postmodernism. It is an architecture that was never seen before in Leipzig. Marble and parquet on the floor, a glass roof and beautiful pink pillars. The atmosphere was western as time witnesses remember it.

Fashion Horizons

Combines airplane trips and fashion. Heavy on the fashion.

New York to Berlin in Twenty-Six Hours

Promotional film about Lockheed aircraft using test pilots and speed records to show how Lockheed was at the forefront of aviation technology during the 1930's and 1940's. Famous pilots including the Wright Brothers, Amelia Earhart, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Lindbergh and Howard Hughes are shown along with the latest aircraft designs such as the P-38 fighter.

Mawson: Life and Death in Antarctica

The Douglas Mawson Antarctic Expedition of 1912 is considered one of the most amazing feats of endurance of all time. Although his two companions perished, Douglas Mawson survived, but how? In a bold historical experiment, scientist and adventurer Tim Jarvis is retracing the gruelling experience, with the same meagre rations, primitive clothing and equipment to uncover what happened to Mawson physically — and mentally — as a man hanging on the precipice of life and death.