
Anniversary of the Revolution (1918)
A chronicle of the Russian Revolution of 1917, from the bourgeois democratic February Revolution to the great socialist October Revolution and the final triumph.
A chronicle of the Russian Revolution of 1917, from the bourgeois democratic February Revolution to the great socialist October Revolution and the final triumph.
A regiment of soldiers demonstrate their skills.
The 1900 Paris World's Fair as seen from Trocadéro.
A moustachioed Frenchman presents his performing cats.
Workmen fix a walkway with bitumen.
A view of Piccadilly Circus in London.
Praised for its fine photography and production design if not its narrative, Sergei Bondarchuk directed this adaptation of the tale by Alexander Pushkin. Boris Godunov came to the Czarist throne at the end of the 16th century, after the original heir to Ivan the Terrible had died. At first, things went well for Godunov (played by Bondarchuk), but when the Russian people began to believe he had killed Ivan the Terrible's son in order to gain the throne, an alliance sprang up against the new Czar. Events continued to spin out of control as a young monk was presented as the son Godunov had supposedly killed. Now he was openly accused of failing an assassination attempt, which seems to be even worse than succeeding. In addition to these woes, Boris Godunov began to suffer serious health problems. So much for the joys of kingship.
On September 6, 2017, the Catalan regional government called an independence referendum. This propagandistic documentary by the Catalan government collects the experiences of an illegal referendum that led to the virtual independence of Spanish territory and the biggest constitutional crisis in Spain since 1981
Filmmaker Lech Kowalski explores his belief that struggle is "the epitome of living" in this documentary which compares the wildly different life experiences of himself and his mother. Kowalski's mother came of age in Poland during the early stages of World War II, and after failed attempts to outrun both Nazi and Russian forces she and her family were sent to a Soviet concentration camp, where inmates were tortured, mistreated, and starved to the point where some ate their own lice in a desperate struggle to survive. Kowalski also depicts his own self-inflicted season in hell during his years on the New York City punk rock scene as he wallowed in the sordid underbelly of drug addiction, pornography, prostitution, and streetwise decadence. On both stories, Kowalski finds a message of hope and strength in the midst of almost certain peril.
The King tosses Rosita in jail and when Don Diego, who Rosita loves, tries to defend her, he too is thrown in jail. While Don Diego is sentenced to be executed, the King lusts after Rosita and decides to put her up in a luxurious villa. To give her a title, he marries her to a masked nobleman, who turns out to be Don Diego.
The titles tell us this film is based on an incident in the Boxer Rebellion. A man tries to defend a woman and a large house against Chinese attackers. They attack with swords, guns, and paddles. He's over-matched. What will become of the mission, its defenders, and its occupants?
Shows a tramp enter and try to ride a wheel, from which he makes some very ludicrous falls and gives up in despair, after which an artist enters and jumps rope on a wheel. A very laughable subject.
Peter Batty presents a gripping account of the bloodshed and horror of the American Civil War. From the origins of the unrest between North and South, the specific events of the war and the eventual assassination of Abraham Lincoln, this program is a powerful, comprehensive account of the American Civil War with large scale battle re-enactments, superb contemporary photographs and period music.
Performed by Constance Smith, Pauline Cushman-Fryer tells us how she became a Union Spy, was almost hanged, was granted the rank of Major by Abraham Lincoln, and died lonely in San Francisco from an overdose of opium.
Consisting of a single shot, Spiders on a Web is one of the earliest British examples of close-up natural history photography. Made by one of the pioneers of the British film industry, G.A. Smith, this short film details spiders trapped in an enclosure, and despite the title, does not actually feature a web.
Madame Ondine performs a serpentine dance surrounded by big cats.
Propped upon the tail-end of a match, a housefly performs astonishing feats, alternately juggling a series of objects - a blade of grass, a cork, a miniature dumbbell… Most extraordinary of all is the sequence in which the fly spins a ball twice its own size, while a second fly perches on top. In the final sequence, the fly repeats some of its earlier tricks while apparently seated on a tiny chair.
Footage shot not long after the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco is edited together so that more than one scene and more than one vantage are included. We see fire raging. We see burned-out buildings, piles of rubble, and buildings with only one wall standing. People stand and watch; others walk purposely through the debris. A carriage passes; the camera pans the desolation. A horse-drawn cart is laden with a family's remaining possessions. A sign hangs outside one building: "A little disfigured but still in business. Men Wanted."
The film opens on a dressing room set with a mirror, dressing table, and chair center stage and a folded dressing screen on the left. A smiling, dark-haired woman enters through the door on stage right, unbuttoning a full-length polka-dot costume. As she undresses, she frequently looks directly at the camera and smiles. She removes her sash or cummerbund, the top with its trailing sleeves, and her skirt, leaving her clothed only in a sleeveless chemise. Smiling directly at the camera, she mischievously slips a strap of the garment off one shoulder, then ducks behind the screen.
Two girls do one of their chores. Standing alongside a tree-lined farmhouse, two children who are about ten and four years old toss grain to a flock of about 50 domesticated ducks. A woman watches them briefly and then moves on. The older girl has her grain in a bucket, the younger one's grain is in her apron. The children stay in one spot, as does the camera; it's the ducks that move around. Chickens are in the background; only one braves the ducks' territory.
A stationary camera looks across a busy corner toward a store front marked "The Divan." The words "des fees" are beneath. A cortege of Arabs, about 20 persons in the party, walk past; the dignitaries are in front, attended by men with horns and drums. Coming in the other direction are local Swiss, who pay little attention, and a group of native-garbed Africans. The dozen or so well-dressed denizens of Geneva who are sitting on the steps of the Divan take it all in.