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Non-Fiction Film
Short Films

Screening on Film
  • A propos de Nice

    Directed by Jean Vigo.
    France, 1929-30, 16mm, black & white, silent, 23 min.

Vigo’s poignant view of the city of Nice is a creative "document" in the style of Dziga Vertov, and was in fact shot by Vertov’s brother, cameraman Boris Kaufman. The film rests mainly on the contrast between the idlers sprawled out in the sun, enjoying the luxuries of the hotels and casinos, and the poor sections of the old town.

  • Land Without Bread (Las Hurdes)

    Directed by Luis Buñuel.
    Spain, 1932, 16mm, black & white, 27 min.
    Spanish with English subtitles.

Buñuel’s documentary marks a shift from the surrealism of his early films to the direct engagement with reality of his later work. An account of the monstrous living conditions in the poorest district of northern Spain, "Las Hurdes," the film juxtaposes images of human degradation with matter-of-fact, travelogue-style commentary written by the poet Pierre Unik. The work was banned by the Spanish government.

  • Blood of the Beasts (Le sang des bêtes)

    Directed by Georges Franju.
    France, 1949, 16mm, black & white, 22 min.
    French with English subtitles.

One of France’s most important documentary filmmakers, Georges Franju established an international reputation with this poetic portrait of the slaughterhouse of La Vilette in Paris. The work of the abattoir is depicted with painful directness, in stark contrast to the calm domesticity of the surrounding Parisian suburb. In attempting "to restore to documentary reality its appearance of artifice," he created a classic postwar document whose forcefulness and poetry remain undiminished today.

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Non-Fiction Film

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sepia photo of Artie Freedman in silhouette with a video camera at show

Boston Punk Rewound / Unbound. The Arthur Freedman Collection

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The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

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From the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection

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a mausoleum that looks like a miniature Spanish cathedral, next to a variety of others, against an evening sky

The Night Watchman by Natalia Almada

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a double-exposed image that includes a 16th century Russian man being fed grapes by another amid decadent decor

Wings of a Serf

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a close-up of a Bissau-Guinean woman wearing a scarf on her head and looking directly at the camera with a slight smile

Le Dépays + Sans soleil

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Peter Sellers wearing a large hat with "ME" embroidered on it, and gripping a Pilgrim-like collar

Carol for Another Christmas