Movies: Observational cinema

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and...

Paris, summer 1960. Anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch and sociologist and film critic Edgar Morin wander through the crowded streets asking passersby how they cope with life's misfortunes....

"In Chile, when the sun rises, it had to climb hills, walls and tops before reaching the last stone of the Cordillera. In my country, the Cordillera is everywhere. But for the Chilean citizens, it is an unknown territory. After going North for Nostal...

“Olive” is a short documentary that follows Olive Hagemeier, an energetic woman, on her daily routine of salvaging, repackaging and redistributing food, and occasional other types of “waste”, across Atlanta, GA. Presented in a quiet observational sty...

A quasi-documentary look at how certain things fit together. This film embraces an unhurried tempo....

Nai Nai follows the story of a Chinese immigrant grandmother, Chu-Ming Wu. Known as “Nai Nai,” Chu-Ming has always been a woman of control. But her grasp of reality and the control of her own mind is slipping away. Told through the lens of her grands...

Nearly thirty years after making his surrealist La Formula Secreta, director Rubén Gámez returned to filmmaking with this impressionistic portrait of modern-day Mexico. Reminiscent in some ways of Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi, Tequila appears to be...

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The personal collaboration between Kiran Acharya and Clint Mansell is an early combination of documentary film and augmented reality....

The diary of Takuya Ogushi, a 18 years old Japanese, who begins his new life as a sumo wrestler....

Rolling along on a bike or floating in a doctor’s office’s seasonal hamster display, Wheel Music explores the aesthetic feeling and social character of Sendagi, an old town in Tokyo under urban development in preparation for the planned Tokyo 2020 Su...

Sean Dunne's observational documentary of a 2016 Donald Trump Rally....

A woman meditates on her life in an 80-minute unbroken zoom shot....

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A five-year visual ethnography of traditional yet practical orchestration of Semana Santa in a small town where religious woodcarving is the livelihood. An experiential film on neocolonial Philippines’ interpretation of Saints and Gods through many f...

Tibetan Buddhist search for the meaning of death in an unforgiving Himalayan landscape and stir compassion by uncovering human truths...

Reya’s World delves into the raw and poignant struggle of a young woman navigating the depths of depression. Feeling trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of isolation, Reya finds solace and gradual healing through small moments of self-connection and...

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What does it mean to belong to a place, a country? In a south Tel Aviv elementary school, that question is addressed head-on by a fourth-grade class and their teacher. The children are asylum seekers whose families mostly do not have a legal status i...