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Sweden: Heaven and Hell
🇸🇪 Sweden The 1960sSweden... where the facts of life are stranger than fiction! — Nine scenes about sexuality and morals in Sweden in the late sixties.
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Both a documentary and a comedy. It features a man on a canoe tour of the Great Lakes while the geological time frame changes around him. He finds himself atop the great glacier, and then suddenly falling from the sky as it is removed. His canoe teeters from a cliff after the shoreline vanishes. He sips pure water from the lake as it suddenly changes to a modern polluted state. Written by Andrew Baird-Kerr
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Revolution
California The 1960sThe weird rites of the Hippies — The San Francisco scene in 1967-68. Documentary about hippies shot during the height of the movement . Viewpoints from many kinds of people. Music by Steve Miller Band, Mother Earth, Quicksilver Messenger Service and others.
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13 Days in France
🇫🇷 France The 1960sThis colorful documentary chronicles the events of the 1968 Winter Olympics in France. The events made international celebrities of skater Peggy Fleming and skier Jean-Claude Killy for their gold-medal performances. The camera accurately catches the speed of bobsleds and downhill racers and ski jumpers as they race for the gold. President Charles DeGaulle is shown observing the action over 13 days, which saw France earn the best performance to date in the winter games.
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Les enfants de Néant
The 1960sMorbihan is one of the poorest regions in Brittany. Joseph, a 33-year-old farmer, can no longer live off the land. He is hired at the fancy new plant that has just opened where he enters a world of rote work. Fortunately he can go home to his farm every evening, far from the large urban centers where workers must usually live.
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Tonite Let's All Make Love in London
England The 1960sSwinging London 66-67 — Peter Whitehead’s disjointed Swinging London documentary, subtitled “A Pop Concerto,” comprises a number of different “movements,” each depicting a different theme underscored by music: A early version of Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive” plays behind some arty nightclub scenes, while Chris Farlowe’s rendition of the Rolling Stones’ “Out of Time” accompanies a young woman’s description of London nightlife and the vacuousness of her own existence. In another segment, the Marquess of Kensington (Robert Wace) croons the nostalgic “Changing of the Guard” to shots of Buckingham Palace’s changing of the guard, and recording act Vashti are seen at work in the studio. Sandwiched between are clips of Mick Jagger (discussing revolution), Andrew Loog Oldham (discussing his future) – and Julie Christie, Michael Caine, Lee Marvin, and novelist Edna O’Brien (each discussing sex). The best part is footage of the riot that interrupted the Stones’ 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert.
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Monument to the Dream
MissouriSoaring above the banks of the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri, the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Arch stands today as the nation's tallest arch and national monument. "Monument to the Dream", at unnerving heights, traces the adventures of the Arch's evolution, from the early concepts on the drawing board to the fabrication of its stainless steel sections, and the triumphant placement, in a race against the sun, of its final section in the fall of 1965. Through the words of the master architect Eero Saarinen, and the ambient chorus of mallets beating metal sheets into graceful curves, the film reveals the innovative structural techniques and the brilliant design of this avant-garde monument, presenting one of this century's greatest civil engineering achievements as a metaphor for the struggle to win the West. This film went on to be nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Documentary Short in 1967.
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See You at the Pillar
🇮🇪 Ireland The 1960sA short film about Dublin City using a mixture of contemporary footage, folk music and quotations from past residents, Shaw, Wilde and Behan etc. Narrated in a "conversation" by Anthony Quayle and Norman Rodway.
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Mondo Topless
CaliforniaMondo Topless is a 1966 pseudo documentary directed by Russ Meyer, featuring Babette Bardot and Lorna Maitland among others.
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The Really Big Family
WashingtonThe Really Big Family is a 1966 American documentary film directed by Alexander Grasshoff about the Dukes family of Seattle, who had 18 children. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
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16 in Webster Groves
Missouri16-year-olds of Webster Groves, an upper-middle-class suburb in Missouri, are interviewed in this one-hour TV special documentary on their experiences of growing up in their town and their views on the future.
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Tokyo Olympiad
Tokyo Prefecture The 1960sThis impressionistic portrait of the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics pays as much attention to the crowds and workers as it does to the actual competitive events. Highlights include an epic pole-vaulting match between West Germany and America, and the final marathon race through Tokyo's streets. Two athletes are highlighted: Ethiopian marathon runner Abebe Bikila, who receives his second gold medal, and runner Ahamed Isa from Chad, representing a country younger than he is.
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Empire
New YorkA single shot of the Empire State Building from early evening until nearly 3 am the next day.
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Children Without
Michigan The 1960sChildren Without is a 1964 American short documentary film directed by Charles Guggenheim, about a young girl and her brother growing up in the housing projects of Detroit. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.
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The Moon
The MoonScience fiction/documentary film about man's voyages to the moon.
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World Without Sun
The 1960sPlunge into astounding true adventure... with Earth's first — Fascinating underwater documentary filmed with hand-held cameras by frogmen and mostly filmed in deep-water seas from within a special designed batiscaff, by the Cousteau family of sea explorers.
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Paparazzi
The 1960sPaparazzi explores the relationship between Brigitte Bardot and groups of invasive photographers attempting to photograph her while she works on the set of Jean-Luc Godard's film Le Mépris (Contempt). Through video footage of Bardot, interviews with the paparazzi, and still photos of Bardot from magazine covers and elsewhere, director Rozier investigates some of the ramifications of international movie stardom, specifically the loss of privacy to the paparazzi. The film explains the shooting of the film on the island of Capri, and the photographers' valiant, even foolishly dangerous, attempts to get a photograph of Bardot.
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Skoplje '63
🇲🇰 North Macedonia The 1960s"Skoplje '63" is a 1964 Yugoslavian documentary film directed by Veljko Bulajić about the 1963 Skopje earthquake (Skoplje, per film title, is the Serbo-Croatian spelling of Skopje). The filming started three days after the earthquake and lasted for four months. After that, Bulajić spent 12 months editing the footage at Jadran Film studios.
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For the Ones to Come
QuebecAt the instigation of the filmmakers, the young men of the Ile-aux-Coudres in the middle of the St-Lawrence River try as a memorial to their ancestors to revive the fishing of the belugas interrupted in 1924.
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The Road to the Wall
🇩🇪 GermanyA brief summary on Comumunism, its origins with Marx, passing through two world wars which leads all the way to the Berlin Wall. Oscar nominated documentary narrated by James Cagney.
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This short film is a series of vignettes of life in Saint-Henri, a Montreal working-class district, on the first day of school. From dawn to midnight, we take in the neighbourhood’s pulse: a mother fussing over children, a father's enforced idleness, teenage boys clowning, young lovers dallying - the unposed quality of daily life.
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Terminus
England The 1960sThis fly on the wall-style documentary from 1961 won an Oscar for best documentary, and shows the changing patterns of human emotions during 24 hours in the life of Waterloo Station.
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The Grand Olympics
🇮🇹 Italy The 1960sEvents and athletes that characterized the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. From the absolute protagonist Wilma Rudolph, called the black gazelle, to Livio Berruti, the first white to win the 200 meters, to the deeds of Ethiopian marathon runner Abebe Bikila, who won the marathon racing barefoot.
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The Human Pyramid
🇨🇮 Côte dIvoireJean Rouch gives a group of black and white teenagers a "what if" question: what if they socialised with each other? The teenagers then improvise their own characters and situations.
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Kahl
🇩🇪 Germany The 1960sA documentary about the building and commissioning of VAK Kahl, the first commercial nuclear power plant in the FRG – gleaming images of a bright future. Oscar nominated documentary short from West Germany, 1961.
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10 juin 1944
🇫🇷 France The 1940s -
Jazz on a Summer's Day
Rhode Island The 1950s...love on a summer's night! — Set at the Newport jazz festival in 1958, this documentary mixes images of water and the town with performers and audience. The film progresses from day to night and from improvisational music to Gospel. It's a concert film that suggests peace and leisure, jazz at a particular time and place.
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Giuseppina
🇮🇹 ItalyOscar winning short in which a young girl observes the array of quirky characters who pass her father's rural petrol station.
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Circle of the Sun
Alberta The 1960sA young man of the Kainai Nation (Blood tribe) shows us contemporary life of people as he attends a Sun Dance ceremony with the tribe.
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Cuban Story
The 1950sCuban Story: The Truth about Fidel Castro Revolution is a 1959 film documentary narrated by Errol Flynn, and the last known performance work of his career.
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Come Back, Africa
🇿🇦 South Africa The 1950sCome Back, Africa chronicles the life of Zachariah, a black South African living under the rule of the harsh apartheid government in 1959.
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Araya
🇻🇪 Venezuela The 1950s"Araya" is an old natural salt mine located in a peninsula in northeastern Venezuela which was still, by 1959, being exploited manually five hundred years after its discovery by the Spanish. In images, the life of the "salineros" and their archaic methods of work before their definite disappearance with the arrival of the industrial exploitation.
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Moi, un Noir
🇨🇮 Côte dIvoire The 1950sWinner of the prestigious Prix Louis Delluc in 1958, "Moi, un noir" marked Jean Rouch's break with traditional ethnography, and his embrace of the collaborative and improvisatory strategies he called "shared ethnography" and "ethnofiction". The film depicts an ordinary week in the lives of men and women from Niger who have migrated to Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire for work.
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The Snowshoers
Quebec The 1950sThis short documentary records the celebration and ritual surrounding a snowshoe competition in Sherbrooke in the late 1950s. The film marked the beginning of a new approach to reality in documentary and prefigures the trademark style of the NFB's newly formed French Unit. Today, Les raquetteurs is considered a precursor to the birth of direct cinema.
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City of Gold
Yukon The 1890sThis classic short film from Pierre Berton depicts the Klondike gold rush at its peak, when would-be prospectors struggled through harsh conditions to reach the fabled gold fields over 3000 km north of civilization. Using a collection of still photographs, the film juxtaposes the Dawson City at the height of the gold rush with its bustling taverns and dance halls with the more tranquil Dawson City of the present.
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N.Y., N.Y.
New YorkA day in the life of the city and citizens of New York as seen through the fantastic eye, and the incredibly distorted optic lenses, of filmmaker Francis Thompson.
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The Flute and the Arrow
🇮🇳 IndiaA film about the muria people of the Bastar jungle in central India. It was entered into the 1958 Cannes Film Festival.
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Gotoma the Buddha
🇮🇳 India The 5th Century BCThis Indian documentary had its world premiere in Paris. Told simply and straightforwardly, the film traces the life of Buddha, from humble priest to religious icon. The central character's search for wisdom and inner peace may not seem like ideal visual fare, but director Rajbana Khanna makes it so. Emphasis is placed upon Buddha's relationship with the land, conveyed by lyrical shots of India's vast and varied terrain. Prior to its official release, Gotoma the Buddha was feted with a "special mention" at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival; few viewers will hold it in lesser esteem.
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After the Ball
England The 1920s The 1910s The 1900s The 1890s The 1880sThe life and loves of Music hall singer Vesta Tilley, who married into the nobility
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The Day Called X
OregonPortentously portrays the evacuation of Portland, Oregon, when threatened by a nuclear attack on its state-of-the-art civil defense system.
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All the World's Memory
🇫🇷 FranceToute la mémoire du monde is a documentary about the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. It presents the building, with its processes of cataloguing and preserving all sorts of printed material, as both a monument of cultural memory and as a monstrous, alien being.
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The Silent World
Indian OceanOut of an uncharted universe comes an experience of unearthly beauty — The Silent World is noted as one of the first films to use underwater cinematography to show the ocean depths in color. Its title derives from Cousteau's 1953 book The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure. The film was shot aboard the ship Calypso. A team of divers shot 25 kilometers of film over two years in the Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, of which 2.5 kilometers were included in the finished documentary.
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The Mystery of Picasso
🇫🇷 FranceUsing a specially designed transparent 'canvas' to provide an unobstructed view, Picasso creates as the camera rolls. He begins with simple works that take shape after only a single brush stroke. He then progresses to more complex paintings, in which he repeatedly adds and removes elements, transforming the entire scene at will, until at last the work is complete.
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A City Decides
Missouri The 1950sA City Decides chronicles the events that led to the integration of the St. Louis public schools in 1954. An Oscar-nominated short documentary from 1956.
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