Poetic Documentary Movies

This short documentary, shot in the glass factories of Leerdam and Schiedam, demonstrates how glass blowers do their work. But thanks to the superbly...

In this short film Bert Haanstra gives his vision - from the water – of a tranquil Holland. During filming he held the camera upside down and...

Morning reveals New York harbor, the wharves, the Brooklyn Bridge. A ferry boat docks, disgorging its huddled mass. People move briskly along Wall...

The faces of a 5:00 PM crowd descending via the Pan Am building escalators in one continuous shot. In old-fashioned black and white, these faces...

A perfect, fast and hilarious montage. Using images from Artis (Amsterdam Zoo), Bert Haanstra shows that a couple of similarities can be discovered...

Featuring a commentary by Noël Burch (in nonsense French), Recreation's rapid-fire montage of single-frame images of incredible density and...

In a small commercial harbour in the south of France, two Moroccan sailors are watching over ferries that were abandoned by ship-owners. Young...

Filmed In the heart of the mountainous villages of Greece and North Macedonia, the documentary follows a group of conservators of antiquities and...

On the island of La Gomera, children imagine stories while they examine archeological remains. An ethno-fictional journey in which past and present...

A hypnotic and slow-burning journey through the austere landscapes of the island of South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. Shot on black and...

This short film made by László Moholy-Nagy is based on the shadow patterns created by his Light-Space Modulator, an early kinetic...

A montage of the skyscrapers of Manhattan opens with a succession of stationary views of the upper portions of numerous buildings. This is followed...

Through interspersed conversation and prose, this experimental documentary follows a poet and a neuroscientist as they explore the definition of...

Exploration of the ordinary lives led by women of different classes—a college professor, an unmarried woman, and a seasoned drama artist. They...

Tommy sets out to document walking. He meets a colorful cast of characters, attaches microphones to his feet, and contends with what it means to...

An ode to man's capacity to care for all creatures throughout their sometimes greatly protracted existence, displayed through the homegrown remedies...