Didactica Magna: Against the Grain

Just Hold Still

1989

In his New York City landscape, Cohen finds inspiration in disturbance. Looking to life for rhythm and to architecture for state of mind, he locates simple mysteries. Just Hold Still is comprised of an interconnected series of short works and collaborations that explore the gray area between documentary, narrative, and experimental genres.

Private Chronicles: Monologue

1999

The collective life of the generation born as Jurij Gagarin became the first man in space. Vitaly Mansky has woven together a fictional biography – taken from over 5.000 hours of film material, and 20.000 still pictures made for home use. A moving document of the fictional, but nonetheless true life of the generation who grew up in this time of huge change and upheaval.

O malém světě

1968

The Bomb

2017

Filmmakers use archival footage and animation to explore the culture surrounding nuclear weapons, the fascination they inspire and the perverse appeal they still exert.

Lynch/Oz

2023

Victor Fleming’s 1939 film The Wizard of Oz is one of David Lynch’s most enduring obsessions. This documentary goes over the rainbow to explore this Technicolor through-line in Lynch’s work.

Chinese Ping-Pong

1972

An experimental sports film made partly during the Scandinavian Open Championships in Halmstad in 1970, partly during the Chinese players' exhibition tour in Denmark immediately after the SOC. First of all, it is a film about their style, about the artistic culmination that is ping-pong at its best, it records China's comeback into the international sports world.

Visions of Europe

2004

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Clouds

1969

Clouds 1969 by the British filmmaker Peter Gidal is a film comprised of ten minutes of looped footage of the sky, shot with a handheld camera using a zoom to achieve close-up images. Aside from the amorphous shapes of the clouds, the only forms to appear in the film are an aeroplane flying overhead and the side of a building, and these only as fleeting glimpses. The formless image of the sky and the repetition of the footage on a loop prevent any clear narrative development within the film. The minimal soundtrack consists of a sustained oscillating sine wave, consistently audible throughout the film without progression or climax. The work is shown as a projection and was not produced in an edition. The subject of the film can be said to be the material qualities of film itself: the grain, the light, the shadow and inconsistencies in the print.

Brise-glace : Bateau givre

1987

First part of the collaborative project "Brise-Glace" showing the diverse travels on the icebreaker "Frej". Directed by Jean Rouch.

Bohemia Docta or the Labyrinth of the World and the Lust-House of the Heart (A Divine Comedy)

2000

A labyrinthine portrait of Czech culture on the brink of a new millennium. Egon Bondy prophesies a capitalist inferno, Jim Čert admits to collaborating with the secret police, Jaroslav Foglar can’t find a bottle-opener, and Ivan Diviš makes observations about his own funeral. This is the Czech Republic in the late 90s, as detailed in Karel Vachek’s documentary.

Locations: Looking for Rusty James

2013

A personal meditation on Rumble Fish, the legendary film directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1983; the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, where it was shot; and its impact on the life of several people from Chile, Argentina and Uruguay related to film industry.

Ôrí

1989

A look at the Brazilian black movement between 1977 and 1988, going by the relationship between Brazil and Africa.