Sergei Parajanov Documentary

Sergei Parajanov was a Soviet Armenian film director and artist, widely regarded as one of the 20th century's greatest masters of cinema.

He invented his own unparalleled cinematic style. His oeuvre is extremely poetic, artistic and visionary and is acclaimed worldwide. But as it was highly unfit with principal rules of socialist realism (the only sanctioned art style in USSR) and his controversial stance and escapades to boot, cinema authorities regularly denied him permission to make films.

>> watch
>> more info

Fully Awake: Black Mountain College

Tucked in the mountains of Western North Carolina, Black Mountain College (1933-1957) has emerged as one of the most influencial experiments in education. Though short lived, Black Mountain College's unique model inspired and shaped the 20th century American modern art.

Fully Awake: Black Mountain College is a documentary film exploring "education in a democracy," and highlights the College's belief that the creative arts and practical responsibilities are equally important to intellectual development. Life skills are developed through democratic governance, art exploration, manual labor, and community living.

Fully Awake reflects on the unique educational style and long-term significance of the school using archive photography, interviews with students, teachers, historians, and current artists, and narration. While popularly known as the location for such events as Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome, John Cage's first 'happening' and the publishing of the Black Mountain Review, the film focuses on the unique educational approach of Black Mountain College to balance academics, art, manual labor and communal living to educate the whole person--head, hand, and heart.

>> watch trailer

...

Beirut - Nantes (Bogdan edit)

Peter Greenaway - A Walk Through H (1978)

As the camera pores over 92 mixed media pictures hung in a gallery (all painted exquisitely by Greenaway himself), a pedantic narrator describes his mysterious journey to H, using the pictures as maps. Subtitled The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist, this film seems to be concerned with the migration of a soul (to Heaven or Hell) following the migratory paths of birds (which feature prominently) - but along the way it takes in the curious provenance and intrepretation of each painting, and it documents a bewildering intrigue between the narrator, his mentor Tulse Luper and his rival van Heuten (keeper of the owls at the Amsterdam Zoo).