Documentary | Musings on Culture

Category : Documentary

“Hollywood Talkies” inaugurates a blog

November 2nd 2011 Posted at Documentary, Hollywood Talkies
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The feature-lenght documentary Hollywood Talkies inaugurates a blog. Come take a look!

“Hollywood Talkies” in Venice

September 29th 2011 Posted at Documentary, Film Festivals, Hollywood Talkies
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I’m glad to let you know that a documentary I was involved in, Hollywood Talkies, was presented at the 68th Venice Film Festival, Orizzonti section. I was involved at a very early stage of the project, when I was doing my masters degree in Barcelona, back in 2006-2007; I worked as a documentalist researcher. It’s a experimental documentary about the Spanish actors that went to Hollywood to participate in the first talkies in the 1930′s. I haven’t seen the final version yet; I’m looking forward to it!

More info HERE (in Catalan).

Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”

March 30th 2011 Posted at Documentary, Inspiration
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Werner Herzog is one of my favourite filmmakers. He has recently directed Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a documentary about the Chauvet Cave in France, that contains the earliest known cave paintings and other evidence of Upper Paleolithic life. The film was released in the UK last Friday, I’m impatient to watch it!

More info about the production on Herzog’s website HERE.

Check the trailer:

“How film is made”

February 23rd 2011 Posted at Behind-the-scenes, Documentary, Film History
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Nowadays that almost everything is digital, let’s watch this 1958 documentary to understand the origins of photographic and cinematic film…

“How film is made”

ARTE looking for documentary series for prime time

December 10th 2010 Posted at Documentary, Industry News
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From the European Documentary Network:

ARTE France has launched a call for proposals for a documentary series of 40 X 26 minutes. The series is to be broadcasted in prime time.

The intention with the prime time documentary series is to start broadcasting from the fall season of 2011.

Given the short time span for the series and to ensure the successful completion of the programs, ARTE France will consider to supply editorial and technical capacity to the production.

The call for projects will be closed December 22, 2010.

Feedback on submitted projects will provided from February 2011 after the submitted ideas have gone through evaluation at the ARTE GEIE Programs Conference.

Here you can read ARTE’s call.

Documentary about Eadweard Muybridge (2)

December 1st 2010 Posted at Documentary, Film History, Inspiration
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Yesterday I watched the BBC documentary about Muybridge I told you about on my previous post. It was very interesting, a good complement to the Tate exhibition. You can now watch it on BBC iPlayer HERE.

Available until 11:34pm Tue, 28 Dec 2010

Duration: 60 minutes

Documentary about Eadweard Muybridge

November 30th 2010 Posted at Documentary, Film History, Inspiration
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Did anyone of you had the opportunity to visit the magnificent Muybridge exhibition at Tate Britain?

Muybridge’s innovative work in capturing motion through a series of photographs was a milestone on the road to motion pictures. In fact, he is often called the Father of the Motion Picture.

Tonight there’s a documentary on the BBC about his life and achievements.

10.35pm Tuesday 30 November on BBC ONE: Imagine – The Weird World Of Eadweard Muybridge

First Spanish sound film dating from 1923!

November 5th 2010 Posted at Documentary, Film History
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The popular perception is that the history of sound cinema begins with Warner Brother’s The Jazz Singer (1927). Nevertheless, efforts to synchronize recorded sound and film began much earlier (see, for instance, the Dickson Experimental Sound Film). What The Jazz Singer actually represents is the beginning of commercial acceptance of transition to sound films.

The Spanish newspaper El País informed yesterday that the first Spanish sound film (dating from 1923!) has been discovered at the Library of Congress. It is a 11min musical film in Spanish and Portuguese titled “From Far Seville”, directed by Lee de Forest in his Phonofilm sound-on-film process, and protagonized by Spanish dancer and singer Concha Piquer. It was shown at the Rivoli Theater in New York City on April 15, 1923, with 17 other short films.

HERE is a fragment of the documentary made about the discovery.

Read the article from El País HERE (in Spanish).

2004 interview with editor Walter Murch in which he discusses what is provisionally known by archivists as the Dickson Experimental Sound Film