Poetic Documentary Movies

Women find empowerment behind the red nose and makeup, revealing the playful and subversive spirit of female clowning. Through poetic and intimate...

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

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

Robert Drew shows the sights and sounds from the funeral of President John F. Kennedy in November, 1963. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in...

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...

Bondi Icebergs is the most photographed pool in the world. This is where generations of children have learnt to swim, where the diehard have braved...

Documentary portrait of the poet Karla Erbová is a confession of a creative personality who, despite many twists and turns in life, remains...

In this short film the director reflects on the feeling of being on the wrong path in your life, that you have no control over your own life. But...

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

A short film following Anthony, a young child from the small, rural town of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. We see him in different moments of...

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...

In 1952, Haanstra made Panta Rhei , another view of Holland through the eyes of a painter and filmmaker. Its poetic images of water, skies and clouds...

An intimate documentary telling people's stories about their scars, how they got them and their overall opinion on them.

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

Ibuka follows Valentine and Jean-Claude, a new couple, at the very beginning of the civil war and the massacres that swept through Rwanda in 1994....