1883 – Man with a Movie Camera (1929)

timespace coordinates: 1920’s (filmed over a period of about 3 years) – urban life in the Soviet cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odessa.

The film Man with a Movie Camera represents
AN EXPERIMENTATION IN THE CINEMATIC COMMUNICATION
Of visual phenomena
WITHOUT THE USE OF INTERTITLES
(a film without intertitles)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF A SCENARIO
(a film without a scenario)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF THEATRE
(a film without actors, without sets, etc.)
This new experimentation work by Kino-Eye is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theatre and literature.

Man with a Movie Camera (Russian: Человек с кино-аппаратом, romanized: Chelovek s kino-apparatom) is an experimental 1929 Soviet Ukrainian silent documentary film, directed by Dziga Vertov and edited by his wife Yelizaveta Svilova.

Man with a Movie Camera was largely dismissed upon its initial release; the work’s fast cutting, self-reflexivity, and emphasis on form over content were all subjects of criticism. In the British Film Institute’s 2012 Sight & Sound poll, however, film critics voted it the 8th greatest film ever made, and it was later named the best documentary of all time in the same magazine. (wiki)

imdb   /   the kinoks

1152 – Samsara (2011 documentary)

Samsara is a 2011 American non-narrative documentary film of international imagery directed by Ron Fricke and produced by Mark Magidson. Samsara was filmed over a period of five years in 25 different countries around the world.

The official website describes the film, “Expanding on the themes they developed in Baraka (1992) and Chronos (1985), Samsara explores the wonders of our world from the mundane to the miraculous, looking into the unfathomable reaches of humanity’s spirituality and the human experience. Neither a traditional documentary nor a travelogue, Samsara takes the form of a nonverbal, guided meditation.” (wiki)

imdb   /   fantasy_coffins   /   819 – Olivier de Sagazan

1115 – Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

Koyaanisqatsi (English: /koʊjɑːnɪsˈkɑːtsiː/), also known as Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, is a 1982 American documentary / experimental film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke.

The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse footage of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. Reggio explained the lack of dialogue by stating “it’s not for lack of love of the language that these films have no words. It’s because, from my point of view, our language is in a state of vast humiliation. It no longer describes the world in which we live.”  In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means “unbalanced life”/ “crazy life”.

The film is the first in the Qatsi film trilogy: it is succeeded by Powaqqatsi (1988) and Naqoyqatsi (2002). The trilogy depicts different aspects of the relationship between humans, nature and technology. Koyaanisqatsi is the best known of the trilogy and is considered a cult film. (wiki)

imdb