California's Golden Beginning

This film recounts the murder of Vincent Chin, an automotive engineer mistaken as Japanese who was slain by an assembly line worker who blamed him...

At a morgue, forensic pathologists conduct autopsies of the corpses assigned. "S. Brakhage, entering, WITH HIS CAMERA, one of the forbidden, terrific...

Inspired by a lesson from Erik Satie, a film in the form of a street: Castro Street, running by the Standard Oil Refinery in Richmond, California.

The arrival of the mining company Osisko creates a lot of excitement in Malartic, a small community of 3600 souls in Quebec, Canada. Faced with the...

Documentary where rich social history frames a spirited debate on the development of water infrastructure throughout the USA.

On October 20, 1967, Roger Patterson captured 60 seconds of film showing a creature walking through the Northern California woods—footage that...

The mysterious appearance of massive golden bracelets in int'l antiquarian circles uncovers an inside story of the looting of a 2000 yr-old...

A propaganda short about the 1944 United States presidential election, produced by the Office of War information, for overseas distribution. It is...

Little Johnny Jones, to be born in the next year, is shown growing to a ripe, healthy old age, thanks to the efforts of his local public health...

An aerial journey through California's coastline.

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...

Late 1970s television documentary on the people of Marin County, California, one of the wealthiest counties in the United States. The documentary...

The connection between these three short films is initially indicated by their sound and music: In all three films, Lee Anne Schmitt does without...

This film, photographed and edited by Les Blank, produced and directed by Pieter Van Deusen, documents a spontaneously improvised concert by musician...

A behind-the-scenes look at the responsibilities of the cinematographer. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

What goes in to the phrase, "Let's go to the movies"? An off-screen narrator takes us back to the earliest days of film: clips remind us of early...

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...

The 1945 atomic-bomb explosion at Bikini Atoll becomes a thing of terrible beauty and haunting visual poetry when shown in extreme slow motion, shown...

Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids? is a 1977 documentary film about Dorothy and Bob DeBolt, an American couple who adopted 14...

The life and works of the great artist Michelangelo Buonarroti are shown against the historical background of his time. It begins with his earliest...