Watch Jeff Beck (RIP) Smash His Guitar: A Classic Scene from Antonioni’s Blowup (1966)

in Film, Music | January 12th, 2023

Note: With the pass­ing of Jeff Beck, we’re bring­ing back a vin­tage post from our archive fea­tur­ing the ear­ly years of the leg­endary gui­tarist. You can read his obit­u­ary here.

Art film and rock and roll have, since the 60s, been soul­mates of a kind, with many an acclaimed direc­tor turn­ing to musi­cians as actors, com­mis­sion­ing rock stars as sound­track artists, and film­ing scenes with bands. Before Nico­las Roeg, Jim Jar­musch, David Lynch, Mar­tin Scors­ese and oth­er rock-lov­ing auteurs did all of the above, there was Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nioni, who bar­reled into the Eng­lish-lan­guage mar­ket, under con­tract with Metro-Gold­wyn-May­er, with a tril­o­gy of films steeped in the sights and sounds of six­ties coun­ter­cul­ture.

Blowup, the first and by far the best of these, though scored by jazz pianist Her­bie Han­cock, promi­nent­ly fea­tured the Yardbirds—with both Jim­my Page and Jeff Beck. In the mem­o­rable scene above, Beck smash­es his gui­tar to bits after his amp goes on the fritz. The Ital­ian direc­tor “envi­sioned a scene sim­i­lar to that of Pete Townshend’s famous rit­u­al of smash­ing his gui­tar on stage,” notes Gui­tar­world’s Jonathan Gra­ham. “Anto­nioni had even asked The Who to appear in the film,” but they refused.

In stepped the Yard­birds, dur­ing a piv­otal moment in their career. The year before, they released mega-hit “For Your Love,” and said good­bye to lead gui­tarist Eric Clap­ton. Beck, his replace­ment, her­ald­ed a much wilder, more exper­i­men­tal phase for the band. Jeff Beck, it seemed, could play any­thing, but what he didn’t do much of onstage is emote. Next to the gui­tar-smash­ing Town­shend or the fire-set­ting Hen­drix (see both below), he was a pret­ty reserved per­former, though no less thrilling to watch for his vir­tu­os­i­ty and style.

But as he tells it, Anto­nioni wouldn’t let the band do their “most excit­ing thing,” a cov­er of “Smoke­stack Light­ning” that “had this incred­i­ble buildup in the mid­dle which was just pow!” That moment would have been the nat­ur­al pre­text for a good gui­tar smash­ing.

Instead, the set piece with the bro­ken amp gives the intro­vert­ed Beck a rea­son to get agi­tat­ed. As Gra­ham describes it, he also played a gui­tar spe­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed as a prop:

Due to issues over pub­lish­ing, the Yard­birds clas­sic “Train Kept A‑Rollin’,” was reworked as “Stroll On” for the per­for­mance, and as the scene involved the destruc­tion of an instru­ment, Beck’s usu­al choice of his icon­ic Esquire or Les Paul was swapped for a cheap, hol­low-body stand-in that he was direct­ed to smash at the song’s con­clu­sion.

The scene is more a tantrum than the orgias­tic onstage freak-out Town­shend would prob­a­bly have deliv­ered. Its chief virtue for Yard­bird’s fans lies not in the fun­ny, out-of-char­ac­ter moment (which SF Gate film crit­ic Mick LaSalle calls “one of the weird­est scenes in the movie”). Rather, it was “the chance,” as one fan tells LaSalle, “in the days before MTV and YouTube, to see the Yard­birds, with Jeff Beck and Jim­my Page.” Anto­nioni had seized the moment. In addi­tion to fir­ing “the open­ing sal­vo of the emerg­ing ‘film gen­er­a­tion,’” as Roger Ebert wrote, he gave con­tem­po­rary fans a rea­son (in addi­tion to explic­it sex and nudi­ty), to go see Blowup again and again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Lost” Pink Floyd Sound­track for Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s Only Amer­i­can Film, Zabriskie Point (1970)

13-Year-Old Jim­my Page Plays Gui­tar on TV in 1957, an Ear­ly Moment in His Spec­tac­u­lar Career

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How to Watch Hundreds of Free Movies on YouTube

in Film | January 6th, 2023

We lived in the age of movie the­aters, then we lived in the age of home video, and now we live in the age of stream­ing. Like every peri­od in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma, ours has its advan­tages and its dis­ad­van­tages. The qua­si-reli­gios­i­ty of the cinephile view­ing expe­ri­ence is, arguably, not as well served by click­ing on a Youtube video as it is by attend­ing a screen­ing at a grand revival house. But on the whole, we do have the advan­tage of access, when­ev­er and wher­ev­er we like, to a great many films that most of us may have been whol­ly unable to see just a cou­ple of decades ago — and often, we can watch them for free.

That said, these are still rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly days for on-demand view­ing, and find­ing out just where to do it isn’t as easy as it could be. That’s why we’ve round­ed up this col­lec­tion of Youtube chan­nels with free movies, which togeth­er con­sti­tute one big meta-col­lec­tion of hun­dreds of films. Among them are numer­ous black-and-white clas­sics, of course, but also crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed pic­tures by inter­na­tion­al auteurs, rather less crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed (but nonethe­less enjoy­able) cult favorites, doc­u­men­taries on a wide vari­ety of sub­jects, and even twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry Hol­ly­wood releas­es.

Which films you can watch will vary, unfor­tu­nate­ly, depend­ing on which part of the world you hap­pen to be watch­ing them in. But no mat­ter your loca­tion, you should eas­i­ly be able to find more than a few worth­while selec­tions on all these chan­nels. One under-appre­ci­at­ed aspect of our stream­ing age is that, though the num­ber of choic­es may some­times over­whelm, it’s nev­er been eas­i­er to give a movie a chance. One click may, after all, trans­port you into a pic­ture that changes the way you expe­ri­ence cin­e­ma itself — and if it does­n’t, well, at least the price was right.

If you know of oth­er YouTube chan­nels that legit­i­mate­ly host films online, please add them to the com­ments sec­tion below.

And, for more films, be sure to explore our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Relat­ed Con­tent 

60 Free Film Noir Movies

Watch 3,000+ Films Free Online from the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Watch 30+ Excep­tion­al Short Films for Free in The New Yorker’s Online Screen­ing Room

Watch More Than 400 Clas­sic Kore­an Films Free Online Thanks to the Kore­an Film Archive

Watch 70 Movies in HD from Famed Russ­ian Stu­dio Mos­film: Clas­sic Films, Beloved Come­dies, Tarkovsky, Kuro­sawa & More

Kino Lor­ber Puts Online 50 Free Films: Watch Clas­sics by Jean-Luc Godard, Derek Jar­man, Tai­ka Wait­i­ti & Oth­er Major Film­mak­ers

Cha­rade, the Best Hitch­cock Film Hitch­cock Nev­er Made: Stars Cary Grant & Audrey Hep­burn

Watch Free Cult Films by Stan­ley Kubrick, Fritz Lang, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi & More on the New Kino Cult Stream­ing Ser­vice

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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What’s Entering the Public Domain in 2023: Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Franz Kafka’s Amerika & More

in Books, Film, Music | January 4th, 2023

It’s safe to say that few, if any, of us alive today were doing any movie-going in 1927. But that should­n’t stop us from rec­og­niz­ing the impor­tance of that year to cin­e­ma itself. It saw the release of, among oth­er pic­tures, The Lodger, with which the young Alfred Hitch­cock first ful­ly assem­bled his sig­na­ture mechan­ics of sus­pense; Metrop­o­lis, Fritz Lang’s still-influ­en­tial vision of Art Deco dystopia; F. W. Mur­nau’s Sun­rise, a lav­ish roman­tic dra­ma com­plete with sound effects; and even the very first fea­ture-length “talkie,” The Jazz Singer star­ring Al Jol­son. And don’t even get us start­ed on what a year 1927 was for lit­er­a­ture.

Rather, take it from Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Rhea Nay­yar, who high­lights Franz Kafka’s posthu­mous­ly pub­lished first nov­el Ameri­ka, which is now “con­sid­ered one of his more real­is­tic and humor­ous works.” Nay­yar also men­tions Vir­ginia Woolf’s much bet­ter-known To the Light­house, which, like Ameri­ka as well as all the afore­men­tioned films, has just entered the pub­lic domain in the Unit­ed States in 2023 for any­one to enjoy and use as they please.

So has Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Case-Book of Sher­lock Holmes, the final book of sto­ries fea­tur­ing that icon­ic detec­tive, Ernest Hem­ing­way’s col­lec­tion Men With­out Women, Her­mann Hes­se’s Der Step­pen­wolf, and even the very first Hardy Boys nov­el, The Tow­er Trea­sure.

You’ll find many such notable books, movies, and musi­cal com­po­si­tions — that last group includ­ing such immor­tal tunes as “The Best Things in Life are Free,” “Puttin’ on the Ritz” and “(I Scream You Scream, We All Scream for) Ice Cream” — round­ed up here by Jen­nifer Jenk­ins, direc­tor of Duke Law School’s Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain. She also explains why we should care: “1927 was a long time ago. The vast major­i­ty of works from 1927 are out of cir­cu­la­tion. When they enter the pub­lic domain in 2023, any­one can res­cue them from obscu­ri­ty and make them avail­able, where we can all dis­cov­er, enjoy, and breathe new life into them.” We know that many works cre­at­ed in 1927 have stood the test of time; now to find out what they’ll inspire us to cre­ate in 2023.

Find a list of impor­tant works enter­ing the pub­lic domain here.

via Duke Uni­ver­si­ty Law School

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Lodger: Alfred Hitchcock’s First Tru­ly ‘Hitch­cock­ian’ Movie (1927)

Metrop­o­lis: Watch Fritz Lang’s 1927 Mas­ter­piece

Free: F. W. Murnau’s Sun­rise, the 1927 Mas­ter­piece Vot­ed the 5th Best Movie of All Time

Why Should We Read Vir­ginia Woolf? A TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion Makes the Case

Franz Kaf­ka: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to His Lit­er­ary Genius

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Restored Versions of Classic Fleischer Cartoons on Youtube, Featuring Betty Boop, Koko the Clown & Others

in Animation, Film, History | December 30th, 2022

Quite a few gen­er­a­tions of Amer­i­can chil­dren have by now grown up know­ing the names of Max and Dave Fleis­ch­er — albeit know­ing even bet­ter the names of the char­ac­ters they ani­mat­ed, like Bet­ty Boop, Pop­eye the Sailor, and Super­man. The kids who first thrilled to Max Fleis­cher’s ear­ly “Out of the Inkwell” series, which he start­ed in the late nine­teen-tens and con­tin­ued into the late nine­teen-twen­ties, would nat­u­ral­ly have seen them in a movie the­ater. But most of us under the age of eighty would have received our intro­duc­tion to the live­ly, whim­si­cal, and often bizarre world of the broth­ers Fleis­ch­er through the tele­vi­sion, a medi­um hun­gry for car­toons prac­ti­cal­ly since its incep­tion.

Now view­ers of all ages can enjoy Fleis­ch­er car­toons on Youtube, and in new­ly restored form at that. “The Fab­u­lous Fleis­ch­er Car­toons Restored team is ded­i­cat­ed to pre­serv­ing Fleis­cher’s films by restor­ing them from orig­i­nal prints and neg­a­tives,” writes Boing Boing’s Rusty Blazen­hoff, adding that “Adam Sav­age’s Test­ed vis­it­ed the Black­hawk Films scan­ning facil­i­ty in Cal­i­for­nia and spoke with restora­tion expert Steve Stanch­field about the process of bring­ing these clas­sic films back to life.”

The charm of Fleis­ch­er car­toons may still feel effort­less a cen­tu­ry after their cre­ation, but any­one famil­iar with ani­ma­tion knows how painstak­ing that cre­ation would have been; by the same token, bring­ing the sur­viv­ing films back to pris­tine con­di­tion is a more com­pli­cat­ed job than most view­ers would imag­ine.

The cur­rent offer­ings on Fab­u­lous Fleis­ch­er Car­toons Restored’s chan­nel include Bet­ty Boop and Pudgy in “Hap­py You and Mer­ry Me,” Bim­bo the Dog in “Teacher’s Pest,” and even the short but lav­ish Tech­ni­col­or fan­ta­sy “Some­where in Dream­land,” which bright­ened up the grim days of the Great Depres­sion for all who saw it. The restor­ers have also worked their mag­ic on Fleis­ch­er hol­i­day car­toons like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Rein­deer” and “Christ­mas Comes But Once a Year” (includ­ing with the lat­ter a side-by-side com­par­i­son of the new restora­tion with the exist­ing six­teen-mil­lime­ter DVD print). Yes, Christ­mas has just passed, but it will come again next year, and bring with it the lat­est gen­er­a­tion’s chance to be delight­ed by Fleis­ch­er car­toons crisper and more vivid than the ones with which any of us grew up.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch a Sur­re­al 1933 Ani­ma­tion of Snow White, Fea­tur­ing Cab Cal­loway & Bet­ty Boop: It’s Ranked as the 19th Great­est Car­toon of All Time

The Harlem Jazz Singer Who Inspired Bet­ty Boop: Meet the Orig­i­nal Boop-Oop-a-Doop, “Baby Esther”

The Orig­i­nal 1940s Super­man Car­toon: Watch 17 Clas­sic Episodes Free Online

The Trick That Made Ani­ma­tion Real­is­tic: Watch a Short His­to­ry of Roto­scop­ing

Einstein’s The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Explained in One of the Ear­li­est Sci­ence Films Ever Made (1923)

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made: 1939 Doc­u­men­tary Gives an Inside Look

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Junky’s Christmas: William S. Burrough’s Dark Claymation Christmas Film Produced by Francis Ford Coppola (1993)

in Film | December 20th, 2022

Back in 1993, the Beat writer William S. Bur­roughs wrote and nar­rat­ed a 21 minute clay­ma­tion Christ­mas film. And, as you can well imag­ine, it’s not your nor­mal hap­py Christ­mas flick. Nope, this film – The Junky’s Christ­mas – is all about Dan­ny the Car­wiper, a junkie, who spends Christ­mas Day try­ing to score a fix. Even­tu­al­ly he finds the Christ­mas spir­it when he shares some mor­phine with a young man suf­fer­ing from kid­ney stones, giv­ing him the “immac­u­late fix.” There you have it. And, oh, did we men­tion that the film was pro­duced by Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs’ Scathing “Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant

Andy Warhol’s Christ­mas Art

Demen­tia 13: The Film That Took Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la From Schlock­ster to Auteur

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The Avant-Garde Animated Films of Walter Ruttmann, Still Strikingly Fresh a Century Later (1921–1925)

in Animation, Film | December 19th, 2022

Though regard­ed by many as near-impos­si­bly dif­fi­cult to judge, avant-garde art can be put to its own test of time: does it still feel new ten, twen­ty, fifty, a hun­dred years lat­er? Now that most of Wal­ter Ruttman­n’s short ani­mat­ed films have passed the cen­tu­ry mark, we can with some con­fi­dence say they pass that test. A few years ago, we fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture his Licht­spiel Opus 1, the first avant-garde ani­ma­tion ever made. Now, with this playlist, you can watch it and sev­er­al of its suc­ces­sors, which togeth­er date from the years 1921 through 1925.

“A trained archi­tect and painter,” writes Car­toon Brew’s Amid Ami­di, Ruttmann “worked as a graph­ic design­er pri­or to becom­ing involved with film. He fought in WWI, suf­fered a ner­vous break­down and spent time recov­er­ing in a sana­to­ri­um.”

It was after that har­row­ing expe­ri­ence that he plunged into the still-new medi­um of ani­ma­tion, and he evi­dent­ly brought the com­bined aes­thet­ic refine­ment of archi­tec­ture, paint­ing, and graph­ic design with him. His four-part Opus series (top) shows us “how abstract ani­ma­tion doesn’t become dat­ed as quick­ly as rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al ani­ma­tion because its cre­ation is not pred­i­cat­ed upon the styl­is­tic trap­pings of its era.”

This also holds true for Ruttman­n’s adver­tis­ing work, includ­ing the three-minute Der Sieger just above. Por­tray­ing “the strug­gles of a durable Excel­sior tire that climbs entire build­ings and wraps itself around the sun to pro­tect it from tri­an­gu­lar shapes with mean-look­ing faces,” as this sum­ma­ry of a talk by film schol­ar Michael Cow­an puts it, the short “is a per­fect exam­ple tes­ti­fy­ing to how a lot of avant-garde artists — con­trary to pop­u­lar belief — nev­er lost sight for a cer­tain applic­a­bil­i­ty of their art in that their con­cepts of form also implied a cer­tain idea of ‘form­ing’: the poten­tial to take dif­fer­ent shapes through mor­ph­ing, to find order­ing prin­ci­ples, or even to com­mu­ni­cate the ide­o­log­i­cal impe­tus of form­ing a nation­al body.”

That last holds espe­cial­ly true for Ruttman­n’s “lat­er work with­in the con­text of Nation­al Social­ism”: an unfor­tu­nate-sound­ing con­text, though it must be not­ed that he dis­pleased Adolf Hitler enough to be per­son­al­ly removed by the dic­ta­tor from the project that would become Leni Riefen­stahl’s Tri­umph of the Will. His artis­tic phi­los­o­phy may have been com­pat­i­ble with sell­ing tires, but it seems not to have served the much more bom­bas­tic and lit­er­al form of Nazi pro­pa­gan­da. That is, of course, to Ruttman’s cred­it, as is the fresh­ness his ear­ly ani­ma­tions still exude these hun­dred or so years lat­er. As Amid writes, “the graph­ic forms used in his film are the same build­ing blocks — raw and unadorned — used by artists today.” But how many artists today use them with such ele­gance?

Relat­ed con­tent:

The First Avant-Garde Ani­ma­tion: Watch Wal­ter Ruttmann’s Licht­spiel Opus 1 (1921)

The First Mas­ter­pieces of Abstract Film: Hans Richter’s Rhyth­mus 21 (1921) & Viking Eggeling’s Sym­phonie Diag­o­nale (1924)

Opti­cal Poems by Oskar Fischinger, the Avant-Garde Ani­ma­tor Despised by Hitler, Dissed by Dis­ney

The Exper­i­men­tal Abstract Films of Pio­neer­ing Amer­i­can Ani­ma­tor Mary Ellen Bute (1930s-1950s)

Spheres Dance to the Music of Bach, Per­formed by Glenn Gould: An Ani­ma­tion from 1969

The Gold­en Age of Berlin Comes to Life in the Clas­sic, Avant-Garde Film, Berlin: Sym­pho­ny of a Metrop­o­lis (1927)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Behold Beautiful Original Movie Posters for Metropolis from France, Sweden, Germany, Japan & Beyond

in Design, Film | December 16th, 2022

Of Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis, the crit­ic Siegfried Kra­cauer wrote that “the Amer­i­cans rel­ished its tech­ni­cal excel­lence; the Eng­lish remained aloof; the French were stirred by a film which seemed to them a blend of Wag­n­er and Krupp, and on the whole an alarm­ing sign of Ger­many’s vital­i­ty.” By Wag­n­er, Kra­cauer of course meant the com­pos­er; Krupp referred to the arms man­u­fac­tur­er Friedrich Krupp AG. We must remem­ber that Metrop­o­lis first came out in the Ger­many of 1927, and thus into a sociopo­lit­i­cal con­text grow­ing more volatile by the moment.

But the film also came out in the gold­en age of silent cin­e­ma, and every seri­ous movie­go­er in the world must have been enor­mous­ly eager for a glimpse of the spec­ta­cle of the elab­o­rate dystopi­an future Lang and his col­lab­o­ra­tors had put onscreen.

And screen around the world that spec­ta­cle did, albeit in a ver­sion cen­sored and oth­er­wise cut in a vari­ety of ways that Lang found ter­ri­bly dis­pleas­ing. How­ev­er bowd­ler­ized the Metrop­o­lis seen by so many back then, it proved to be so much of an attrac­tion that its adver­tis­ing mate­ri­als became near­ly as artis­tic as the film itself.

At Stephen O’Don­nel­l’s blog Gods and Fool­ish Grandeur, you can see a selec­tion of the posters for Metrop­o­lis put up dur­ing the late nine­teen-twen­ties and ear­ly nine­teen-thir­ties in the movie the­aters of var­i­ous coun­tries, includ­ing Swe­den, France, Japan, and Aus­tralia.

All are visu­al­ly strik­ing, but it prob­a­bly comes as no sur­prise that the Amer­i­can ones — prod­ucts, after all, of the cul­ture that gave rise to Hol­ly­wood — get espe­cial­ly breath­less with the accom­pa­ny­ing text.

“FANTASTIC FUTURISTIC FATALISTIC,” promis­es one poster, but not with­out adding “IMAGINARY IMPRESSIVE IMPOSSIBLE” and “EROTIC EXOTIC ERRATIC.” Anoth­er sheet holds out to view­ers a flight “HIGH INTO THE AIR!” Lest they sus­pect that would­n’t give them their quar­ter’s worth of fan­ta­sy, it also promis­es them a plunge “DEEP IN THE EARTH!” A dif­fer­ent tagline, also used in oth­er Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­tries, declares of the film that “Every­one is talk­ing about it, yet no one can describe it!”

That’s not for lack of try­ing, least of all by the dis­trib­u­tor’s pub­lic­i­ty depart­ment: anoth­er poster’s detailed para­graph boasts of a “mighty, surg­ing love dra­ma of the two worlds that work out their moil­ing des­tinies with­in the con­fines of a great city.” But over the gen­er­a­tions — and after restora­tions — Metrop­o­lis has sur­passed these claims with its val­ue as a work of cin­e­mat­ic art, and indeed become as time­less as a ques­tion once used to pro­mote it: “What’s the world com­ing to?”

via Messy­Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

Metrop­o­lis: Watch Fritz Lang’s 1927 Mas­ter­piece

Read the Orig­i­nal 32-Page Pro­gram for Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis (1927)

H. G. Wells Pans Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis in a 1927 Movie Review: It’s “the Sil­li­est Film”

Gaze at Glob­al Movie Posters for Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go: U.S., Japan, Italy, Poland & Beyond

10,000 Clas­sic Movie Posters Get­ting Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter at UT-Austin: Free to Browse & Down­load

40,000 Film Posters in a Won­der­ful­ly Eclec­tic Archive: Ital­ian Tarkovsky Posters, Japan­ese Orson Welles, Czech Woody Allen & Much More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch 80 Free Documentaries from Kino Lorber: Includes Films on M. C. Escher, Stanley Kubrick, Hannah Arendt, Hilma af Klint & More

in Film | December 16th, 2022

M. C. Esch­er, Han­nah Arendt, Hierony­mus Bosch, Hilma af Kint, Stan­ley Kubrick: if you’re a reg­u­lar read­er of Open Cul­ture, you’re no doubt fas­ci­nat­ed some or all of these fig­ures. Now, thanks to film dis­trib­u­tor Kino Lor­ber, you can watch entire films about them on Youtube. Hav­ing evi­dent­ly put a good deal of ener­gy toward expand­ing their Youtube chan­nel in recent months, Kino Lor­ber has uploaded such doc­u­men­taries as M. C. Esch­er: Jour­ney to Infin­i­ty, Vita Acti­va: The Spir­it of Han­nah Arendt, Hierony­mous Bosch: Touched by the Dev­il, Beyond the Vis­i­ble: Hilma af Kint, and Film­work­er (about Kubrick­’s right-hand man, the late Leon Vitali) — all of them free to watch.


So far, Kino Lor­ber’s playlist of free doc­u­men­taries con­tains 80 films, a num­ber that may vary depend­ing on your loca­tion. Some pop­u­lar selec­tions focus on music: that of Elvis Pres­ley, that of Lev­on Helm and The Band, that of Green­wich Vil­lage in the nine­teen-six­ties and sev­en­ties.

But the doc­u­men­tary is a ver­sa­tile form, able in the right direc­to­r­i­al hands to con­tain a wide range of real-life sub­jects, from art (Louise Bour­geois: The Spi­der the Mis­tress and the Tan­ger­ine, The Jeff Koons Show) to food (Sushi: Glob­al Catch, El Bul­li: Cook­ing in Progress) to nature (More than Hon­ey, The Woman Who Loves Giraffes) to reli­gion (Bril­liant Moon: Glimpses of Dil­go Khyentse Rin­poche, The Last Dalai Lama?), to cin­e­ma itself (Cap­tured on Films: The True Sto­ry of Mar­i­on Davies, Blank City).

All this gives only a hint of the sheer aes­thet­ic, intel­lec­tu­al, and cul­tur­al vari­ety of Kino Lor­ber-dis­trib­uted doc­u­men­taries. To get a fuller sense, you’ll have to explore the playlist itself, down to its most recent addi­tions like Find­ing Fela, Nol­ly­wood Baby­lon, and Lina Wert­müller: Behind the White Glass­es. Like all doc­u­men­taries worth watch­ing, these don’t just address sub­jects of inter­est, but leave their view­ers with new­ly open avenues of curios­i­ty to fol­low. Your jour­ney may begin with films about Glenn Gould, Char­lotte Ram­pling, John­ny Cash, or Maya Deren, but to what realm it will take you — that of the Bal­lets Russ­es, of Mex­i­can lucha libre wrestling, of the female Bud­dhists of the Kath­man­du Val­ley — can­not be fore­told.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed con­tent:

285 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online

Watch Free Cult Films by Stan­ley Kubrick, Fritz Lang, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi & More on the New Kino Cult Stream­ing Ser­vice

The 10 Great­est Doc­u­men­taries of All Time Accord­ing to 340 Film­mak­ers and Crit­ics

50 Must-See Doc­u­men­taries, Select­ed by 10 Influ­en­tial Doc­u­men­tary Film­mak­ers

The Atom­ic Café: The Cult Clas­sic Doc­u­men­tary Made Entire­ly Out of Nuclear Weapons Pro­pa­gan­da from the Cold War (1982)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.