Every school day, African-American teenagers William Gates and Arthur Agee travel 90 minutes each way from inner-city Chicago to St. Joseph High School in Westchester, Illinois, a predominately white suburban school well-known for the excellence of its basketball program. Gates and Agee dream of NBA stardom, and with the support of their close-knit families, they battle the social and physical obstacles that stand in their way. This acclaimed documentary was shot over the course of five years.
African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Mississippi. After Tibbs proves not only his own innocence but that of another man, he joins forces with Gillespie to track down the real killer. Their investigation takes them through every social level of the town, with Tibbs making enemies as well as unlikely friends as he hunts for the truth.
Londoner Harry Fabian is a second-rate con man looking for an angle. After years of putting up with Harry's schemes, his girlfriend, Mary, becomes fed up when he taps her for yet another loan.
An uptight English writer traveling to Crete on a matter of business finds his life changed forever when he meets the gregarious Alexis Zorba. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation in 2004.
Kris Kringle, seemingly the embodiment of Santa Claus, is asked to portray the jolly old fellow at Macy's following his performance in the Thanksgiving Day parade. His portrayal is so complete that many begin to question if he truly is Santa Claus, while others question his sanity. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation in 2009.
Shortly before the start of WW2, renown British big-game hunter Thorndike vacationing in Bavaria has Hitler in his gun sight. He is captured, beaten, left for dead, and escapes back to London where he is hounded by Nazi agents and aided by a young woman. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation in 2000.
While filing for a divorce, beautiful ex-stripper Roslyn Taber ends up meeting aging cowboy-turned-gambler Gay Langland and former World War II aviator Guido Racanelli. The two men instantly become infatuated with Roslyn and, on a whim, the three decide to move into Guido's half-finished desert home together. When grizzled ex-rodeo rider Perce Howland arrives, the unlikely foursome strike up a business capturing wild horses.
After being discredited as a coward, a 19th century seaman lives for only one purpose: to redeem himself. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2000.
A Korean War vet returns to his job as a railroad engineer and becomes involved in a sordid affair with a co-worker's wife and murder. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment, in 1997.
A greedy King Midas is visited one day by a mysterious visitor who grants him the ability to turn all things he touches to gold. He learns his lesson when the food he tries to eat and his own daughter are turned to gold as well. The visitor reappears and offers him the opportunity to return to his old self, which he gladly does. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2004.
The first Studies were synchronized with records (Fischinger made a total of 13 Studies all without sound). It was only with the introduction of sound, beginning with Study No 6 that the films did full justice to this musical principle. The play of the white lines, the arcs, and the upside-down U’s running hither and thither like ballet dancers was brought into perfect synchronization with the music, and thus the films offered an abstract illustration of the melodies. Study No 6 is certainly the best of his films in terms of forms. - Hans Scheugl and Ernst Schmidt, Jr. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2001.
Albert and David Maysles (Gimme Shelter) directed this 53-minute documentary about movie tycoon Joseph E. Levine (1963). Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.
A 1944 propaganda short film produced for the U.S. Treasury Department and intended to boost war bond sales, directed by an uncredited Alfred Hitchcock and starring Jennifer Jones as a nurse's aide. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive, from the Academy War Film Collection, in 2008.
Begins with a three beat announcement drawn out in time which thereafter serves as a figure to divide the four sections. Each return of this figure is more condensed, and finally used in reverse to conclude the film. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2004.
A disgraced sea captain signs on as a crewman on a cargo ship. He discovers that the vessel is captained by the very man who stole his ship, a sadistic brute who also took the former captain's wife and daughter. The ship's crew is composed mostly of sailors who were shanghai'ed aboard and are kept in line by the brutal captain and his even more fearsome first mate. The captain and one of his fellow crewmen--who has fallen in love with the man's daughter, who now belongs to the brutal captain--try to unite the crew to end the brutal reign of the captain and his henchman. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2007.
An ode to queer sex and drugs, boys shooting up and kissing. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 1998.
"One continuous, intimate shot from within the commune…Being is seen as transitory; everything is in the infinite process of becoming." Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.
a 32-minute color film by Gwen Brown, featuring precious footage of Living Theatre productions “Mysteries” and smaller pieces, “Paradise Now” and “Frankenstein.” “The fusion of Brown’s freewheeling direct cinema and the Living Theatre’s performance for revolutionary change (amidst the heydays of both) unite as a dynamic concoction of the era, yielding for the viewer a shifting terrain of both critical insight and ecstatic zeal, not as a vacant nostalgia for a pre-commodified radicality, but as tactical inspiration for future days.” – Andrew Wilson (Artist’s Access Television)
The story revolves around a woman, who stays in a large mansion with her husband. She develops an obsession for her ornaments and refrains giving them to her husband as they face financial crisis. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Arsenal - Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V. in 2007.