This VHS video includes two short documentaries by Elda Hartley. In the first, THE ART OF MEDITATION, Alan Watts gives us techniques and advice for meditating. Elda Hartley herself narrates the second film, MEDITATION: THE JOURNEY INWARD, which exposes viewers to different cultural approaches to meditation. Hartley then discusses how meditation enriches one's life, and what it can reveal to us.

Jag Mandir is a quiet and often overlooked film in the vast oeuvre of Werner Herzog. Apparently, 20 hours of footage was shot that covered the whole fest and the film hardly presents us a twentieth of that. A native walking into the film in between may well fail to immediately realize that it is his country that is being shown and these are figures from the mythology of various sections of his nation. The bulk of the film consists of footage of an elaborate theatrical performance for the Maharana Arvind Singh Mewar at the City Palace of Udaipur, Rajasthan staged by André Heller.

A quickfire portrait of the New York City ballroom scene in the ‘80s.

A love story, portraying the dilemmas and inevitable consequences of ambition. It is a film about a woman's fight for independence, a woman trying to succeed with her own art in the extremely competitive world of dance.

A couple of dancers appear one morning in a High School. It's Monday and they announce to a group of youngsters that they have five days to get up on stage and dance. A short time but a big challenge. The dance compels these youngsters to break through their roles exactly at the time of their lives when the social roles are being forged. The handsome boy is no longer the most admired, the timid one takes a step forward. Wilfried van Popple and Amaya Lubeigt are the choreographers. Professional dancers who have decided now to work with people who have never danced before. This is the challenge: five days, a class of teenagers, a microcosm in which occurs a little big bang.

Released on DVD as part of The Criterion Collection's "Martha Graham: Dance on Film" collection.

This short documentary describes the process and inspiration behind the creation and performance of a new Cuban ballet based on Afro-Cuban traditions and beliefs.

While most of Ken Russell's documentaries for the BBC's Monitor arts strand focused on a single creative figure, he would also occasionally make more wide-ranging surveys of the state of a particular art. The Light Fantastic (BBC, tx. 18/12/1960) was written and presented by Ron Hitchins, a Cockney barrow boy who has long been interested in a great many dance forms, and who has recently taken up Spanish dancing. Hitchins participates in some of the dance sequences, but his main contribution is an enthusiastic commentary that helps personalise what could have been simply a disparate collection of dance footage. He's not shy about expressing likes and dislikes, being none too keen on ballroom dancing (too choreographed), rock'n'roll (too monotonous) and Morris dancing (just doesn't like it), though anything genuinely spontaneous gets a thumbs up, even if it's a room full of people dressed in black swaying to the sound of a gong.

Merlin nightclub opened in 1992 in Barcelona and its medieval appearance did not leave anyone indifferent from the first day. After more than 30 years of enjoying the night with its characteristic atmosphere and varied musical selection, the castle was forced to close its doors in January 2023 despite filling the room every weekend. This video immortalizes the place through its regular customers and staff.

Rumba Rules, New Genealogies offers an enjoyable, rough-edged glimpse into the music scene of Kinshasa, with impromptu shots drawing the viewer into jam sessions on plastic chairs, and the quest for perfection at the studio.

Narrated by Terence Stamp, this TV program documents the life and career of famed ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, through interviews with friends and colleagues and archive footage.

Pina Bausch created and performed Café Müller for her dance company Tanztheater Wuppertal. The dance was inspired by and based on her childhood memories of watching her father work at his café in Germany during and immediately following World War II. In this silent style featurette, Bausch shows a restaurant after closing, in which the ghosts of the departed customers stumble blindly into walls and onto chairs but fail to find one another.

BLACK BALLERINA tells the story of several black women from different generations who fell in love with ballet. Six decades ago, while pursuing their dreams, Joan Myers Brown, Delores Browne and Raven Wilkinson confronted racism, exclusion and unequal opportunity. Today, young dancers of color continue to face formidable challenges breaking into the overwhelmingly white world of ballet. Moving back and forth in time, this lyrical, character driven film shows how far we still have to go and stimulates a fresh discussion about race, inclusion and opportunity across all sectors of American society.

In Jacob Sutton’s film “Ascension”, two young dancers soar up from the darkness beneath the stage at Bastille to the sumptuous Grand Foyer and eventually to the rooftop of the Palais Garnier, where they experience moments of heavenly, dreamlike luminosity.

Miss Hill: Making Dance Matter tells the inspiring and largely unknown story of a woman whose life was defined by her love for dance. Martha Hill emerges as dance's secret weapon, someone who fought against great odds to establish dance as a legitimate art form in America. Through archival footage, lively interviews with friends and intimates, and rare footage of the spirited subject, the film explores Hills's arduous path from a Bible Belt childhood in Ohio to the halls of academe at NYU and Bennington College to a position of power and influence as Juilliard's founding director of dance (1952-1985). Peppered with anecdotal material delivered by dance notables who knew her, this revelatory story depicts her struggles and successes, including the battle royal that accompanied her move to the Lincoln Center campus.

Urban is a short documentary on the importance of dance in shaping the identity of five young adolescent girls. In the Susp3ctz dance crew, they learn the basics of hip hop, house, krump, in order to learn to freestyle and reveal their own identity.

Portrait of Lester Horton, a Los Angeles-based dancer, choreographer and teacher who trained many world-reknowned dancers and built the first American theater devoted permanently to dance. Former students and friends, including Bella Lewitzky, Alvin Ailey, and Carmen de Lavallade, help create a picture of Horton through interviews. Includes numerous dance excerpts.

A document of Tatsumi Hijikata's Butoh dance with Kazuo Ohno as the guest dancer shot in Hijikata's early period when he was emerging as the originator of Butoh. All of the male dancers are dressed up with evening suits and move gracefully, yet an intruder breaks up the whole scene abruptly. The film is worth seeing, even if just to see a memorable gay duet of Hijikata and Ohno. Overexposed, washed out images are sandwiched among normal ones.

A short documentary following Paulette Harwood, a 90-year-old former Radio City Music Hall Corps de Ballet soloist, as she teaches the final classes in a school she's run for sixty years.

Movie and stage icon Debbie Reynolds hosts the making of "Singin' in the Rain". The short documentary includes Donald O'Connor, who played the comical "Cosmo Brown", Stanley Donen, one half of the directors next to Gene Kelly, and Kathleen Freeman, who played Phoebe Dinsmore, Lina Lamont's (Jean Hagen) voice coach.