Movies: Manfred Kirchheimer

"Eisenstein journeyed to Mexico in late 1930 to begin shooting a film. With backing provided by Upton and Mary Craig Sinclair, the great Soviet auteur planned to make an epoch-spanning pageant of Mexico’s political history and cultural iconography, m...

Produced and directed by Hurwitz for National Educational Television (precursor of PBS), Hurwitz uses biographer and Columbia professor, John Unterecker, to help him look for the poet, Hart Crane, in his work and in the memories of many of his contem...

Stations of the Elevated exposes viewers to an underground art scene- that is, one found exclusively on the sides of subways and train cars. A moving portrait of late-70's NYC, the film boasts a soundtrack by jazz legends Charles Mingus & Aretha Fran...

The anger and outrage captured by graphic artists have defined revolutions through the centuries. Printmakers have depicted the human condition in all its glories and struggles so powerfully that perceptions, attitudes and politics have been dramatic...

Documentary examining the work of sculptor Richard Lippold, particular his sculpture of the sun at the Metropolitan Museum of Art....

First shown on January 30, 1967, FOR LIFE AGAINST THE WAR was an open-call, collective statement from American independent filmmakers disparate in style and sensibility but united by their opposition to the Vietnam War. Part of the protest festival W...

Documentary about New York skyscrapers....

Meticulously restored and constructed 16mm black-and-white footage shot in New York between 1958 and 1960. This lustrous evocation of a different rhythm of life captures the in-between moments—kids playing stickball, window washers, folks reading new...

The astonishing story of the first documentary film school in the USA—The Institute of Film Techniques at The City College of New York. This groundbreaking program exposed thousands of working-class kids raised on Hollywood movies to the power of doc...

Manfred kirchheimer featurette...

Following his use of art, painting and sculpture, in his work of the previous decades, Hurwitz took on a project for the American Foundation of the Arts aimed at deepening and enriching, for art students, the way in which we see. Working with his sec...

A poetic blend of documentary and experimental filmmaking, depicting the changes brought on by urban planning as seen in New York City and the large mechanical claw that demolishes the architecture seen in the film....

Rummaging through city trash for hours and miles, New York’s gleaners gather and recycle soda cans for a nickel apiece. The stories they tell are full of humor, violence, tragedy, and resilience. As Kirchheimer’s documentary reveals, however, their t...

Documentary that follows four graffiti artists who trace the history of graffiti...

Between 1958 and 1960 Walter Hess and Manny Kirchheimer shot black and white 16mm film from Wall Street to midtown New York to the Delaware River. They documented the activities at a huge construction site, street life in Hell’s Kitchen, New York har...

A coda to the suite Kirchheimer began with 2018’s Dream of a City, One More Time poignantly intercuts our last glimpses of the cycle’s black-and-white, late-fifties New York with color outtakes from 1981’s Stations of the Elevated, depicting a differ...

How the art in the Detroit Institute of Art connects to life's experiences and the neighborhood....

A humorous and illuminating series of coffee klatches with 20 friends that proves the old adage, “Where you have two Jews, you have three opinions.” Ranging in age from 18 to 85, and in experience from greenhorn to Pulitzer-Prize winner, the film’s s...

Passage across a suspension bridge, moving from the country to the city, a half minute trip ­expanded. Choreographed cables, girders and arches....

Crafted from the endless wealth of images filmed in 16mm on a Bolex by Kirchheimer and Walter Hess, Up the Lazy River is the conclusion of the triptych begun with Dream of a City and Free Time. Beginning with paired images of boulders planted in the...