This past Monday was the 182nd birthday of photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who became famous for his high speed photographs of galloping horses. In 1965, the US Department of Defense commissioned this short documentary titled It Started with Muybridge, which tells the story of how Muybridge’s early photography experiments contributed towards the advancement of science and technology during the Atomic Age.
In February 2008, Polaroid announced that it was ceasing production of instant film. ‘TIME ZERO’ is a documentary that tells the story of the last year of Polaroid film in three acts. Act I introduces the magic of Polaroid through the perspective of Polaroid artists and former employees of the corporation. Act II begins with the discontinuation of instant film and covers the grass-roots movement to keep it alive. Act III centers on ‘The Impossible Project’ and follows their against-the-odds effort to reinvent instant film.
The film was created by Polaroid enthusiast Grant Hamilton, and will premier on April 28 at the Independent Film Festival in Somerville, MA — three miles away from Polaroid’s former headquarters.
Here’s an oldie but goodie: back in September 2009, photographer Chris Weeks released this documentary about street photography titled Documenting the Human Condition. It’s occasionally preachy and at times feels like a stealthy Leica advertisement, but should be interesting to you if you’re at all interested in the practice of street photography. Read more…
Here’s an interesting 20-minute-long documentary film titled Chimping in which Dan Perez de la Garza speaks to various photojournalists about their work and the state of their profession. Subjects include two Pulitzer Prize winners and an Emmy Award winner.
Here’s a documentary film about acclaimed American photographer Richard Avedon that originally aired in 1995. If you have 90 minutes to spare, watching this movie is a great way to peek into the mind of a master and become inspired to improve your own photography.
A French photographer who goes by the pseudonym Mani was recently in Homs, Syria documenting the urban warfare between government forces and rebel fighters. The video above, broadcast by Channel 4 News in Britain, shows the amazing footage Mani was able to capture by fearlessly putting himself in the midst of skirmishes.
While the world has become used to grainy shaky and gruesome footage and images from Homs fed through whatever Internet connection is available, Mani’s crystal clear and incredible footage gives perhaps the clearest and most frightening account of what Homs has been like for the past three weeks.
Everything is a Remix is a fascinating four-part video series by filmmaker Kirby Ferguson that explores the concept of creativity, and how everything created has some degree of copying, transforming, or combining of old ideas. While the series isn’t specifically directed towards photographers, the ideas are quite relevant to the discussion of “original” work. Read more…
[...] an elegant, moving, and lyrical portrait of this quintessentially American photographer. The documentary weaves together archival footage, photographic images, dramatic readings of the artist’s own writing, and interviews with leading photographers, historians, curators, naturalists, as well as Adams’s family, friends, and colleagues, to tell the story of a man who was at once a visionary photographer, a pioneer in photographic technique, and an ardent crusader for the cause of environmentalism.
It’s about 80 minutes long. You can find out more about the film here.
PressPausePlay is an award-winning documentary film that poses questions on what the digital revolution has done to various creative industries:
The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent in an unprecedented way, with unlimited opportunities.
But does democratized culture mean better art or is true talent instead drowned out? This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world’s most influential creators of the digital era.
Although the topic of photography isn’t addressed directly, the film is very relevant to photographers, since the imaging industry has definitely been transitioning from old school (film and traditional distribution methods) to new school (digital and Web-based distribution methods).
The final nail in the Kodachrome coffin came at the end of 2010 when the last lab that processed the film, Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas, ceased its support. In Kodachrome’s final years, every roll sent to Kodak for processing from around the world was sent to Dwayne’s. This mini-documentary created by Xander Robin offers an interesting glimpse into Kodakchrome processing at Dwayne’s Photo before it came to an end.
