Yesterday's Witness

Nov 1, 1976

0h 54m

★ 0.0

a tribute to the American Newsreel

Overview

For the first 50 years of film history, the newsreel was a fixture in American movie theaters. From 1911 to 1967, these shorts proved an influential source of information – and misinformation – for generations of American moviegoers. Television news and public affairs programs became a great improvement over the scanty information offered by the newsreels. This documentary offers insight into a medium which has disappeared.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

Michael Blackwood Productions

Yesterday's Witness Trailers

Cast

Self - Narrator (voice)

Lowell Thomas

Self

Ed Herlihy

Self

Harry von Zell

Self

Jack Shaindlin

Self

Norman Alley

Self

Max Markman

Self

Joe Gibson

CNN camerawoman Margaret Moth fearlessly captures footage of war zones. After receiving catastrophic injuries in the crosshairs of battle, she returns to work with more courage than ever. An intimate portrait of a trailblazing female photojournalist. Features interviews with Moth’s family and friends, including CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. A Sundance film festival premiere directed by Lucy Lawless.

4.3

Nice Girls Don't Stay for Breakfast

Feb 27, 2019

In the late 1990s, iconic photographer Bruce Weber barely managed to convince legendary actor Robert Mitchum (1917-97) to let himself be filmed simply hanging out with friends, telling anecdotes from his life and recording jazz standards.

7.8

Zombies in the Sugar Cane Field: The Documentary

Nov 8, 2019

Tucumán, Argentina, 1965. Three years before George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead was released, director Ofelio Linares Montt shot Zombies in the Sugar Cane Field, which turned out to be both a horror film and a political statement. It was a success in the US, but could not be shown in Argentina due to Juan Carlos Onganía's dictatorship, and was eventually lost. Writer and researcher Luciano Saracino embarks on the search for the origins of this cursed work.

5.5

Daughter of the Crater

Sep 13, 2019

A woman with a deep love of the land, Yolande Simard Perrault sees her life as having been shaped by a planetary upheaval in Charlevoix, Quebec, millions of years ago. As enduring as the Canadian Shield, she’s a woman of strength and spirit, a child of the crater left by the meteor’s impact. This documentary portrays a determined woman who’s the reflection of a land created on an immense scale. She was the creative and life partner of filmmaker Pierre Perrault, who gave up everything to be by her side. The film charts the influence of her unquenchable dreams and her contribution to the building of a people’s collective memory. In a stream of images and words, Simard Perrault recounts the splendours of the landscape and the people who shaped it. Generous and boundless, she embarks on a quest for identity that nurtures and perpetuates the oeuvre of the man who breathed new life into Quebec cinema.

7.2

The Celluloid Closet

Jan 30, 1996

What "That's Entertainment" did for movie musicals, "The Celluloid Closet" does for Hollywood homosexuality, as this exuberant, eye-opening movie serves up a dazzling hundred-year history of the role of gay men and lesbians have had on the silver screen. Lily Tomlin narrates as Oscar-winning moviemaker Rob Epstein ("The Times of Harvey Milk" and "Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt") and Jeffrey Friedman assemble fabulous footage from 120 films showing the changing face of cinema sexuality, from cruel stereotypes to covert love to the activist triumphs of the 1990s. Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg, Tony Curtis, Harvey Fierstein and Gore Vidal are just a few of the many actors, writers and commentators who provide funny and insightful anecdotes.

6.5

At the Edge of Russia

Jan 1, 2010

Alexei is a nineteen year old recruit being flown in to perform his military service on the frontier of northern Russia. The base is one of few such remaining outposts on the Arctic Ocean. There are five other seasoned and long serving soldiers stationed here, each with their own personal story or secret that has caused them to retreat from the real world. Their training and breaking in of the new arrival is sometimes humorous, at times harsh. Gradually, they each reveal something of themselves in their daily interactions and private moments as they continue their absurd duty in this snow covered no man's land, hundreds of miles from the nearest human settlement.

5.9

Done the Impossible

Jul 28, 2006

A documentary covering Firefly's birth, death and rebirth from the perspective of both the fans and the cast and crew of both productions.

0.0

Rich Media, Poor Democracy

Jan 1, 2003

Robert McChesney lays the blame for the US's current state of affairs squarely at the doors of the corporate boardrooms of big media, which far from delivering on their promises of more choice and more diversity, have organized a system characterized by a lack of competition, homogenization of opinion and formulaic programming.

8.0

Lex Barker - Westernheld und Playboy

Oct 1, 2023

He is the most sought-after man in Europe in the 1960s. Lex Barker embodies the flawless hero in his films and, as Old Shatterhand, becomes a role model for generations of fans. Revered in Europe, misunderstood and almost forgotten in his native America. But who was this American who rode through Yugoslavia in a leather costume for the European audience? In 1973, Lex Barker died of a heart attack on the streets of Manhattan in New York. But no one recognizes the man who was Tarzan in Hollywood. Nobody knows him or cares about that he, as Winnetou's friend, is revered as an icon in Europe. Lex Barker's European western adventures are just a footnote in American film history. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his death, the documentary tells the story of one of the most beautiful men who ever flickered across Europe's cinema screens, for whom European cinema proved to be a stroke of luck and for whom a failed Hollywood career took him via Italy to Germany.

0.0

Never a Backward Step

Jan 1, 1966

This feature documentary is a profile of Canadian press tycoon Roy Thomson, whose single-minded attention to business brought him riches, power, and even a baronetcy in England. A native of Timmins, Ontario, Thomson had a tremendous career as publisher, television magnate, financier, and owner of many newspapers, including leading London dailies. The film is a frank study of an equally frank man.

7.2

The One, the Only, the Real Tarzan

Aug 22, 2004

The glorious and tragic story of American athlete and actor Johnny Weissmuller (1904-84), Olympic swimmer, water polo player and the only true Tarzan, an archetypal character and myth of cinema, that of the original Hollywood blockbusters (1932-48).

8.0

Hell on Wheels

Jun 10, 2004

Year after year hundreds of thousands of fans line the route of the Tour de France, cheering on their heroes and willing them to victory, while millions of viewers worldwide tune in on their televisions. Academy Award-winning director Pepe Danquart, fascinated by the spectacle of the three week race, chose to focus on the courage, the pain and the fear of the riders of the Tour. Training his lens on German superstar sprinter Eric Zabel and his loyal domestique Rolf Aldag, Danquart captures the thrill of the race and the teamwork behind the stars of the peleton. He also shines light on the Tour's supporting cast - the director sportifs, masseurs, and, of course, the wildly enthusiastic fans. Reveling in the stunning landscape - from the Alps to the Pyrenees to the Massif Central to Paris - and with a nice dollop of Le Tour's history, HELL ON WHEELS transcends the sport it celebrates to reveal an astonishing human endeavor.

2.0

Cinema Now

Apr 8, 2022

A fragmented collection of independent closed cinemas, in London during lockdown, captured on Super 8mm film.

7.0

The Lot of Fun: Hollywood’s Fun Factory

May 29, 2014

A documentary about film producer Hal Roach.

7.6

Becoming Marilyn

Jul 7, 2022

The story of how Norma Jeane Mortenson became Marilyn Monroe (1926-62), a lucid path of self-discovery, from anonymity to stardom: the painful birth of a myth.

7.8

Indiana Jones: The Search for the Lost Golden Age

May 7, 2021

Hawaii, May 1977. After the success of Star Wars, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg meet to find a new project to work on together, the former as producer, the latter as director. The story of how the charismatic archaeologist Indiana Jones was born and how his first adventure, released in 1981, triumphed at box offices around the world.

7.1

Lost in La Mancha

Feb 11, 2002

Fulton and Pepe's 2000 documentary captures Terry Gilliam's attempt to get The Man Who Killed Don Quixote off the ground. Back injuries, freakish storms, and more zoom in to sabotage the project.

Yesterday's Witness

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

Yesterday's Witness Trailers