Movies: Alberto Cavalcanti

“Musical performers Henry Hall and his Orchestra hog the limelight in this promotional film, ostensibly for Ascot gas water heaters.” - BFI....

The film, made to advertise domestic telephone sets, is based around two very different families. The Petts are conventional, happy and have children; the Potts are unconventional and unhappy, without children....

1935 documentary about the hard working life of Welsh coal miners....

An impressionistic portrait of the BBC....

The whimsical Riquet's has kidnapped and married a well-born young girl, Ralda. They travel around Spain performing their act in a circus but Ralda's beauty arouses the director's lust. Furious at being rejected, he opens a lion's cage during Ralda's...

Le P'tite Lili is a short film directed by Alberto Cavalcanti in 1927. This is a visual illustration of a song, The Lady of gravel and Benech Lilie, with music for the audio version of 1930 by Darius Milhaud. Only one original copy of this tragic sto...

British war documentary...

A nurse falls in love with her patient and secretly marries him. When treating another patient, he falls in love with her and, pretending to be in agony, asks for one last wish: to marry him, and she accepts....

Documentary about the construction of tlephone lines....

This film is based on actual letters German soldiers sent home from the siege of Leningrad during World War II. The litany of trouble these poor grunts endured is lamentable. One complains of returning home an invalid. An SS man has bad dreams about ...

Documentary on savings...

In the drought areas of Northeastern of Brazil, groups of migrants move trying to find better place to live, at least with water. Some of them go to Recife, to get a vessel to Santos expecting to have a better life in the Southern. In the poor area o...

Wartime propaganda short in which a professor enlists the help of a dustman to explain the importance of saving paper, bones and metal to help the war effort....

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The first behind-the-scenes documentary in the film industry, from the making of a camera (Debrie) to studio shooting and directing, including animation techniques. Pierre Chenal meets André Rigal who executes, in his workshop, a series of freehand d...

The ill-fated romance of a brow-beaten seaport slum café waitress and a young man with a possessive mother, who dreams of going out to sea....

The first months of WWII as experienced by the new young recruits - the 'young Berts' - of the British Army....

A young couple goes through a plot unscathed in the welcoming salons of a large fashion house....

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Drama-documentary, reconstructing a real incident in which a trawler got into difficulties in a North Sea storm. Released 7th March 1938....