First up is La Camioneta:
Every day dozens of decommissioned school buses leave the United States on a southward migration that carries them to Guatemala, where they are repaired, repainted, and resurrected as the brightly-colored camionetas that bring the vast majority of Guatemalans to work each day. Since 2006, nearly 1,000 camioneta drivers and fare-collectors have been murdered for either refusing or being unable to pay the extortion money demanded by local Guatemalan gangs. LA CAMIONETA follows one such bus on its transformative journey: a journey between North and South, between life and death, and through an unfolding collection of moments, people, and places that serve to quietly remind us of the interconnected worlds in which we live.
Next is Go Grandriders, a film from Taiwan about the trials and tribulations of a group of elderly men on a motorcycle trip:
In Go Grandriders, a group of senior citizens embark on what may be the most daring adventure of their lives: a thirteen-day tour—entirely on motorcycle—around the island of Taiwan. A number in the group have heart problems, two have had cancer, and their average age is 81. The trip brings harrowing escapes (one rider falls asleep at the wheel, while another is knocked off his bike by a truck), pure exhilaration (including a gleeful romp in the waves when riders reach Taiwan’s east coast), and somber reflection, as riders recall their youths fighting in the Sino-Japanese War.
Then we move to a beautiful film called Trains of Winnipeg: 14 Film Poems available through MUBI.* There's a 17-minute version of the film available, and the full length version on MUBI which is 89 minutes:
Trains of Winnipeg: 14 Film Poems is a feature-length film cycle that straddles the borders between the balkanized worlds of cinema, visual art, music and literature. The 14 films in this major cycle employ a wide variety of non-linear digital and filmic formal experiments in depicting suburban and urban dystopias, in essays exploring the politics of form and the form of personal politics, as well as in audiovisual tone poems celebrating the raw joy of moving pictures, sound, colour and light.
The films are pulled together with the overarching metaphor of a train journey, culminating in the title film, an unabashed love ballad for the rusty grace and brute power of the Trains of Winnipeg. The film also acts as a portal from the analog century to the digital beyond, where everything looks the same, but we know it’s not.
More about Clive Holden's project is on his website, including information about a related book and CD.
Another film on MUBI, the 1968 film The Girl on a Motorcycle, is described as a "counterculture classic" about a woman "on a doomed psychedelic and erotic journey":
It looks like you can watch the entire film here.
And finally, Arrival of a Train, a fascinating short silent film by the Lumière brothers:
For many, cinema began on December 28, 1895, with the first public projection of short films like Arrival of a Train and The Card Party by Louis and Auguste Lumière. But these iconic films also exist in alternative versions, sometimes with each frame of the print colored by hand! Lobster Films purchased the original Lumiere-perforation negatives of Arrival of a Train and fifty other titles at an auction in Lyon for about fifty U.S. dollars. They were wrapped up in old paper, which turned out to be an original poster of Watering the Gardener, perhaps the very first poster in the history of moving pictures!*MUBI (formerly The Auteurs) is a really fantastic independent and alternative site that streams films. It's described as an "online cinematheque." I don't love the new film format - where they upload a new film each day and have an ongoing collection of 30 films available to view (so one rotates out each day) - because I like taking forever to watch a film if I feel like it. But, still it's only $4.99 a month and there's always a well-curated and diverse group of films. This month Nick Broomfield's films are being featured. There are also lots of free things to watch in MUBI's general library of films.
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