1950s Documentary Movies

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Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

The film depicts part of Priest Donizetti Tavares de Lima's trajectory in a little town in the State of São Paulo called Tambaú, where he performed a series of miracles.

One of the first filmed portraits of a jazz musician.

The film recounts the adventures of three lovable animals, a Viszla, a Dachshund and a northern goshawk. The animals are accidentally taken to the shores of Lake Kis-Balaton, where many surprises and adventures await them. Created in 1958, it is a classic of Hungarian nature film, generations have grown up with it, and today's children still enjoy the story of Ficko, Pletyka and Nimrod in a beautiful setting.

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Documentary about the life in Berlin in 1941. The planned premier was stopped by the national party due to the damages and painful changes to the city that soon followed. It thus premiered in 1950.

Institutional film made for Petrobras in 1958, through a public announcement, about the company's actions for the training of technicians specialized in petroleum engineering.

Twenty-four hours in the story of the British Railways Channel ferryboats, the 'link spans' directly joining the roads and railways of Britain with those of France and all the Continent. The Lord Warden laden with an assortment of road vehicles from Dover, and the Night Ferry from Newhaven carrying passengers bound for Paris, Vienna or Rome are two of the ferries illustrated in this film; and freight is not forgotten.

A documentary on the island off the French Riviera where 'bathing in the buff' isn't just practiced, it's highly encouraged!

A short documentary directed by Jesus Franco.

The State Folk Ensemble has performed the dance game more than a thousand times, and it has traveled all over the world. The short film was shot in Ecser, Gyömrő, Dabas and in the capital, in the studio of Magyar Filmgyártó Vállalat.

Short movie by Marta Meszaros

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The film presents the wildlife of the Gemenc flood area sanctuary, arranging the episodes of each selected species into little etudes: how the fox steals the chicken from the pen, how the roused deer flees jumping across a huge abyss, how the sturgeon sticks to the bottom of the water, how the adoption of an orphaned fawn takes place. Wildlife is wound into striking novellas by shedding light on the inner life of the forest’s inhabitants.

A rare Soviet documentary film from 1951, directed by Pavel Klushantsev. It explores the history of humanity’s study of the universe, from ancient astronomy to modern understandings of the solar system, examining the structure of the cosmos, the planets, and advances in scientific space research.

An East German documentary by Andrew and Annelie Thorndike investigating NATO General Hans Speidel’s alleged role in the 1934 assassination of Yugoslav King Alexander I and French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou. Drawing on archival footage and documents, it scrutinizes Speidel’s past and postwar career, provoking controversy and a ban in West Germany. The film won First Prize at the 1958 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and the Heinrich Greif Prize in East Germany.

This "Theater of Life" series short focuses on a medical services ship that stops in the native village of Haines, Alaska. The natives are depicted as superstitious of modern medicine. In the end, however, youngster Ralph Sarlan (the only person identified by the narrator) is taken by airplane to get corrective surgery on his deformed foot.

A documentary about the life of Jewish children forced to live in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

Two couples, one from St. Louis and one from Switzerland, each go to the other's country and travel around.

A short documentary directed by Jesus Franco.

A synthesis of the life and soul of Portugal, with the sea, the river, the mountains, the plains, and the people who dance and work, cry and laugh, are born and die. From the Minho to the Algarve, distant places, sometimes difficult to access, were chosen for their beauty and picturesque, to figure in a register that allies realism to poetry?

Detailed record of the celebration of the day of the Virgin of Andacollo, a feast that takes place between December 23 and 27 in the city of Andacollo, located in the Coquimbo Region, Chile. The arrival of the pilgrims, the way to the temple, and the beginning of the procession of the Virgin through the town, along with the dances of the numerous brotherhoods that gather. Then, the penitences for completed errands, other activities around the festivity and, finally, the departure of the pilgrims.

Johan van der Keuken's first film is a uniquely beautiful portrait of Paris at dawn.

Through the forward-looking windows of the new diesel multiple-unit trains reveals a new world of signs, signals and railway sights to those who ride behind the driver. For children, particularly, find this is a fascinating experience. This film communicates something of their excitement and wonder as well as some of the wry, un-conscious humour with which their pertinent and amusing questions and comments are so often interlerded.

"700 meters far from humans, and million meters far from humanity…" The study of the life of the lepers of Spinalonga with a dedication and affection that brighten the neo-realistic and documentaristic framework and style of the film. Plot: We watch romantic and emotional adventures, ideological and sentimental conflicts featuring the patients, doctors and several locals. The doctor Stathis Chtenas (Giorgos Kampanellis) is disappointed at the situation on the island and confesses to the teacher (Orestis Markris) that he wants to leave soon. Their life changes with the arrival of a young volunteer doctor, Angela (Nina Sgouridou), whose dynamic presence transforms life on the island. Stathis and Angela become a couple and make everything to improve life at Spinalonga. However, on the occasion of young Sifis’s (Tzannis Kourkoulakos) “escape” from the island, Stathis’s attitude changes.

This short film is an introduction to oyster farming in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Showing the various stages of oyster cultivation, the film highlights the sampling of larvae by Department of Fisheries biologists, the staking of oyster beds by farmers, the nurturing of spat, and underwater scenes showing the dragging of the seabed with cotton mops to ensnare starfish, which prey upon the oyster. Final sequences show the grading and shipping of oysters and their arrival at the seafood restaurant or family dinner table.

An allegorical documentary about the workers of the world, whose common destinies and hopes for peace are symbolically united by the rivers that run through their respective lands. The film was shot on the Volga, the Mississippi, the Nile, the Yangtze, the Amazon and the Ganges and combines these images of five continents with the music of Dmitri Shostakovich and the poetry of both Bertolt Brecht and Paul Robeson.

The efforts of a community to build a bridge which would allow their children to go school during the rainy season.

One of several films by the Hoffman-Skórzewski duo, made as part of the "black series" of Polish documentaries showing social problems hidden from viewers behind the façade of socialist realist productions until the mid-1950s. The subject of the film are the effects of alcoholism, whose innocent victims are children.

Short documentary

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A look at the horse races at the famous track in Sluzewiec, Warsaw.

An anthology of three filmed ballets, two written for the film and the third an abridgment of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake". It was entered into the 1954 Cannes Film Festival. Filmed in color.

No overview available

No overview available

Documentary about farming in Havrå, outside Bergen. A film from a closed-off small Norwegian rural community.

Everyday the children of the neighborhood known as "Tire Dié", in the city of Santa Fe, wait for the train to ask for money, shouting "Tire dié!" (toss me a dime!) to the passengers. Considered the first survey-on-film in Latin America.