Filmmaker Jethro Waters has a background in cinematography and an ear for music. He tackles the biopic of master photographer Burk Uzzle without ever making you feel like you’re doing homework. There is energy in his work and a true respect for his subject. Though it’s hard to witness how little America has progressed in terms of racial justice since Uzzle began working seven decades ago, the film vibrates with hope that good things might yet still come. We sat down over Zoom to discuss his film “F11 and Be There” and some of the influences that contributed to its creation.

In 1988, nearly a decade after leaving the US for France, renegade filmmaker Robert Kramer returns. “Back,” he emphasizes. Not “home.” To try to understand the contemporary United States, he decides to travel the entire length of Route 1, from the Canadian border to Key West, filming all the way for five months. ROUTE ONE/USA was shot more than 30 years ago, but it feels remarkably contemporary in its portrayal of many of the racial, social, and economic challenges America continues to face.

One of the founding principles of OVID is a commitment to openness and transparency. For any number of reasons we believe that it is high-time for the film and media industries to open the books and share with both our members (subscribers, customers, viewers) and our filmmaking, producing, and distribution partners, the real numbers and metrics and dollars and cents of the business. We’d be happy to enter into a discussion with our colleagues, distributors, and other VOD and SVOD services about this idea and why information such as that shown here is generally so closely held.

OVID is pleased to premiere and present exclusively in the United States, the restored version of the French New Wave’s classic omnibus film, Six in Paris (Paris vu par…). And taking advantage of a capability in our platform, OVID is able to present Six in Paris in both its original feature-length version, and as the six separate short films […]

I first learned about Madeline Anderson (b. 1927), primarily through her work on the public affairs news program Black Journal, when I was a graduate student conducting research on African-American cultural production. As I recall, her name was a footnote in an essay; there was not much information beyond a credit line. At the time, I was seeking to identify pioneering female filmmakers since the field of study is often so male-dominated. I was determined to find out if there were women working behind the camera as well. As my research expanded, I learned about Zora Neale Hurston’s anthropol

Jiayin Liu’s Oxhide (2005) is composed of 23 static shots, inside of a small, claustrophobic apartment in Beijing, China. Within each shot are only pieces of the apartment, along with only pieces of Liu, her mother and her father. She commits to a narrative refraction of an only child in a family of bag makers with a non-fictional rigor that eschews any kind of objective context for a Western spectator. Distinctions between the film’s events and Liu’s real life cannot be accounted for. Her presentation operates with biblical fervor, awash in every frame, are individual moments that are p

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