1925 Studio Tour

This second entry in MGM's "Romance of Film" series documents how celluloid movie film is processed and features behind-the-scenes glimpses of current MGM productions.

Early Balkan footage.

Early Balkan footage.

Film historians, and survivors from the nearly 30-year struggle to bring sound to motion pictures take the audience from the early failed attempts by scientists and inventors, to the triumph of the talkies.

A silent succession of black-and-white photographs of the city of Montreal.

In 1916, twenty-year-old Marion Wong wrote and directed The Curse of Quon Gwon, the earliest example of an Asian American film. What initially appears to be a story about a Chinese family cursed for allowing Western influence through the door, proves to be an illuminating examination of cultural diaspora years ahead of its time.Sandwiched between two global pandemics, this documentary follows the Wong family descendents as they secure The Curse of Quon Gwon its place in film history and new revelations rise to the surface.

The lives of Stan Laurel (1890-1965) and Oliver Hardy (1892-1957), on the screen and behind the curtain. The joy and the sadness, the success and the failure. The story of one of the best comic duos of all time: a lesson on how to make people laugh.

Wallace Carlson walks viewers through the production of an animated short at Bray Studios.

An overview of the works of French film pioneers Louis and Auguste Lumière from 1895 to 1897.

Follows the behind-the-scenes work of Studio Ghibli, focusing on the notable figures Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, and Toshio Suzuki.

"[Hutton’s] latest urban film, New York Portrait, Chapter III, takes on a unique tone in relation to Hutton’s ongoing exploration of rural landscape. The very fact that Hutton is dealing with older footage, with archives of memory more than immediacy, gives it a different texture than his earlier New York films. Hutton always found the presence of nature in the city, not only in his many shots of sky and vegetation, but also in the geometry and texture of the city itself, which seemed to project an independence from the human." (Tom Gunning)