Ein Clown - ein Leben

Grazing the Sky is a compelling look at the lives of trapeze artists and other circus performers. The film was shot for over two years covering 11 countries, including the Americas, Europe and the Near East. It follows the nomadic lives of circus performers. The audience follows 10 protagonists as they try to reach perfection and meet their lofty goals. The documentary sheds light on the contemporary circus world, and focuses on performers who devote themselves to the greatest show on earth.

Elephants are among the most majestic and intelligent creatures on Earth-but for hundreds of years, they have suffered at the hands of humans. Narrated by Lily Tomlin, this documentary short traces our long history with elephants and explores the many problems that arise when they are brought to live in captivity in zoos and circuses.

This documentary is about the Italian small family circus, based on the old street theatre of the Commedia dell'Arte. Since World War II, they have diminished in number and today hardly exist anymore. They simply can't compete with modern times entertainment, symbolized by television. The film portrays and follows the Colombaioni family, six brothers and two sisters, their children and grand children. Most of them work in their own small circus(father, mother, children). Two of the brothers, Carlo and Alberto left the circus and now have a theatre show, based on their improvisation skills that they learned in the circus. The family is known by their collaboration with Frederico Fellini and Dario Fo. They appeared in many a Fellini movie -o.a. La Strada, Le Notti di Cabiria and I Clown.

Alexander Calder created and performed one of the most important and beloved works, his miniature circus (1926-1931). More than twenty years later Jean Painleve made Le Grande Cirque Calder 1927, begun in 1953 and completed in 1955.

From the slow waitings for opening of the big top to the loneliness in the dressing room backstage, Abuhadba follows the life of a small circus in Chile run entirely by a traditional circus family.

A Documentary on the Creation of OVO, by Cirque du Soleil

Errol Morris’s Fast, Cheap & Out of Control interweaves the stories of four men, each driven to create eccentric worlds from their unique obsessions, all of which involve animals. There’s a lion tamer who shares his theories on the mental processes of wild animals; a topiary gardener who has devoted a lifetime to shaping bears and giraffes out of hedges and trees; a man fascinated with hairless mole rats; and an MIT scientist who has designed complex, autonomous robots that can crawl like bugs.

This documentary highlights the evolution of Brazil's Circo Voador venue from homespun artists' performance space to national cultural institution.

The Pickle Family Circus was founded by Lorenzo Pisoni's parents in 1974. The film documents the spirit, the lunacy, the daring, the danger and the dynamics of growing up in a circus family.

Vienna’s Prater is an amusement park and a desire machine. No mechanical invention, no novel idea or sensational innovation could escape incorporation into the Prater. The diverse story-telling in Ulrike Ottinger’s film “Prater” transforms this place of sensations into a modern cinema of attractions. The Prater’s history from the beginning to the present is told by its protagonists and those who have documented it, including contemporary cinematic images of the Prater, interviews with carnies, commentary by Austrians and visitors from abroad, film quotes, and photographic and written documentary materials. The meaning of the Prater, its status as a place of technological innovation, and its role as a cultural medium are reflected in texts by Elfriede Jelinek, Josef von Sternberg, Erich Kästner and Elias Canetti, as well as in music devoted to this amusement venue throughout the course of its history.