Before the Close of Day
Set during winter storms on the Staten Island Ferry, this experimental documentary is a poetic meditation on Dante’s Purgatorio. As the boats cross the New York Harbor, back and forth through the storms, Cantos from Purgatorio are read evoking a spiritual passage between places.
2021. Run time: 75 minutes. Directed by Peter Lucas, Motion Graphics by Garry Waller, Music and Sound Design by Ben Kruse.
Status: Currently under submission to film festivals. To see the trailer:
https://www.beforethecloseofday.com/
Housing Problems Macapá
Housing Problems was first shot in 1935, in the slums of London. The film is famous because it’s considered the first documentary where people address the camera with their concerns. Here is our third re-make after Hong Kong and Rio. This version was made in the Macapá wetlands (ressacas) located in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest in the state of Amapá.
2020. Running time 21 minutes. A film by Bianca Moro de Carvalho and Peter Lucas.
Status: Finished. Available to view on Vimeo.
Remembering Shakespeare
January 01, 2020
Shakespeare is the most remembered writer of all time. People from around the globe know lines from his plays and sonnets. Our documentary engages participants in a dialogue about memory, memorization and how Shakespeare’s words continue to live in us. Recurring themes are that people remember passages from Shakespeare that are connected to their own personal stories. Our film is mainly set in New York and as we moved around the city making the link between Shakespeare and these unexpectedly moving personal stories, we've tried to evoke a visual side of New York that compliments Shakespeare’s poetry.
2019. Running time: 80 mins. Directed by Cecilia Rubino & Produced by Peter Lucas. Edited by Will Lucas
Status: Remembering Shakespeare has been launched on Vimeo on Demand. Both versions, the full-length 120-minute film and the shorter 52 minute version are now available to rent or purchase. Please see our Vimeo on Demand page:
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/rememberingshakespeare
One Child Nation
January 01, 2020
Directors Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang’s documentary essay on the legacy of China’s one child policy. In this intimate and wide-reaching doc, the filmmakers lay bare the consequences and the hidden traumas of China's population control strategy.
2019. Running time 80 minutes. Directed by Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang. Creative Consultant: Peter Lucas
Status: The film won the Grand Jury Award, the top documentary prize at Sundance. Currently playing in film festivals.
SAILS
January 01, 2020
An short assemblage film using found Super 8 footage of sailing on Lake Michigan in both the summer and winter.
A film by Peter Lucas. Vimeo link and password available on request.
Running time: 12 mins. Status, completed.
The Folly of Kings
January 31, 2018
Every January in Rio de Janeiro the tradition of the Folia de Reis is celebrated in the favelas with a reenactment of the nativity and the journey of the Three Kings. On the eve of Three Kings Day, we filmed and photographed the opening songs, prayers and preparations for a 24 hour walk whereby the Folia de Reis troupe from Camarista Meier visit other communities.
2017. Running time: 16.44. A film by Peter Lucas.
Status: Vimeo and password available on request.
The Rules
Rules can be anything; laws, ideological beliefs, religious convictions, long-held customs, cultural mores, systemic practices, institutional policies, and even international human rights. With these ideas in mind, we asked people from all walks of life in Rio to pause, look at the camera and answer the question. If you could break the rules... what would you do?
2016. Running time: 75 minutes. A Collaborative Documentary Project. Conceived & Produced by Peter Lucas
Status: Finished. Vimeo and password available on request.
I Am Another You
Chinese filmmaker Nanfu Wang follows a charismatic young drifter named Dylan as he roams across America in search of freedom and escape from society’s rules. Along the way, she documents the merger of homelessness, addiction, and disabilities affecting Dylan and his fellow street dwellers. But she also captures hope, love, and the possibility of liberation with street life.
2017. Running time 75 minutes. Directed by Nanfu Wang. Creative Consultant: Peter Lucas. Available to stream online.
Passing
Passing (called Instantaneous in Brazil) is a film about the last café photographer in Rio de Janeiro. For over 40 years, the late Sergio Silvira, otherwise known as Gaucho, photographed the patrons of samba bars in Rio. Every night from 8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. he walked the streets with a large instant camera around his neck...
2010. Running Times 15 minutes. A Film by Peter Lucas & Andrea Capella
Status: Available to View on Vimeo
The Mural of Pain
Every year over 30,000 people are killed by small arms in Brazil. How can we begin to visualize these deaths? On July 7, 2000, people from all parts of Rio de Janeiro tried to evoke such a collective tragedy. For one day, they created a long wall of personal photographs of those who had died...
2013. Running time: 15 minutes. A Film by Peter Lucas & Garry Waller
Status: Available to View on Vimeo
I Am Another You
The danger is palpable as intrepid young filmmaker Nanfu Wang follows maverick activist Ye Haiyan (a.k.a Hooligan Sparrow) and her band of colleagues to Hainan Province in southern China to protest the case of six elementary school girls who were sexually abused by their principal. Marked as enemies of the state, the activists are under constant government surveillance and face interrogation, harassment, and imprisonment.
2016. Running time 80 minutes. Directed by Nanfu Wang. Creative Producer: Peter Lucas
Status: Played in major film festivals and public television in 2016. The film was short-listed for the Oscar for feature documentary in 2017. Available to stream on Netfix.
The Last Hour of Summer
A cache of photographs found at flea market in Rio de Janeiro. The beach at Ipanema. The Years 1962 and 1963 penciled on the back. Who were the women in these pictures? A time of hope, innocence, wonder. A pocket of Happiness. But this was about to change...
2016. Running Time: Feature Length. A Film by Peter Lucas & Felipe Varanda
Status: Work in Progress.
The Amazon Star
Drawing on the tradition of the travelogue, this is a film about moving from place to place along the Amazon River. The visual essay presents an open episodic form where the movement of boats, the passing scenes along the river, the variety of people working and traveling, and everyday encounters in the ports carry the story...
2016. Running Time: Feature Length. A Film By Peter Lucas
Status: Work in Progress.
Too Small to Swing a Cat
A remake of the famous 1935 short film Housing Problems shot in the slums of London, Too Small to Swing a Cat (to borrow a quote from the original film) documents working class tenants in modern Hong Kong as they discuss and show their extreme, almost surreal, living conditions.
2015. Running Time 18 minutes. A Film by Ines Gerber & Marie Bakke. Produced by Peter Lucas
Status: Finished.
House of Oranges (Casa das Laranjas)
Inspired by the 1935 short film Housing Problems shot in the slums of London, we traveled to Brazil to update this story. With the help of Teto, a local housing NGO, we were able document two of the largest concentrations of critical housing in the favelas of Rio. By critical housing, we mean dwellings constructed with anything one can find.
2016. Running Time 26 Minutes. A Collaborative Documentary Project. Produced by Peter Lucas
Status: Finished. Vimeo and password available on request.
One Nation
On the evening of November 25th, 2014, protestors gathered in front of the Ferguson Police Department in Missouri. They were waiting in the cold to hear whether a grand jury would order officer Darren Wilson to stand trial for the shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown. Adam Saewitz and Shelby Smith were documenting the night for Yahoo news. In this intense visual essay without commentary, their footage gathers the marches, the vigils, the waiting, the singing, the drumming, and the ferocious violence that erupted when the news broke that "no probable cause exists to file any charges against officer Wilson."
2015. Running Time: 13 minutes. A Film by Adam Saewitz. Creative Producer: Peter Lucas
Status: Finished
A Small Revolution (Uma Pequena Revolucao)
The base is the hillside itself inside Pereira da Silva where a miniature favela was created within a larger real one. For 20 years this “morrinho” (little favela) has been a space of play, a folklore destination for visitors, a traveling exhibition, a participatory workshop, and a space of synergy for small films. Ours is the latest collaboration with Projecto Morrinho, at once a reflection on the history of play on the hillside and a critical take on the impact the Olympics are having on Rio and the favelas in particular. There are no films quite like TV Morrinho where hands reach into the frame animating small figures through a miniature tableau with character voiceovers that reflect the political street life of the favelas in Rio.
2016. Running time: 37 minutes. A Collaborative Documentary. Produced by Peter Lucas & TV Morrinho.
Status: Vimeo and password on Request.
Children's Rights & The Dreamers
Made in honor of the 18th birthday of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Using archives from the photo agency Magnum, the video documents each article with matching photos while school children read and improvise on the Convention. An additional slide show The Dreamers by Peter Lucas presents the school children themselves from the Chelsea-Elliot Houses in New York.
2008. Running Time: 5 minutes. A Video by the Magnum Group. Conceived, Curated and Written by Peter Lucas.
Status: Archived and Available to View on the Magnum in Motion Site