1953-01-01
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On a journey to West Africa, award-winning documentarian Mathew Welsh fashions portraits of six 'middle class' Gambians - taking us beyond stereotypes about Africa - and teaching us that we in the Developed World have a lot to learn from West Africa about how we give, how we live. These are six personalities that will resonate with a Western audience.
0.0In Uganda, AIDS-infected mothers have begun writing what they call Memory Books for their children. Aware of the illness, it is a way for the family to come to terms with the inevitable death that it faces. Hopelessness and desperation are confronted through the collaborative effort of remembering and recording, a process that inspires unexpected strength and even solace in the face of death.
10.0Every year, on the steppes of the Serengeti, the most spectacular migration of animals on our planet: Around two million wildebeest, Burchell's zebra and Thomson's gazelles begin their tour of nearly 2,000 miles across the almost treeless savannah. For the first time, a documentary captures stunning footage in the midst of this demanding journey. The documentary starts at the beginning of the year, when more than two million animals gather in the shadow of the volcanoes on the southern edge of the Serengeti in order to birth their offspring. In just two weeks, the animal herd's population has increased by one third, and after only two days, the calves can already run as fast as the adults The young wildebeest in this phase of their life are the most vulnerable to attacks by lions, cheetahs, leopards or hyenas. The film then follows the survivors of these attacks through the next three months on their incredible journey, a trip so long that 200,000 wildebeest will not reach the end.
6.0The story of Kenyan athlete David Rudisha, the greatest 800m runner the world has ever seen, and his unusual coach, the Irish Catholic missionary Brother Colm O'Connell.
6.4Filmmaker Karim Aïnouz decides to take a boat, cross the Mediterranean, and embark on his first journey to Algeria. Accompanied by the memory of his mother, Iracema, and his camera, Aïnouz gives a detailed account of the journey to his father’s homeland, interweaving present, past, and future.
8.0Somewhere on the coast of the Bering Sea, a father and son make a living fishing in a community that seems almost outside of time. Aliaksandr Tsymbaliuk’s camera takes us in close to the subjects, recording both the harshness of their condition and the rigour of education, softened by paternal love and the universal insouciance of childhood.
“The shepherdess” is a short ethnographic film inspired by Joyce, an 80 year old woman who has spent her whole life farming in Eastern Ontario. While this film is largely centred on Joyce’s narrative about her life, it is also about Joyce’s flock of about 20 Suffolk ewes, the filmmaker, and the relationships between these actors.
7.2This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures, massacres and executions of Algerians. The real death of children, passers-by, resistance fighters, one after the other, becomes unbearable. Rather than be blatant propaganda, the film convinces entirely by its visual evidence, constituting an object lesson for revolutionary cinema.
This early travelogue film, made in a Kenyan train station, captures an impromptu musical performance. Some passengers eagerly join in while others sleep—blissfully unaware of the performance taking place around them.
6.0A walk through the landscapes of the province of Salamanca, Spain, as well as a testimony of the daily life and customs of its inhabitants.
6.0A walk through the landscapes of the province of Barcelona, Spain, as well as a testimony of the daily life and customs of its inhabitants.
0.0Beatrice is an 18-year-old young reporter with the Children’s Radio Foundation (CRF) in Lusaka, Zambia. She is part of the Unite4Climate Radio Initiative, a project which uses the power of radio to challenge mindsets and shift behaviours around environmental protection.
0.0The film is an evocative story of the tenuous relationship between a charcoal burner and forests. The film follows Lloyd on his journey from burning charcoal to setting up a micro-nursery selling trees to his neighbouring community – a brief window into his deep rooted connection to forests around Livingstone.
0.0There are thousands of people working as scrap workers in Agbogbloshie, Accra, Ghana, and Abdallah is one of them. Like the majority, Abdallah is from the northern part of the country and behind him, there is a big family awaits support. The air pollution caused by the open burning of electronic scraps has raised Muntaka’s concern, who is trying to stop them from burning…