“Gjama” is a rarely practiced mourning ritual that was performed by Albanian men throughout the centuries. By shouting specific phrases and acting out a strict choreography, it is a way of paying respect to the deceased but also overcoming grief and pain over the loss of a loved one. Through the documentation of the re-enactment of the ritual, Zgjim Elshani seeks to recover fragments of the practice in the communities where this form of collective grieving is still a way of overcoming loss. By doing so, the project intends to rethink collective grieving and what it means to publicly display emotions in a male-headed society.
Themself
Themself
Themself
Themself
Themself
Themself
Themself
Themself
Themself
Themself
“Gjama” is a rarely practiced mourning ritual that was performed by Albanian men throughout the centuries. By shouting specific phrases and acting out a strict choreography, it is a way of paying respect to the deceased but also overcoming grief and pain over the loss of a loved one. Through the documentation of the re-enactment of the ritual, Zgjim Elshani seeks to recover fragments of the practice in the communities where this form of collective grieving is still a way of overcoming loss. By doing so, the project intends to rethink collective grieving and what it means to publicly display emotions in a male-headed society.
2021-10-08
4
The events take place in a small Albanian village, around the '30ies. This isolated land, dominated by rituals and patriarchal relationships is the spirit that welcomes the newborn child of Abas. Servet, a co-villager, emigrant in the United States of America comes back in his homeland bringing a new vision and a new mentality, which serves as an inspiration for the 10 years old boy, Gjoleka, the son of Abas. Gjoleka founds himself in between of the ideas of his wild father, Abas and his illuminist godfather, Servet. Gjoleka symbolizes the young generation in the difficult realities that offer small and underdeveloped countries, where the outside world constitutes an irresistible attraction. The movie shows with a deep realism the human relationships, such as love, jalousie, hate, the impossibility to be integrated with another world, making this way a cruel autopsy of the weird society to which, "sometime" we belong.
A short comedy spoof about Universal Monsters and their everyday unconventional work done at their very own talent agency for their movies.
Chilean science fiction low-budget film about a death metal band trio who steal a crucifix from a church in order to make their album's cover. Christ's figure not only is brought to life but also joins the band as a singer, provoking Satan's himself anger.
Sayed is a defeated human being living in the slums of old Cairo where he is constantly bombarded with government propaganda. He crosses paths with an ancient Egyptian porter carrying a throne and wondering in search of his lost king. Now Sayed wants to be seated too 'even for 5 minutes to see how it feels'. This political allegory is a study of the inherent self-imposed oppression in third world nations.
In a city on Spain’s Costa Brava, Clara Valverde, a young beautiful woman, lives with her husband Juan. Juan is an architect and has planned a daring urbanistic project. In reality, the project is not viable. Clara, to keep her marriage and finances a float, works as a porno actress in an underground film industry. In spite of her job and her marriage, Clara is still a virgin. Her marriage has never been consummated because her husband is impotent for which she blames herself. In her work she does not allow to be penetrated. One day she goes to a reunion with Kellerman, an American millionaire who seems to be interested into put into fruition Juan’s project. However soon Clara learns that what he really wants is to blackmail her. The owner of the house, Jorge, finds out Claras’s real occupation and if she does not have sex to the American would tell everything to her husband.
A story of love and honor that takes place during the mid-nineteenth century during revolutions, as well as economic, political, and social hypocrisy. Two extraordinary but lonely artists share a passionate love, as evidenced by the preserved letters that they exchanged.
The events of the play revolve around the academic and emotional conditions of young people in Kuwait and raises the issue of opposites in addition to the issue of loans in a meaningful comedic style.
Truck driver Teddy's late night stop at a gas station takes a dark turn when he meets the mysterious hooker Katerina, leading to unexpected consequences.
Scream of the Bikini is a 1960s action-spy-thriller by acclaimed South American director, Fernando Fernandez. Jasmine Orosco and Paola Apanapal are Bridget and Sophia: gorgeous super models by day, brutal bounty hunters by night. Murder, intrigue and pillow fights await our beautiful leading ladies at every turn, as they match wits and martial arts with a coterie of madmen and women bent on world domination. Filmed somewhere in South America in 1966, and poorly translated and dubbed by Germans, this unintentionally funny James Bond meets Barbarella love child plumbs the seedy depths of the international fashion model/psycho-killer underworld with a boldness that only a gun to the head can provide.
Ciccio loves very much the novel Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, although his friend Franco does not understand him.
From Jerusalem to Haifa, stopping by Acre, Bethlehem and Ramallah, we travel across Israel and the West Bank to meet with Palestinian women shaping the cultural landscape. They are artists, chefs, performers, entrepreneurs, designers... and they tell us about their life, culture and identity in a divided and much disputed territory. The documentary features how these young women reinvent today their political and cultural battles.
During a ride on the Staten Island Ferry, a young Wall Street investment banker and an old shoeshine man begin chatting and discussing their life philosophies.
The lives of three brothers who left their small village in Serbia to live in Sweden. The first one escaped from police, while the other two followed his path.
Four couples stranded at a remote lakeside cabin on the eve of a reported alien invasion discover not everything is as it seems.
A poet gets dejected with the materialistic society around him. The only person he gets some sympathy from is a washed out working girl who gives him shelter. Rejected by publishers, he gains fame when his death is reported by a newspaper.
Marcel Perez arrives at the holiday resort wearing a pith helmet and carrying enough luggage to hold supplies for a monthlong journey through hostile territory. It's a good idea for a comic who never met a flight of stairs he didn't fall down.
Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording "Daybreak Express", this is a five-minute short of the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated subway station in New York City.
Several behind the scenes aspects of the movie-making business, which results in the enjoyment the movie going public has in going to the theater, are presented. They include: the production of celluloid aka film stock, the materials used in the production of which include cotton and silver; construction crews who build sets including those to look like cities, towns and villages around the world; a visit with Jack Dawn who demonstrates the process of creating a makeup design; the screen testing process, where many an acting hopeful gets his/her start; the work of the candid camera man, the prying eyes behind the movie camera; a visit with Adrian, who designs the clothes worn by many of the stars on screen; and a visit with Herbert Stothart as he conducts his musical score for Conquest (1937). These behind the scenes looks provide the opportunity to get acquainted with the cavalcade of MGM stars and their productions that will grace the silver screen in the 1937/38 movie season.
A true story of a courageous boy who becomes a legend. Living a dream that wouldn't die; his passion empowered him to historically change the course of baseball. Facing challenges on every front he conquers all with his belief and determination; a true hero. A life changing story!
Some months after the fall of the Berlin wall, during the time of federal elections in Germany in 1990, Chris Marker shot this passionate documentary, reflecting the state of the place and its spirit with remarkable acuity.
Through his own photographs, the Basque artist Néstor Basterretxea (1924-2014) is portrayed by the art critic and exhibition curator Peio Aguirre, a great connoisseur of his work and personal archives.
Tilly, Miah and Safa are three young women who endure debilitating period pain. Following an adolescence with little menstrual education, support or relief, they navigate the physical and emotional toll of intensely painful periods while trying to maintain a normal life.
Stop for Bud is Jørgen Leth's first film and the first in his long collaboration with Ole John. […] they wanted to "blow up cinematic conventions and invent cinematic language from scratch". The jazz pianist Bud Powell moves around Copenhagen -- through King's Garden, along the quay at Kalkbrænderihavnen, across a waste dump. […] Bud is alone, accompanied only by his music. […] Image and sound are two different things -- that's Leth's and John's principle. Dexter Gordon, the narrator, tells stories about Powell's famous left hand. In an obituary for Powell, dated 3 August 1966, Leth wrote: "He quite willingly, or better still, unresistingly, mechanically, let himself be directed. The film attempts to depict his strange duality about his surroundings. His touch on the keys was like he was burning his fingers -- that's what it looked like, and that's how it sounded. But outside his playing, and often right in the middle of it, too, he was simply gone, not there."
The Dream Is Alive takes you into space alongside the astronauts on the space shuttle. Share with them the delights of zero gravity while working, eating and sleeping in orbit around the Earth. Float as never before over the towering Andes, the boot of Italy, Egypt and the Nile. Witness firsthand a tension-filled satellite capture and repair and the historic first spacewalk by an American woman.
A documentary showcasing a family as they pack up their home of twelve years and begin looking towards the future.
A 16mm anthology of experimental super 8 films by Derek Jarman, Michael Kostiff, Cerith Wyn Evans and John Maybury, with framing footage by Tim Burke of Brion Gysin using a dream machine. Jarman's contribution is a version of his 1977 Art and the Pose (aka Arty the Pose), refilmed at 3fps, with a musical soundtrack. Jarman planned The Dream Machine as a commemoration of William Burroughs and Gysin's 1982 visit to the UK, and received initial funding from the Arts Council in 1983, then rethought the project as a portmanteau film featuring Gysin alone. The production remained in limbo until 1986, when James Mackay obtained completion funding from the British Film Institute. (Since this film was released on VHS accompanied by Jarman's Broken English: Three Songs by Marianne Faithfull, T.G.: Psychic Rally in Heaven and Pirate Tape under the umbrella title The Dream Machine, synopses of this film have often muddled up its details with those of the earlier films. )
Filmmaker Carol Nguyen interviews her own family to craft an emotionally complex and meticulously composed portrait of intergenerational trauma, grief, and secrets in this cathartic documentary about things left unsaid.
When internationally renowned Haida carver Robert Davidson was only 22 years old, he carved the first new totem pole on British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii in almost a century. On the 50th anniversary of the pole’s raising, Haida filmmaker Christopher Auchter steps easily through history to revisit that day in August 1969, when the entire village of Old Massett gathered to celebrate the event that would signal the rebirth of the Haida spirit.
This short focuses on the job of the costume designer in the production of motion pictures. The costume designer must design clothing that is correct for the film historically and geographically, and must be appropriate for the mood of the individual scene. We see famed costume designer Edith Head at work on a production. The Costume Designer was part of The Industry Film Project, a twelve-part series produced by the film studios and the Academy. Each series episode was produced to inform the public on a specific facet of the motion picture industry. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.
December 31, 2015. The Valencian bookstore Valdeska closed its doors permanently after forty years of activity. The result of four years of monitoring and filming, these 31 minuts of run time are part of a book unread, unknown and undiscovered. "Me voy. Me voy" it's not the story of a bookstore, not the portrait of an exceptional bookseller, it's a will to attach the things in the filmed image, to make something lasting showing the moment of its disappearence.
A documentary about the Parisian night club “Bus Palladium”. This film was theatrically released as a complement for Godard's Masculin, féminin.
This 1964 documentary returns to the battlefields where over 100,000 Canadian soldiers lost their lives in the First and Second World Wars. The film also visits cemeteries where servicemen are buried. Filmed from Hong Kong to Sicily, this documentary is designed to show Canadians places they have reason to know but may not be able to visit. Produced for the Canadian Department of Veteran Affairs by the renowned documentary filmmaker Donald Brittain. (NFB)
A brief portrait of famous and brave bullfighter Manuel Benítez el Corbobés; an account on still photos of his triumphs and failures.
When asked a question on politics, late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish once answered: “I write about love to expose the conditions that don’t allow me to write about love.” In TWO TRAVELERS TO A RIVER Palestinian actress Manal Khader recites such a poem by Mahmoud Darwish: a concise reflection on how things could have been.
In this tape, Ko Nakajima and Video Earth Tokyo interview a homeless man. The subject is initially angry and frustrated, but gradually opens up and shares stories about his life. Under A Bridge was later broadcast on cable television.