'9-Man' is an independent feature documentary about an isolated and exceptionally athletic Chinese-American sport that's much more than a pastime. Since the 1930s, young men have played this gritty streetball game competitively in the alleys and parking lots of Chinatown. At a time when anti-Chinese sentiment and laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act forced Chinese restaurant workers and laundrymen to socialize exclusively amongst themselves, nine-man offered both escape and fraternity for men who were separated from their families in China and facing extreme discrimination and distrust. Pivoting between oil-spotted Chinatown parking lots and jellyfish-filled banquet scenes, the film captures the spirit of nine-man as players not only battle for a championship but fight to preserve a sport that holds so much history.
A 91-year-old Polish Holocaust survivor donates his violin of 70 years to a local instrument drive, changing the life of a 12-year-old schoolgirl from the nation’s poorest congressional district, and unexpectedly, his own.
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a country with a very strong social cohesion and the unprecedented admiration of the people for their leader, which is absolutely unique and incomprehensible especially from a Western point of view. The native Korean director Sung-Hyung Cho tries to understand this by accompanying several Koreans from different backgrounds in their daily lives. The film shows the country and its people in a way, as it is rarely done in Western media, non-judgmental and respectful towards the people.
Facing eviction the oldest black-owned gay bar in Brooklyn relies on a passionate community in its fight for survival.
A full-length documentary about a controversial evangelical movement that purports to convert gay people into heterosexuals. The film brings us inside this unusual Christian subculture and follows the lives of several young people whose homosexuality is at odds with their religious beliefs.
Tahani Rached’s powerful documentary enters the doors of an AIDS clinic in Montreal. We meet a group of dedicated doctors struggling to provide health care to their patients. This 1994 film explores legal and ethical problems surrounding HIV/AIDS and the struggle against fear, rumours and prejudice. It is still relevant today.
Soraïda is a Palestinian woman living in Ramallah, in the occupied territories. In this city under siege and a strict curfew, she fights her own battle: despite the military occupation, violence and oppression, she is determined not to lose her humanity.
In 2007 the Sydney Dance Company appointed 29-year-old choreographer Tanja Liedtke as their first new artistic director in 30 years. However before she could take up the position, she was struck and killed by a truck in the middle of the night. Admired internationally as a dancer and celebrated for her fresh choreographic voice, she was known as a dedicated artist, intelligent, dorky, funny and generous. 18 months after her death her collaborators embark on a world tour of her work, and in the process they must deal with their grief and explore the reasons for her death. Interspersed with intimate footage of her artistic process and previously unseen interviews, Life in Movement is a film about moving creatively through life and loss. Filmmakers Bryan Mason and Sophie Hyde give us a powerfully rendered take on art and artists, creativity and our own mortality.
This film of interviews with the film director Jacques Rivette was produced in collaboration with Serge Daney, film critic from “Cahiers du cinéma”, then of “Liberation”. In the course of their conversations, the two speakers discuss Rivette’s career, his relationships with the other film makers of the new wave, his use of “mise en scene” and his working with actors.
Nearly 20 years since the end of the 1992-95 Bosnian war, there are people who still live in refugee Centers, usually located on the outskirts of cities and villages. In such centers what should have been temporary has become indefinite. Collecting medicinal herbs or scraps from nearby coal mines and raising children who were born as refugees in their own country are just some aspects of the monotonous daily life of the people in Ježevci.
Short lo-fi film set in Senegal. Mostly focussing on a group of Senegalese youths, discussing their hopes and fears concerning the crossing of the atlantic to get to Europe. Will life be easier there or not?
"The Wash is a portrait of the river wash that runs behind the older part of Newhall, California, where Lee and I used to live. We shot the wash on Super8 film and then finished it on video. It is a collaboration between us, describing the ways the wash is used, and the people who use it, ourselves included. It charts the way this land has changed since they began developing Newhall and the surrounding community of Valencia for housing, a development that is expected to bring over 250,000 more people into the area by the year 2015."
They are teenagers who fled crisis regions and undertook an extremely dangerous journey to Europe, all alone, hoping for one thing: to live. After arriving here, they fight to live normal lives, struggling against a system that demands they sacrifice their youth to an uncertain future.
Travelling between Germany, France and Tunisia, Viola Shafik reconstructs and deconstructs the unknown life story of El Hedi Ben Salem through interviews with his companions and family members as well as archive material. With openness and slight naivety the interviewees explain how “Ali” became an oriental object of projection for the Fassbinder group, while El Hedi Ben Salem, the human being, was overlooked in order to establish the foreigner as “other.” A no-frills examination of a piece of German and Munich film history.
As families across America endure the repeated deployment of loved ones to Iraq and Afghanistan, many attempt to fill the void with Flat Daddies and Heroes on a Stick, life-sized cardboard cutouts of their husbands, wives, sons, and daughters serving overseas. The documentary feature "Flat Daddy" uses these two-dimensional surrogates as a connecting thread to explore the lasting impact of the war on the families left behind.
Not far from the White House, the Capitol, and the National Mall lies a part of Washington, DC that the tourists never see and the mainstream media virtually ignores. At least three percent of DC is HIV positive, a staggering rate higher than parts of Africa. Behind all the stories of heartbreak, loss, and struggle there are also the incredible, encouraging stories of the people behind grassroots movements to extend education, combat stigmas, and spread hope.
Rosanna Arquette talks to various actresses about the pressures they face as women working in the entertainment industry.
Ana Deborah Mola and Belkis Lescaille were among the first young teachers who started pilot programs around the island of Cuba in 1960, laying foundation for the massive National Literacy Campaign that would take place the following year.
"The Arab governments pushed us out of our homes... I was twelve years old… I've been here for 60 years." A beautiful, poignant documentary, Still Life examines the effect a collection of personal photos showing life in Palestine before the 1948 displacement have on an elderly Palestinian fisherman living in exile in Lebanon. The importance of place and memory in preserving a people's history are crucial to Diana Allan's illuminating documentary. In, Said Ismael Otruk, a Palestinian man born in Acre in the 1930s, recalls his childhood and the halcyon days of his youth. His memories, not always accurate, so he relies on the photographs he managed to take with him. They are images of young boys, of the port, of fishing boats and the sea. On one, he reads a note he wrote many years ago: "Acre and Said in the Golden Age."