Iran, 2008. As President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's motorcade creeps through the teeming streets of Qom Shrine, thousands of people jam hand-written letters into the hands of his handlers. Hearing their President deliver a speech is a thrill, but more promising to these men and women is the hope that their letters - expressing pleas for loans, medical attention, housing and jobs - will be answered. Since his 2005 election on a populist, "man of the people" platform, Ahmadinejad has encouraged Iranians to send him such letters; according to a staff member, he has received about 10 million of them, and has been able to respond to nearly 76 percent. In one letter, a 16-year-old boy says his family has no money and goes to bed hungry every night. According to the staff member, the boy will be helped. As other letters are read, the worker says that "In Islam, charity is a necessity."


Himself
Iran, 2008. As President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's motorcade creeps through the teeming streets of Qom Shrine, thousands of people jam hand-written letters into the hands of his handlers. Hearing their President deliver a speech is a thrill, but more promising to these men and women is the hope that their letters - expressing pleas for loans, medical attention, housing and jobs - will be answered. Since his 2005 election on a populist, "man of the people" platform, Ahmadinejad has encouraged Iranians to send him such letters; according to a staff member, he has received about 10 million of them, and has been able to respond to nearly 76 percent. In one letter, a 16-year-old boy says his family has no money and goes to bed hungry every night. According to the staff member, the boy will be helped. As other letters are read, the worker says that "In Islam, charity is a necessity."
2009-02-12
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6.0An archival investigation into the imperial image-making of the RAF ‘Z Unit’, which determined the destruction of human, animal and cultural life across Somaliland, as well as Africa and Asia.
6.1A duo of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations about a greedy wife's attempt to embezzle her dying husband's fortune, and a sleazy reporter's adoption of a strange black cat.
7.0Commander Logar fools Arif and sends him 1.000.000 years back in the time. He must civilize people from past to reach today.
7.8In late 19th century Tokyo, Kikunosuke Onoue, the adopted son of a legendary actor, himself an actor specializing in female roles, discovers that he is only praised for his acting due to his status as his father's heir. Devastated by this, he turns to Otoku, a servant of his family, for comfort, and they fall in love. Kikunosuke becomes determined to leave home and develop as an actor on his own merits, and Otoku faithfully follows him.
7.3In this prequel to the original, a bloody power struggle among the Triads coincides with the 1997 handover of Hong Kong, setting up the events of the first film.
6.0A British spy is banished to Panama after having an affair with an ambassador's mistress. Once there he makes connection with a local tailor with a nefarious past and connections to all of the top political and gangster figures in Panama. The tailor also has a wife, who works for the Panamanian president and a huge debt. The mission is to learn what the President intends to do with the Canal.
7.0Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman lives in New York. Filmed images of the City accompany texts of Akerman's loving mother back home in Brussels. The City comes more and more to the front while the words of the mother, read by Akerman herself, gradually fade away.
7.5The frustrating adventures of a humble employee who all the time has to fullfill the wishes and desires of his bosses.
6.1Fantozzi is now retired but continues to go to the office where it is held up as a fine example of employees intending to do career.
5.9Eight years after seemingly destroying the killer doll, teen Andy Barclay is placed in a military school, and the spirit of Chucky returns to renew his quest and seek vengeance after being recreated from a mass of melted plastic.
7.0Django is on the trail of some renegade outlaws who raped and killed his wife. En route, he rescues a horse thief from an impromptu hanging. He discovers the man knows who committed the murder. The men team up and head west for revenge.
7.2Composer Gustav von Aschenbach travels to Venice for health reasons. There, he becomes obsessed with the stunning beauty of an adolescent Polish boy named Tadzio who is staying with his family at the same Grand Hôtel des Bains on the Lido as Aschenbach.
6.9Downtrodden writer Henry and distressed goddess Wanda aren't exactly husband and wife: they're wedded to their bar stools. But, they like each other's company—and Barfly captures their giddy, gin-soaked attempts to make a go of life on the skids.
7.5Prompted by the death of his father and the grief of his mother, a man recalls the story of how they met in flashback.
6.9It's World War II and there is a severe housing shortage everywhere - especially in Washington, D.C. where Connie Milligan rents an apartment. Believing it to be her patriotic duty, Connie offers to sublet half of her apartment, fully expecting a suitable female tenent. What she gets instead is mischievous, middle-aged Benjamin Dingle. Dingle talks her into subletting to him and then promptly sublets half of his half to young, irreverent Joe Carter - creating a situation tailor-made for comedy and romance.
7.2Zeitgeist: Addendum premiered at the 5th Annual Artivist Film Festival. Director Peter Joseph stated: "The failure of our world to resolve the issues of war, poverty, and corruption, rests within a gross ignorance about what guides human behavior to begin with. It address the true source of the instability in our society, while offering the only fundamental, long-term solution."
5.4This animated comic goes back in time to explore the events that spurred the transformation of mild-mannered John Kramer into the monstrous Jigsaw.
6.1Brad has committed murder and barricaded himself inside his house. With the help of his friends and neighbours, the cops piece together the strange tale of how this nice young man arrived at such a dark place.
6.6The chilling and relentless Jigsaw killer returns to terrorize the city once again. When a gruesome murder victim emerges with unmistakable traces of Jigsaw's sinister methods, Detective Eric Matthews is thrust into a high-stakes investigation. To his surprise, apprehending Jigsaw seems almost too easy, but what he doesn't realize is that being caught is merely another piece of Jigsaw's intricate puzzle.
0.0One decade after THE FARM: ANGOLA, USA (Oscar nominated 1999; two-time Emmy winner 1999), we go back inside Louisiana's maximum security penitentiary, to catch up with our characters' lives. While the theme of THE FARM was "to err is human, to forgive divine", we now delve more deeply and find hope for "reconciliation and release". Angola is America's oldest and largest prison, with 5,000 inmates, most of whom have received life -, or death-, sentences for violent crimes, and will never leave Angola. THE FARM continues to provide extraordinary opportunities for learning through storytelling.
7.5The definitive documentary record of one of Jimi Hendrix's most celebrated performances. It includes such signature songs as Purple Haze, Voodoo Child (Slight Return) and his rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, as well as interviews with Woodstock promoter Michael Lang and Hendrix band members Mitch Mitchell, Billy Cox, Larry Lee and Juma Sultan among others.
8.0This two-hour premiere special analyzes with new details and revelations the case that led to Simpson's conviction for armed robbery. Included: the scene of the crime in room 1203 at the Palace Station Casino and the chilling details that led to O.J. Simpson's verdict.
0.0Very few people have seen life from as many angles as Ray Jones. After a regular upbringing in a working-class area of Swansea, Ray veered off the rails into a life of shoplifting and small-time drug dealing fuelled by alcohol and driven by gambling. Inevitably, Ray was sent to prison and eventually left Swansea for London such was his growing notoriety with the police and magistrates in his home town. In London he settled in Ladbroke Grove and became a key figure in the burgeoning music and art scene emerging from the boho pubs around Notting Hill. He toured with Joe Strummer, hung out behind the scenes in Paris fashion houses and ran Dylan's bar in San Francisco before being ripped off in a massive drugs deal, leaving him destitute.
0.0The eagerly anticipated wait is over, after 5 years since the release of her last album, Adele is back! Fans have applauded her return, by breaking the record for most viewed video in a single day, reaching an astounding 28.7M views in the first 24 hours. The British singer has knocked Taylor Swift off the record, previously holding most viewed video in a single day for her Bad Blood video which reached 20 million views. “Hello” has now been viewed nearly 89 million times on Vevo alone since the day of its release, and has already topped the iTunes charts in 85 countries. The success of this debut single has blown everyone away and the rest of her album will most likely follow suit. Through her own words, video and live performance this documentary takes an incredible look at the life and times of this truly amazing young artist.
0.0The creation of Iannis Xenakis’ « Persephassa » at the Shiraz-Persepolis Art Festival. There are only a few archives left of this piece, for its ring-like disposition around the audience made it difficult for people to record it or take pictures of it. When it was created in Persepolis, each percussionist was settled on the stump of a column of the Palace of Darius. The distance between them could go as far as 164 feet (50 metres).
5.5When a feature film is made about them seven years after their break-up, Benjie Nycum visits his ex-boyfriend Michael Glatze and finally tries to get answers about his bewildering shift from gay activist to ex-gay evangelical.
6.7A retrospective documentary about the groundbreaking horror series, Friday the 13th, featuring interviews with cast and crew from the twelve films spanning 3 decades.
6.3King Corn is a fun and crusading journey into the digestive tract of our fast food nation where one ultra-industrial, pesticide-laden, heavily-subsidized commodity dominates the food pyramid from top to bottom – corn. Fueled by curiosity and a dash of naiveté, two college buddies return to their ancestral home of Greene, Iowa to figure out how a modest kernel conquered America. With the help of some real farmers, oodles of fertilizer and government aide, and some genetically modified seeds, the friends manage to grow one acre of corn. Along the way, they unlock the hilarious absurdities and scary but hidden truths about America’s modern food system in this engrossing and eye-opening documentary.
6.9This documentary follows three women — a fire chief, a judge, and a street missionary — as they battle West Virginia's devastating opioid epidemic.
10.0For over four decades the Rolling Stones have been on top. Arrests, drugs, fall-outs, death and relationships have stood center stage with eight consecutive number one albums in the US and sold out live shows.
8.0Leyla and her six-year-old daughter Nila live in the holy city of Mashhad in Iran. Nila is the result of a temporary marriage, which allows a man to marry a woman even if he is already married. Children born from such a relationship are legally non-existent. As long as the father does not recognize the child, no birth certificate can be issued and Nila cannot attend school. The documentary depicts Leyla's tireless efforts to clarify Nila's legal status in order to offer her a perspective for her future. In a never-ending bureaucratic battle, Leyla fights not only against the legal system, but also against a judgmental society.
5.0The Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy talks about his life and work. Footage of Cairo, Gharb Assouan, New Gourna, Kom-Ombo.
0.0Short documentary film on the fashionable nightclubs and the trendy pop culture scenes that were famous in London on the late 70's. Released as a support feature to the first Alien (1979) movie.
7.4Duran Duran: Unstaged is a multimedia event that takes the audience on a cinematic journey with one of the most successful acts in the world during their performance at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles.
0.0Filmed in 1974 and edited and released in 1983 (and then rereleased by its director in 2005), DEAD PEOPLE purports to document the final years of Frank Butler, a local fixture in the depressed burg of Ellicot City with a particular fondness for drink and tales of the dead. Over hazy 16mm footage two decades later, Deutsch adopted a painfully unsentimental view of his early approach, colored as it was by notions of ethnographic film and an undercurrent of fetishism for a man he considered somehow more "alive" than himself. While it chafes against notions of authenticity in documentary and incisively hints at the complicity of the subject in inventing his own history, DEAD PEOPLE simultaneously oozes nostalgia, transcending its own judgment as a gauzy memorial for the man Deutsch once called a friend.
6.5A short documentary detailing the forging of a katana.
6.0The Great Northwest is a documentary film based on the re-creation of a 3,200 mile road-trip made in 1958 by four Seattle women who thoroughly documented their journey in an elaborate scrapbook. Fifty years later, Portland artist Matt McCormick found that scrapbook in a thrift store, and in 2010 set out on the road, following their route as precisely as possible and searching out every stop in which the ladies had documented. Patiently shot with an observational, cinema-vérité approach, The Great Northwest is a lyrical time- capsule that explores how the landscape, architecture, and culture of the Pacific Northwest has changed over the past fifty years.