With no access to their heritage, four women are forging a new sense of self. In the country that was once the epicenter of the Jewish world, and now regarded as “the Jewish graveyard,” they are figuring out how to be Jewish in today’s Poland.
Short documentary about—the now closed—Olympic Doughnuts in Footscray, Melbourne.
A documentary about the confluence of Christianity and mixed martial arts, including ministries which train fighters. The film follows several pastors and popular fighters in their quest to reconcile their faith with a sport that many consider violent and barbaric. Faith is tried and questions are raised. Can you really love your neighbor as yourself and then punch him in the face?
Venerable storytellers recount for the camera and their listeners the founding myths of Malagasy culture.
This documentary on the "youth movement" of the late 1960s focuses on the hippie pot smoking/free love culture in the San Francisco Bay area.
In the quirky mountains of Colorado, people from all over the world gather to throw a party for a frozen dead guy. “Grandpa” died in 1989 and was frozen by his Norwegian grandson who hid him away in a tiny shed along with one other body. The uncovering of the bodies, as well as the controversy that followed, led to an annual celebration of costumed weirdos looking to drink, dance, race coffins, and dive into a frozen lake.
A look at the Hutterites, an Anabaptist religious community similar to the Amish or the Mennonites in rural Alberta.
“Balance of Life” is a film about life’s and human kinds’ fight to find the balance between our own evolving life style and the nature of the planet we inhabit. The human race is drifting further and further away from its real roots and from what being a human is really about. The speed of development has increased to a state where humans have a hard time keeping up. We find ourselves in a situation where both our own and the planets’ wellbeing is severely threatened. As a last resort human is relying on faith to find the balance. Is faith the last defense of man or is this world guided by forces greater than us? Is this force God, evolution or just the mere sum of coincidences that formed the universe, the natural order and laws of physics?’ Watch it here (https://vimeo.com/51203265)
Commentator-comic Bill Maher plays devil's advocate with religion as he talks to believers about their faith. Traveling around the world, Maher examines the tenets of Christianity, Judaism and Islam and raises questions about homosexuality, proof of Christ's existence, Jewish Sabbath laws, violent Muslim extremists.
A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.
Zombies are part of pop culture, but what are they? Where do they come from? To find real zombies we visit Haiti where Zombies are an integral part of the island's cultural and religious roots.
On 25th December 2011 the Georgian Patriarch Ilia II described his 34 year-long leadership as head of the Georgian Orthodox Church as a ‘sunny night’. Beginning in 1989, and going up to the present, the film essay Sunny Night tells of political and social events since Georgian Independence. A variety of formats and sources, disparate images and voices report on protests, recommencements, uproars and wars, and religious identity that centres around the dominant religion of the nation. In the midst of the ongoing shifts and the various state of affairs, the patriarch stands out as the only constant figure. Meanwhile the sermonised religion begins to take on radical forms, going as far as priests forming front row human-chains, leading protests of several thousand orthodox believers chasing a handful of LGBT activist throughout the streets of Tbilisi in May 2013.
An exploration of the intersection between religion and homosexuality in the U.S. and how the religious right has used its interpretation of the Bible to stigmatize the gay community.
Keith Haring: The Message was released in conjunction with the Keith Haring retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. Directed by famed designer, Madonna stylist and Haring confidante Maripol, The Message goes pretty deep into both the artist and the city and times he’ll forever be identified with: New York City, circa the 1980s. The focus, as the title indicates, is upon the “struggles that animated” Keith Haring’s work, his activism – in a word, his “message.”
The Richardson Olmsted Campus, a former psychiatric center and National Historic Landmark, is seeing new life as it undergoes restoration and adaptation to a modern use.
AMERICAN JESUS is an exploration of Christianity in every faction of American Life, from the breadline to the yoga studio, from the humble churches of snake handlers to the mega churches in the ex-urbs. Christian cowboys, bikers and musicians, comedians, surfers and cage-fighters, they are all doing it for Christ. Aram Garriga travels from his native Barcelona to the politically divided United States to chronicle the sometimes bizarre relationship between faith, materialism, politics and personal passions in this uniquely American tableaux. Populated by an array of religious and secular characters offering candid, often illuminating testimonials, AMERICAN JESUS is a vivid mosaic of personalities and conflicting points of view that emerges as a portrait of an America yearning for solace and meaning in the modern world.