A Moth in Spring(2010)

The Pearl(en)

THE PEARL is a cinematic and intimate portrait of four transgender women who come out in their senior years. Set in logging towns in the Pacific Northwest, the visceral, observational story explores what it means to leave behind presenting as a man.

InRealLife(en)

InRealLife takes us on a journey from the bedrooms of British teenagers to the world of Silicon Valley, to find out what exactly the internet is doing to our children.

Monks - The Transatlantic Feedback(en)

The monks were 5 American GIs in cold war Germany who billed themselves as the anti-Beatles; they were heavy on feedback, nihilism and electrical banjo. They had strange haircuts, dressed in black, mocked the military and rocked harder than any of their mid-sixties counterparts while managing to basically invent industrial, kraut rock, heavy metal, punk and techno music.

Through a Blue Lens(en)

This documentary, set in the Lower East End of Vancouver's downtown core, is a pretty honest account of life on the streets in urban Canada. It is aimed at educating high school kids on the dangers of addiction to hard drugs and is the brainchild of a group of city police officers who videotape their interactions with local homeless personalities.

New Boobs(nl)

For years, filmmaker Sacha Polak has known that she carries the BRCA1 hereditary cancer gene, responsible for breast cancer, but she can't decide what to do. Does she have her breasts removed as a preventive measure to minimize the risk of developing cancer? What if she had them removed, thus forsaking her femininity, for nothing? Sacha decides to make a personal and open documentary about her search.

Tender Fictions(en)

Childhood stories of the artist as a young lesbian and intimate tales of the lesbian as a young artist underscore the filmmaker's life of performances. With a Swiss army knife she robs an American Express Bank in Morocco, accosts a shepherd in a field on International Women's Day, and tap dances on Shirley Temple's star on Hollywood Boulevard. This child movie star was the ideal by which Hammer's ambitious mother measured her own Barbie. Grandma, already a cook for Lillian Gish in Hollywood, introduced the cute, loquacious child and her mother to D.W. Griffith. Lesbian autobiography is a slender genre, so Hammer draws from general culture studies for critique and to provide an ironic edge to the synthesized "voices of authority".

Stripped(en)

Nonfiction filmmaker Jill Morley documents her exploration of the exotic dancer (stripper) experience. Through tactfully selected and edited sequences, you get an insider's view into the job itself, how clubs chauffeur dancers, protect them, what's required of them, how much money they can make, tricks that dancers use to make more money, and keep clients at bay. By trying to work as a dancer, Morley gives the viewer a very personal perspective on the experience. Long-time professional dancers reveal personal anecdotes and feelings about how the job effects them in candid, personal interviews. A group discussion with several dancers is likewise illuminating.

Buitenkampers(nl)

The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden(en)

Darwin meets Hitchcock in this documentary. Directors Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine have created a parable about the search for paradise, set in the brutal yet alluring landscape of the Galapagos Islands, which interweaves an unsolved 1930s murder mystery with stories of present day Galapagos pioneers. A gripping tale of idealistic dreams gone awry, featuring voice-over performances by Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger, and Gustaf Skarsgard.

De verdediging van Robert M.(nl)

Bitch Academy(ru)

A documentary on women in St. Petersburg who enroll in a program which will help them land millionaire husbands.

Maestra(en)

Cuba, 1961: 250,000 volunteers taught 700,000 people to read and write in one year. 100,000 of the teachers were under 18 years old. Over half were women. MAESTRA explores this story through the personal testimonies of the young women who went out to teach literacy in rural communities across the island - and found themselves deeply transformed in the process.

Olympia: Part One – Festival of the Nations(de)

Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. This first half of her two-part film opens with a renowned introduction that compares modern Olympians to classical Greek heroes, then goes on to provide thrilling in-the-moment coverage of some of the games' most celebrated moments, including African-American athlete Jesse Owens winning a then-unprecedented four gold medals.

Olympia: Part Two – Festival of Beauty(de)

Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. Where the two-part epic's first half, Festival of the Nations, focused on the international aspects of the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin, part two, The Festival of Beauty, concentrates on individual athletes such as equestrians, gymnasts, and swimmers, climaxing with American Glenn Morris' performance in the decathalon and the games' majestic closing ceremonies.

Dig!(en)

A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.

In the Realms of the Unreal(en)

In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.

A Fuller Life(en)

Friends and admirers of iconoclastic film director Sam Fuller read from his memoirs in this unconventional documentary directed by Fuller's only child, Samantha.

Soft and Hard(fr)

Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville talk about their films, while doing everyday tasks around their house.

Hill of Pleasures(pt)

It examines the daily life of the residents and cops at a Rio de Janeiro favela one year after the arrival of a Pacifying Police Unit.

Abel Gance et son Napoléon(fr)

This documentary focuses on the making of the 235-minute, silent epic Napoleon, the masterpiece of French director/writer/actor Abel Gance. Napoleon showcased Gance's talents with the camera, his use of multiple-images (like a split screen), and his handling of crowded action scenes -- all brought forward in this documentary by his later assistant, Nelly Kaplan. While Gance was shooting Napoleon in 1925-26, he and his crew were also being filmed for a documentary titled Autour de Napoleon. The only extant reels from that documentary are included in this film, as well as views of Gance's unique "triptychs" -- three different scenes lined up side-by-side across a super-wide screen to convey the effect of a panorama, or of three separate interludes. Nelly Kaplan put together this documentary using old footage, such as Gance filming the famous snowball fight at the Brienne military school and still photographs and excerpts from Gance's production diaries.