The Ona People: Life and Death in Tierra del Fuego(1977)

Terre magellaniche(es)

The film Terre Magellaniche represents the fruit of multiple and risky trips that the explorer Alberto M. De Agostini made in the Patagonian mountain range and in the Tierra del Fuego archipelago. Executed with rare mastery and exquisite artistic sense, the film shows the explorer in the labyrinth of Patagonian channels, penetrating the deep fjords between large masses of floating ice of curious shapes, coming from the immense glaciers that descend from the Cordillera and bathe its frontal walls on the waters of the sea. Transported to regions of extraordinary beauty, situated in front of gigantic mountains, from which majestic waterfalls rush, the viewer experiences the illusion of finding themselves in a mysterious kingdom of dream and enchantment.

La última huella(es)

In the southernmost place in the world live the Yámanas, who survived and developed in one of the most inhospitable climates in the world. Today on the brink of extinction, its oldest survivors Úrsula and Cristina Calderón, invite us on a journey through its history, its myths, its language and its landscape. They are the last Footprint.

Isla de Fuegos(es)

The Island is a real territory, as well as a metaphorical one, a synthesis of the country and of civilization, of progress and injustice. An intensive expression of the human effort to overcome adversity.

Beavers: Patagonia invaders(es)

In 1940 twenty Canadian Beavers were brought to 'Tierra del Fuego' island in southern Patagonia for commercial fur production. However, beavers having no natural predators, quickly spread throughout the island, causing massive destruction of trees threatening the entire Patagonian forests rivers and species. Why wildlife conservationist are convinced that 150.000 beavers must be killed? Why some of the most recognized specialist are convinced that an eradication is not possible? Meanwhile truism is capitalizing on the situation: a man dressed as a beaver passes out flyers promoting a famous sky resort: 'Cerro Castor' - Beaver Hill. Hunters claim for subsidies, scientists are researching, rangers do what they can and restaurants tray to offer beaver meat to tourist.

Argentina: Del Norte Andino a la Tierra del Fuego(es)

La Tierra del Fuego se apaga(es)

In the faraway lands of the south of the Patagonia, in a town made up of wrongdoers and thieves, a mysterious and solitary man takes a prostitute to live with him at his ranch. However, her past follows her, and he is forced to face it head on.

Tierra del Fuego(xx)

Diary of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and the South Atlantic Islands, the southernmost province of Argentinia. European sailors began to call it Tierra del Fuego when they saw the large bonfires that illuminated the mountains. It is said that they were lit and maintained throughout the year by the Selk'nam, the Yámanas and Alacalufes, natives of the region, to protect themselves from the extreme temperatures. In this brief dieary some characteristic specimens of the flora and fauna of the province, its landscapes and a stay in Tolhuin were recorded.

Chance, History, Art...(en)

Anne Bean, John McKeon, Stuart Brisley, Rita Donagh, Jamie Reid and Jimmy Boyle are interviewed about their artistic practice and the legacy of Surrealism on their work.

Petar Dobrovic(sh)

Documentary about painter Petar Dobrovic.

My Homeland(en)

Perhaps this is Robert Vas' most personal film; a portrait of his country - Hungary - as seen through the eyes of an exile. Robert Vas escaped from his homeland after the brutal crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising by the Russians and he was never able to return. He portrays his country through the writings of Hungary's national poets and illustrates the film with images of the Revolution and of the society it would become in the years immediately following 1956. The film was transmitted on the 20th anniversary of the crushing of the uprising.

Mysterion(fi)

A documentary about a convent of Russian Orthodox nuns in Estonia who have dedicated their lives to serving God.

Coalesce: A City Composed(en)

A visual artist and a musician create a series of works in which paintings and musical scores form cohesive pieces intended to be experienced together. The works interpret the excitement and monotony of life in the urban desert sprawl from the diverse perspectives of the native and the newcomer.

The Final Year(en)

Featuring unprecedented access inside the White House and State Department, The Final Year offers an uncompromising view of the inner workings of the Obama Administration as they prepare to leave power after eight years.

Duerers Heritage(de)

Dammbeck, himself an alumnus of the Leipzig Academy for Graphic and Book Design, presents the origins of the new German realism developed by the so-called Leipzig School, which took place in the context of socialist-realist dogma in the GDR before the Wall was built in 1961. After the Wall came down in 1989, what happened to the major Leipzig School painters Werner Tübke and Bernhard Heisig, who had been called “Dürer’s red heirs” by West German journalists in the 1970s? In the film, Tübke, Heisig, and former GDR officials who were involved with the cultural scene in Leipzig at the time talk about modernism, conformism, political pressure, party discipline, personal claims, and fading memory. The documentary paints an insightful, often critical picture of early East German art history.

Time of the Gods(de)

The film explores what transformations in power and politics do to art, how much opportunism can be found in “pure” art and whether fascist symbols can ever regain their aesthetic innocence. The questions it addresses about the relationship between ethics and aesthetics make a valuable contribution to any discussion about art and power.

The Rape of Recy Taylor(en)

Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old black mother and sharecropper, was gang raped by six white boys in 1944 Alabama. Common in Jim Crow South, few women spoke up in fear for their lives. Not Recy Taylor, who bravely identified her rapists. The NAACP sent its chief rape investigator Rosa Parks, who rallied support and triggered an unprecedented outcry for justice. The film exposes a legacy of physical abuse of black women and reveals Rosa Parks’ intimate role in Recy Taylor’s story.

Teaching War(cs)

This episode from the Czech Journal series examines how a military spirit is slowly returning to our society. Attempts to renew military training or compulsory military service and in general to prepare the nation for the next big war go hand in hand with society’s fear of the Russians, the Muslims, or whatever other “enemies”. This observational flight over the machine gun nest of Czech militarism becomes a grotesque, unsettling military parade. It can be considered not only to be a message about how easily people allow themselves to be manipulated into a state of paranoia by the media, but also a warning against the possibility that extremism will become a part of the regular school curriculum.

Two Meetings and a Funeral(en)

Two Meetings and a Funeral explores Bangladesh’s historical pivot from the socialism of the 1973 Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting in Algeria to its ideological counterpoint, the emergence of a strong Islamic perspective at the 1974 Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) meeting in Lahore. Centred on Bangladesh’s navigation of these two historic meetings, as well as its fight for United Nations recognition (vetoed by China, acting as a proxy for Pakistan), the film considers the erosion of the idea of the Third World as a potential space for decolonialism, liberation theology and socialism. In particular, it looks at how a transnational Islamic ‘ummah’ concept was used against socialist forces.

Commensal(ja)

A two-channel installation utilizing both digital video and 16mm film, Commensal focuses on the controversial figure of Issei Sagawa, who gained notoriety in 1981 when, as a graduate student in Paris, he murdered a fellow student and engaged in acts of cannibalism. After his release from a mental institution, Sagawa returned to Japan, and later appeared in innumerable documentaries and sexploitation films. In contrast to earlier journalistic documentaries on Sagawa, the film suspends moral judgment and explores a realm that eludes classification as either “documentary” or “pure fiction,” to instead chart the ambiguous territory between crime, fantasy, and social realities, between an individual and the economy of his public persona.

Verdon Vertical Mile(fr)