(Voice)
Herself
A filmmaker explores the life of her 100-year-old great-aunt, Jane Chung, an actress who made a career for herself at a time when Asian Americans faced widespread racism in Hollywood. Jane has had parts in over fifty films and TV shows including Chinatown, When Harry Met Sally, M.A.S.H. and I Love Lucy, yet most of her roles are uncredited. Through the story of Jane Chung's life and career, More than a Face in the Crowd reveals a larger untold story of Asian American actors and extras in Hollywood.
2013-03-16
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Documentary taking a look at the making of the controversial 1978 film I Spit on Your Grave.
Lost in the Bewilderness is a feature-length documentary about the filmmaker’s cousin Lucas, kidnapped at age five from his native Greece, and found on the eve of his 16th birthday in the US. This story of international parental abduction, filmed for over twenty years, chronicles Lucas’s journey of growth and self-discovery, and culminates with Lucas becoming a father himself. Lost in the Bewilderness is not only a detective story but also a lyrical meditation on childhood, lost and found, and an exploration of how the themes of ancient Greek myth and tragedy, with the family at their center, are still very much alive in the modern world.
In 1975, a seven-months pregnant Vietnamese refugee, Giap, escapes Saigon in a boat and, within weeks, finds herself working on an assembly line in Seymour, Indiana. 35 years later, her aspiring filmmaker son, Tony, decides to document her final day of work at the last ironing board factory in America.
Inspired by the true-life experience of its star George Takei, Allegiance follows one family's extraordinary journey in this untold American story following the events of Pearl Harbor. Their loyalty was questioned, their freedom taken away, but their spirit could never be broken.
The personal stories lived by the Uncle, the Father and the Son, respectively, form a tragic experience that is drawn along a line in time. This line is comparable to a crease in the pages of the family album, but also to a crack in the walls of the paternal house. It resembles the open wound created when drilling into a mountain, but also a scar in the collective imaginary of a society, where the idea of salvation finds its tragic destiny in the political struggle. What is at the end of that line? Will old war songs be enough to circumvent that destiny?
At the end of the 1960s, Vanesa’s parents fled the Franco-regime’s deep poverty to pursue their dream in the Netherlands. Working their blue-collar jobs for hours and hours, for over 45 years, their purpose was to return to Spain wealthy and comfortable. There, in a house full of Dutch porcelain and shiny gold, they can now finally rest. Vanesa was raised as Dutch, but still feels trapped in their expectant illusion, even with the distance between them. Torn between two homes, she starts to re-examine her past.
The story is set at the beginning of the 20th century in Sicily. Salvatore, a very poor farmer, and a widower, decides to emigrate to the US with all his family, including his old mother. Before they embark, they meet Lucy. She is supposed to be a British lady and wants to come back to the States. Lucy, or Luce as Salvatore calls her, for unknown reasons wants to marry someone before to arrive to Ellis Island in New York. Salvatore accepts the proposal. Once they arrive in Ellis Island they spend the quarantine period trying to pass the examinations to be admitted to the States. Tests are not so simple for poor farmers coming from Sicily. Their destiny is in the hands of the custom officers.
Filmmaker Helena de Llanos, who lives in the chaotic house, full of memories and treasures, where her grandfather, Fernando Fernán Gómez (1921-2007), legendary writer, actor and director; and his wife, the actress and writer Emma Cohen (1946-2016), shared their lives, analyzes the relationship that the living have with the dead through the places and objects they have left behind.
When Werner Herzog was still a child, his father was beaten to death before his eyes. His mother was overwhelmed with his upbringing and thereupon shipped him off to one of the toughest youth welfare institutions in Freistatt. This was followed by a career as a bouncer in the city's most notorious music club and an attempt to start a family. Today, the 77-year-old from Bielefeld lives with his dog Lucky in a lonely house in the country. Despite adverse living conditions, he has survived in his own unique and inimitable way.
A luxury cruise boat motors up the Yangtze - navigating the mythic waterway known in China simply as "The River." The Yangtze is about to be transformed by the biggest hydroelectric dam in history. At the river's edge - a young woman says goodbye to her family as the floodwaters rise towards their small homestead. The Three Gorges Dam - contested symbol of the Chinese economic miracle - provides the epic backdrop for Up the Yangtze, a dramatic feature documentary on life inside modern China.
Ten-year-old Fiona is sent to live with her grandparents in a small fishing village in Donegal, Ireland. She soon learns the local legend that an ancestor of hers married a Selkie – a seal who can turn into a human. Years earlier, her baby brother was washed out to sea and never seen again, so when Fiona spies a naked little boy on the abandoned Isle of Roan Inish, she is compelled to investigate.
THE LIMITS OF MY WORLD follows a nonverbal young man’s transition from the school system into adulthood. Brian has autism and faces the daily challenges of adjusting to his new life. Filmed from the intimate perspective of his older sister Heather, this documentary seeks to understand Brian’s personality beneath his disability. THE LIMITS OF MY WORLD is an autistic coming of age story exploring what it means to be a nonverbal disabled person in today’s society.
Freddy, a 48-year-old bachelor with no children, who continues to live as if he were a teenager, meets Aylín, a 30-year-old girl who arrives in Lima, and is surprised that she could be his daughter.
Madicken is a Swedish girl from the upper level family, growing up during the time of first world war which did not include Sweden. She lives happily with her family, experiencing the world and making brave and crazy things.
The director Andrés Kaiser combines hundreds of amateur films and photographs from the treasure trove of images belonging to his migrant grandparents creating a cinematic firework of analogies.
When a Chinese-Canadian college student returns home to Toronto, she visits a Hong Kong cafe she frequented during her childhood. Through eating the food, she is suddenly able to relive suppressed memories of her deceased grandmother. Now she must confront their multifaceted relationship and her own identity to find her peace.