Part of John Nesbitt's Passing Parade series, this short shows how three seemingly unimportant things can affect people. The first is how the number 7 affects a student accused of theft charges. The second segment shows that a person's doodles can reveal personality traits. The final segment shows why certain items are on men's suits, such as lapels.
Eighteen months in the life of 89 years old Viola Dees as she tries of persuade Los Angeles authorities that she can care for her grandson, 9-year-old Walter.
This dramatized short film describes the historical mystery of France's "man in the iron mask". King Louis XIV imprisoned a man who was never identified, but who was forced to wear an iron mask for the length of his captivity, which ended only in his death. Several candidates for the identity of the man are investigated.
This short film focuses on the mysterious and legendary Seri Indians who live in a utopian colony off the west coast of Mexico.
This short film examines the origins of several superstitions including crossing your fingers, knocking on wood, rabbit's feet, and breaking champagne bottles to christen ships, plus the role of superstitions in the Flying Dutchman tale.
Poignant postwar appeal for Britain’s Jewry to support orphaned Jewish children rescued from Europe.
From 1950 to 1953, one hundred thousand children were orphaned by the Korean War. With no resources to mend the wounds, the two sides, North and South, took different paths to find homes and families for the war orphans. While the children of South Korea were sent to Europe and the United States through ‘International Adoption’, the children of North Korea were distributed across Eastern Europe through a method called ‘Commissioned Education’. As a result, more than five thousand children from the North had to spend nearly a decade living in foreign lands across Eastern Europe. This story is a record of their lives, which used to be kept hidden from the rest of the world. There is a key to understanding how North Korea's closed political structure began and how the ‘Juche ideology’ was formed in this documentary movie. Understanding North Korea in the 1950s is an important way to understand North Korea at present.
In Uganda, AIDS-infected mothers have begun writing what they call Memory Books for their children. Aware of the illness, it is a way for the family to come to terms with the inevitable death that it faces. Hopelessness and desperation are confronted through the collaborative effort of remembering and recording, a process that inspires unexpected strength and even solace in the face of death.
A talented group of orphaned children in Swaziland create a fictional heroine and send her on a dangerous quest.
In China more people are on death row than the rest of the world combined. The children of the convicts are often left alone, stigmatized and living in the streets. Grandma Zhang, as the kids call her, is a former prison guard who has founded an orphanage in Nanzhao.
In this somewhat whitewashed documentary on Manhattan's Bowery a newcomer to the area takes his first step toward redemption after a meal, bed, and inspiring talk.
This short shows how two objects led to important discoveries. Children playing with a seesaw inspire French physician Rene Laennec to invent the stethoscope, and a pair of shoes made of caoutchouc lead Charles Goodyear to discover the process for vulcanizing rubber.
In this powerful tale about the rise of Korea’s global adoption program, four adult adoptees return to their country of birth and reconnect with their roots, mapping the geographies of kinship that bind them to a homeland they never knew.
The saga of the Normandie is recounted from her life as a luxury liner, the horrific fire that nearly destroyed her, and her resuscitation to join in the war effort. A John Nesbitt's Passing Parade short.
Since the fall of the Iron Curtain an estimated four million children have found themselves living on the streets in the former countries of the Soviet Union. In the streets of Moscow alone there are over 30,000 surviving in this manner at the present time. The makers of the documentary film concentrated on a community of homeless children living hand to mouth in the Moscow train station Leningradsky. Eight-year-old Sasha, eleven-year-old Kristina, thirteen-year-old Misha and ten-year-old Andrej all dream of living in a communal home. They spend winter nights trying to stay warm by huddling together on hot water pipes and most of their days are spent begging. Andrej has found himself here because of disagreements with his family. Kristina was driven into this way of life by the hatred of her stepmother and twelve-year-old Roma by the regular beatings he received from his constantly drunk father. "When it is worst, we try to make money for food by prostitution," admits ...
In this John Nesbitt's Passing Parade short, a look is taken at the problems of film preservation efforts in the 1930s and early 1940s.
In SFRJ, the state officially takes care of all it's citizens. Every child is a good little pioneer. However, in reality no one (especially not the state) takes care of Roma and many other poor kids leaving them to poverty and the streets.
This John Nesbitt's Passing Parade series short highlights the film preservation efforts of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Several scenes from early newsreels are shown.
It's the end of the century at a corner of the city in a building riddled with crime - Everyone in the building has turned into zombies. After Jenny's boyfriend is killed in a zombie attack, she faces the challenge of surviving in the face of adversity. In order to stay alive, she struggles with Andy to flee danger.
The film tells the story of three best friends named Ako, Aki and Awang, who are well-known in their village for their mischievous and humourous pranks. The trio work for Pak Man. One day, they are assigned to pick up his daughter Misha, who has just returned from overseas and dreams of becoming a doctor. The trio have been in love with her for a long time but she does not pay them any heed. When Misha is robbed by a snatch thief one day, she is rescued by a doctor named Shafiq. Her face reminds the doctor of his late wife, and he begins to pursue her, which annoys the trio.
Dr. Mabuse and his organization of criminals are in the process of completing their latest scheme, a theft of information that will allow Mabuse to make huge profits on the stock exchange. Afterwards, Mabuse disguises himself and attends the Folies Bergères show, where Cara Carozza, the main attraction of the show, passes him information on Mabuse's next intended victim, the young millionaire Edgar Hull. Mabuse then uses psychic manipulation to lure Hull into a card game where he loses heavily. When Police Commissioner von Wenk begins an investigation of this mysterious crime spree, he has little to go on, and he needs to find someone who can help him.
Rome, Italy. After committing a heinous crime, a senior police officer exposes evidence incriminating him because his moral commitment prevents him from circumventing the law and the social order it protects.
Someone from another planet crashed on Earth and evil is chasing him, and then love appears, and it defeats evil through an amulet.
As a result of a successful conspiracy against Menshikov, Peter II is prematurely recognized as an adult and is in a hurry to be crowned in Moscow. The Dolgoruky brothers gather for this celebration. There were eight of them - all-powerful and influential representatives of the ancient Rurikovich family - and among them the beautiful Ekaterina, the daughter of the huntsman Alexei.
When Marty's car is stolen, he sets out on a mission to find it; however, he soon realizes that the person who stole it is much more dangerous than he thinks.
In Edo Period Japan, a noblewoman's banishment for her love affair with a lowly page signals the beginning of her inexorable fall.
John tells the story of a young male, a psychiatric hospital patient who witnesses the death of another Black male patient at the hands of white staff. Blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction, this work draws from real life cases of mentally ill Black men who have died as a result of excessive force of the State.
The uneventful lives of three young men who live in a small, poverty-stricken village in southern Italy.
David McDoll is a selfish and wealthy man living an enviable lifestyle in his large villa and collecting fancy cars. However, his life is about to be changed forever when he inherits his six grandchildren. His glamorous lifestyle quickly becomes complete chaos. But he will learn a valuable lesson that teaches him about placing family first and discovering a newfound appreciation for life.
An elder brother who lived a life of crime but left to show his younger brother the lifestyle is not fit for anything. Years later his younger brother takes his footsteps in the life of drugs/crime, to a deal gone wrong his younger brother is murdered, his elder brother steps back into his crime ways and to find and avenge his younger brother's death.
A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident.
A young photographer's home is haunted by it's former residents.
A forged 500-franc note is passed from person to person and shop to shop, until it falls into the hands of a genuine innocent who doesn't see it for what it is—which will have devastating consequences on his life.
When Max (Eric Stoltz), urged on by "Risk Management," a self-help book for the hapless, decides to approach his fellow ferry-commuter Rory (Susanna Thompson), he hopes simply saying hello might change his life for the better. But Rory only accepts contact by contract. Max finds he can play along. As the two negotiate a whirlwind relationship on paper, Rory slowly lets down her guard; but when her unresolved personal life intervenes in the form of Donald (Kevin Tighe), Max must manage a little more risk than he bargained on.