Self
Self
In 2015, Dagny Carlsson quickly garnered the attention of millions of Swedes when she started blogging for the first time at age 102. Now at age 106, wanting to experience as much as she can, she accepts an invitation from a Finnish film director who wants her to star in a short film. So, off to Åland she goes!
2019-01-11
6
Once described by the press as "one of the most controversial figures on the Australian art scene", avant-garde poet and playwright Christopher Barnett achieved a level of notoriety in the Melbourne underground theatre scene during the ‘70s and ‘80s, before self-exiling to France. He remains there today, running an experimental theatre lab working with the marginalised and underprivileged, applauded by the establishment (including former French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault) and faithful to his belief that art can change the world. These Heathen Dreams is an intimate portrait of Barnett's life and revolutionary philosophy. Combining archival footage dating back to the ‘60s with contemporary observational documentation and text from Barnett's writings, it is a poignant and inspiring study of the power of both art and political activism.
In 1970, Melek Tez came to Berlin as a young worker from Turkey. A confident woman, she first countered racist resentments and remarks with irony and wit. Jokingly, she even referred to herself as a "Kümmeltürkin", a derogatory German term for Turkish migrants. Yet after fourteen humiliating years, her fighting spirit has given way to resignation: Melek Tez is returning to Turkey. Blending documentary, interviews and re-enacted scenes, director Jeanine Meerapfel chronicles Melek Tez' life experience.
Filmmaker Froukje van Wengerden’s 86-year-old grandmother shares a powerful memory from 1944, when she was just 14. As her story unfolds, we see a group of contemporary 14-year-old girls. Their procession of portraits permits the spectator to see simultaneously forward and back, into the future and towards the past. A miraculous testimonial that uses eye contact to focus the viewer inward and evoke unexpected emotions.
Dr Iain Stewart tells the story of how Earth works and how, over the course of 4.6 billion years, it came to be the remarkable place it is today.
A film about the close relationship between two brothers. Markus (10) and Lukas (7) live in an old, yellow townhouse in the middle of Oslo. The river runs close to their home. A paradise in the heart of a big city. Here the brothers grow up with their dreams and longings for the future.
This is an intimate portrait of life in the Mississippi Delta, where Chinese, African Americans and Whites live in a complex world of cotton, work, and racial conflict. The history of the Chinese community is framed against the harsh realities of civil , religion, politics, and class in the South. Rare historical footage and interviews of Delta residents are combined to create this unprecedented document of inter-ethnic relations in the American South.
What does beauty look like? In this award-winning short, Kenyan filmmaker Ng’endo Mukii combines animation, performance, and experimental techniques to create a visually arresting and psychologically penetrating exploration of the insidious impact of Western beauty standards and media-created ideals on African women’s perceptions of themselves. From hair-straightening to skin-lightening, YELLOW FEVER unpacks the cultural and historical forces that have long made Black women uncomfortable, literally, in their own skin.
Directed by the wife of 'That Kevin Smith', Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, a feature length documentary looking at the behind the scenes making of JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK.
A young artist, born as Nicole, but renamed Nova, sets out on a healing journey on an indigenous Taino sanctuary in upstate New York. Accompanied by the Wild Darlings, a black + queer, healing arts collective, she transmutes the trauma of her past by performing in white-face as the male teacher that sexually abused her as a child.
Jazz in Love tells the story of Jazz, a young man from Davao whose dream wedding is within reach: his boyfriend of 11 months has proposed. Because no law allows him to get married in the Philippines, he must fly to Germany, his boyfriend's home country, and tie the knot there. One of the things that stand in his way is his inability to speak Deutsch, and to address that he must temporarily relocate to Manila for language lessons. Meanwhile, his parents remain completely unaware of the radical changes that his life is about to undergo.
Rites of winter, rites of peyote. A creative documentary based on texts by Antonin Artaud read by Jean Rouch, and the words of the last shaman’s peyote, translated by Raymonde Carasco.
The '40s and '50s were a classic period in New York City nightlife, when the saloonkeeper was king and regular folks could drink with celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Jackie Gleason. In this documentary, Kristi Jacobson profiles her grandfather, the king of kings: Toots Shor of the eponymous restaurant and saloon, which was once the place to be seen in Manhattan. Edward R. Murrow called Toots Shor the owner of America’s greatest saloon. He became the unlikely den-mother to the heroes of America's golden age. Politicians and gangsters, sports heroes and movie stars - Sinatra, Gleason, DiMaggio, Ruth, Costello, Eisenhower, Nixon, Warren - for 30 years, they all found their way to Toots' eponymous saloon on New York's West 51st Street.
Iverson is the ultimate legacy of NBA legend Allen Iverson, who rose from a childhood of crushing poverty in Hampton, Virginia, to become an 11-time NBA All-Star and universally recognized icon of his sport. Off the court, his audacious rejection of conservative NBA convention and unapologetic embrace of hip hop culture sent shockwaves throughout the league and influenced an entire generation. Told largely in Iverson's own words, the film charts the career highs and lows of one of the most distinctive and accomplished figures the sport of basketball has ever seen.
Acclaimed Montreal band Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra is one of a growing number of rock groups to have accepted an infant into their touring tribe. Touring with children is both costly and complicated, yet SMZ are determined to combine family life and being on the road with the band's deep political commitment.
Carole Laganière dives deeply into personal territory in this beautifully crafted exploration of absence and loss and its painful effect on daily lives. Inspired by her mother’s steadily advancing Alzheimer’s and the inevitability of her estrangement, Laganière weaves their story with the stories of others wrestling with loss: Ines, an immigrant who returns to her birth country of Croatia to find the mother who abandoned her during the war; Deni, an American author who’s finally able to search for his Quebec roots; and Nathalie, who’s desperately looking for her missing sister. Through their experiences the film ponders how absence is often the catalyst for a quest—a quest for information, understanding and often acceptance. Through its many voices, Absences speaks to us of the immense fragility and resiliency of human emotions.
The film follows the story of Jamie, a struggling butch lesbian actress who gets cast as a man in a film. The main plot is a romantic comedy between Jamie's male alter-ego, "Male Jamie," and Jill, a heterosexual woman on set. The film's subplots include Jamie's bisexual roommate Lola and her cat actor Howard, Lola's abrasive butch German girlfriend Andi, and Jamie's gay Asian friend David.
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.
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.
Filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond spent three months in 1976 riding along with patrol officers in the 44th Precinct of the South Bronx, which had the highest crime rate in New York City at that time.
For almost half of his life, Kenneth Viken has been in prison, and he does not know how many times he has been released, only to soon return . In January 2016 he is released again.
San Francisco filmmaker Konrad Steiner took 12 years to complete a montage cycle set to the late Leslie Scalapino’s most celebrated poem, way—a sprawling book-length odyssey of shardlike urban impressions, fraught with obliquely felt social and sexual tensions. Six stylistically distinctive films for each section of way, using sources ranging from Kodachrome footage of sun-kissed S.F. street scenes to internet clips of the Iraq war to a fragmented Fred Astaire dance number.
The Making-of James Cameron's Avatar. It shows interesting parts of the work on the set.
After the discovery of a mysterious VHS tape, a brutish police SWAT team launches a high-intensity raid on a remote warehouse, only to discover a sinister cult compound whose collection of pre-recorded material uncovers a nightmarish conspiracy.
Capturing Avatar is a feature length behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of Avatar. It uses footage from the film's development, as well as stock footage from as far back as the production of Titanic in 1995. Also included are numerous interviews with cast, artists, and other crew members. The documentary was released as a bonus feature on the extended collector's edition of Avatar.
Returning wounded from the war Maksym was overcome by self-doubt, in his physiological state. He is undergoing rehabilitation. He loses contact with his wife. He is tormented by dreams. In one of his dreams Maksym goes to the island to catch a lot of fish, as the paramedic advised him. Maksym takes a boat, net, dynamite from the best man and sails to the island.
After their late former Captain is framed, Lowrey and Burnett try to clear his name, only to end up on the run themselves.
Roughly chronological, from 3/96 to 11/96, with a coda in spring of 1997: inside compounds of Aum Shinrikyo, a Buddhist sect led by Shoko Asahara. (Members confessed to a murderous sarin attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995.) We see what they eat, where they sleep, and how they respond to media scrutiny, on-going trials, the shrinking of their fortunes, and the criticism of society. Central focus is placed on Hiroshi Araki, a young man who finds himself elevated to chief spokesman for Aum after its leaders are arrested. Araki faces extreme hostility from the Japanese public, who find it hard to believe that most followers of the cult had no idea of the attacks and even harder to understand why these followers remain devoted to the religion, if not the violence.
Known for his unmistakable cascading strings and recordings such as Charmaine, Mantovani enthralled the world with his sublime arrangements. This is the story of the man and his music.
Eddie, Dov, and Yvan are back, still working in Paris' Sentier textile district, This time they're confronting the high-stakes world of large distribution after striking a deal with Eurodiscount, a European hypermarket chain.
The comedian and best selling author of "Cancer on $5 a Day...How Humor Got Me Through the Toughest Journey of My Life," has plenty to say on everything from raising a 17 year old daughter, bargaining with the Almighty, and how not to make friends with a dolphin.
When they were young, Min-joo and Seo-yeon cared for each other and were closer than brothers and sisters. However, she accidentally learns about Seo-yeon's tutor, Woo-hyeon, and because of this man, their 10-year friendship starts to become shaky. Meanwhile, Jeong-soo is hurt in seeing Min-joo like that, and so he distanced himself from Min-joo. Because of Min-joo and Seo-yeon's misunderstanding, Jeong-soo who couldn't care much might just leave so Min-joo tries to break up with the help of Seo-yeon. While in the process of breaking up, Min-joo and Seo-yeon went back to their close relationship. The love of women who have been separated because of man, and the two men's friendship is comically drawn.
Jackie Justice is a mixed martial arts fighter who leaves the sport in disgrace. Down on her luck and simmering with rage and regret years after the fight, she's coaxed into a brutal underground fight by her manager and boyfriend Desi and grabs the attention of a fight league promoter who promises Jackie a life back in the Octagon. But the road to redemption becomes unexpectedly personal when Manny - the son she gave up as an infant - shows up at her doorstep. A triumphant story of a fighter who reclaims her power, in and out of the ring, when everyone has counted her out
A college teacher brings the little creatures back to his campus, where they proceed to terrorize the faculty and students.
The crew of Ukrainian NAVY minesweeper U311 "Cherkasy" is resisting seizure of the vessel by Russian army in Crimea in 2014.
Just as Daniel and Kristi welcome a newborn baby into their home, a demonic presence begins terrorizing them, tearing apart their perfect world and turning it into an inescapable nightmare.
The sequel to the cult classic August Underground is a character study in the sick, an amoral putrid fantasy. The found footage contained in August Underground’s MORDUM documents extreme deviant sexuality, torture and murder, while unfolding a classic tale of a man and woman in love. However, the woman cannot give up her other lover, who also happens to be her younger brother. August Underground’s MORDUM will vomit all over you and leave you for dead!
Having escaped years of imprisonment, vampire warrioress Selene finds herself in a changed world where humans have discovered the existence of both Vampire and Lycan clans and are conducting an all-out war to eradicate both immortal species. Now Selene must battle the humans and a frightening new breed of super Lycans to ensure the death dealers' survival.