Bissau Diary

Amílcar(pt)

Poet, agricultural engineer and revolutionary Amílcar Cabral was born in Guinea-Bissau to Cape Verdean parents. After studying in Portugal, he emerged as the charismatic leader of the anti-colonial struggle against Portuguese rule. With his utopian ideas, he sparked a cultural and an armed uprising that went on to inspire other African liberation movements.

Malan Malé - The Voice of Independence(fr)

The life of Malan Mané, once the star singer of the legendary band Super Mama Djombo from Guinea-Bissau, is turned upside down from one day to the next: After 30 years in exile in France, he is now allowed to sing in a sold-out stadium in Bissau, see his country again and return to the studio to finally complete the album he started decades ago.

Mangrove School(pt)

We went to research the conditions of the students in the guerrilla schools in the mangroves. Instead, we soon became ourselves the learners and the first lesson was how to walk. In the mangrove school the learning happens with the whole body.

Concerning Violence(sv)

Based on powerful archival material documenting the most daring moments in the struggle for liberation in the Third World, this documentary is accompanied by classic text from The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.

Clara di Sabura(pt)

Clara is a lazy and irresponsible teenager, who live in Bissau (the capital city of Guinea-Bissau), and uses her beauty as a weapon. Everyone around her admonishes her, despising her and naming her as Clara di Sabura (Clara of Parties, of the Good Life).

Jimmy Murakami: Non-Alien(en)

A documentary film about acclaimed filmmaker Jimmy T. Murakami and his emotional return to Tule Lake concentration camp in America.

Hunting Hitler's Stolen Treasures: The Monuments Men(en)

The true story of an unlikely World War II band of brothers: the unsuspecting group of scholars, academics, historians and architects headed to the front lines to rescue thousands of years' worth of European art and culture from Nazi-occupied Europe.

The Man Who Wanted to Classify the World(en)

Paul Otlet was a Belgian, *1868, died 1944, who perfected the Dewey Classification system as "the Universal Decimal Classification", in his lifetime alone totalling 17 million index cards of human knowledge.

Giuseppe Makes a Movie(en)

While the rest of America slept, DIY filmmaker/musician Giuseppe Andrews has made over 30 experimental features. Set in some demented alternate universe (i.e. Ventura, California), they are populated by real-life alcoholics and drug addicts, trash-talking senior citizens and trailer park residents dressed in cow outfits and costume-shop wigs. Director Adam Rifkin creates a wildly surreal, outrageously funny and strangely touching portrait of a truly Outsider Artist inhabiting a world few of us even know exists.

One Cut, One Life(en)

When seminal documentarian Ed Pincus is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he and collaborator Lucia Small team up to make one last film, much to the chagrin of Jane, Ed’s wife of 50 years. Told from two points of view with vulnerability, intimacy and humor, ONE CUT, ONE LIFE challenges the form of first person documentary while offering a complex story of love, loss, legacy, and the delicacy of capturing the preciousness of life while time is fleeting.

Untold Odyssey: Reindeer Wrangling(en)

A lyrical and haunting portrait of reindeer herding in the twilight expanses of the Lappish wilderness.

Voices from the Front(en)

In New York City, a distraught activist confronts the mayor with a story of a friend who languished on a cot in an emergency room hallway for nine days, only to die 48 hours after leaving the hospital. In 1988, thousands of activists hold the Food and Drug Administration under siege, demanding speedier drug approval. In 1990 AIDS activists converge on the National Institute of Health, calling for a more equitable clinical trial system and expanded research into new drugs and treatment. Voices From the Front, the first feature-length documentary on AIDS activism in America, makes clear the emotional and political effects of community activism using the voices of those directly engaged. It is a powerful distillation of pictures and words from events organized to change public consciousness, expose the failure of the health care systems, and challenge government inaction and neglect concerning AIDS.

Elstree Story(en)

Starting in 1927 when the first film, The White Sheik, was made there, Elstree Story features excerpts from over forty productions – including Hitchcock’s Blackmail, the first feature-length British talkie ever shown – with early appearances by some of cinema’s greatest stars; it is a most memorable and evocative journey through the years.

Berlin 10⁄90(en)

In 1990, Robert Kramer receives a grant from the Ford Foundation. He goes to Berlin for 6 months, where he makes an hour long single video shot (for a festival) in the bathroom of his apartment. Facing the camera, the filmmaker thinks, alone, about the fall of the Berlin wall. "I've already spent 6 weeks here. With all the events in eastern Europe, it was like a hurricane. Berlin is a city where you feel the biggest changes, where you meet Polish immigrants, or others, escaping. Berlin will become a very violent city. What happens in eastern Europe is a bit like the end of the civil war in the US. The North, and all it's power stimulated by years of war, took over the South, who has lost everything. And there is this German past, the war, on all levels.

Polvere - Il grande processo dell'amianto(it)

What's Up, Fatlip?(en)

During the filming of Fatlip's debut solo music video for "What's Up, Fatlip?" Spike Jonze compiled a series of interviews with the rapper and put them together in a documentary.

Les Scandales de « La Religieuse »(fr)

Released in 1796 posthumously, The Nun, a novel that Diderot did not dream of publishing during his lifetime, as he knew it to be revolutionary, caused the same explosion in the 19th century France as in that of the 1960s, when Jacques Rivette decided to adapt it, with Anna Karina in the title role. “This film is banned and it will remain so!” said the General de Gaulle. Exploration of an indictment of incredible modernity which, through the tragedy of the young Suzanne, locked up in the convent against her will, denounces the inequity of a society denying women all moral, political and sexual freedom.

Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi(ar)

Muslims and Crusaders conclude a truce during Richard the Lionheart's illness, and young Arabs seize this opportunity to join their armies in Jerusalem. Among them is Saif al-Din, who hides his identity, which Prince Khalid knows. The young man heads towards Jerusalem and gains the trust of the Sultan.

Brexit(en)

A look at the streets of London in 2016 with Churchill's speech on the importance of a unified Europe.