Take It From Me

Meet the Patels(en)

Finding love is never easy. For Ravi Patel, a first generation Indian-American, the odds are slim. His ideal bride is beautiful, smart, funny, family-oriented, kind and—in keeping with tradition—Indian (though hopefully raised in the US). Oh, and her last name should be Patel because in India, Patels usually marry other Patels. And so at 30, Ravi decides to break up with his American girlfriend (the one who by all accounts is perfect for him except for her red hair and American name) and embark on a worldwide search for another Patel longing to be loved. He enlists the help of his matchmaker mother, attends a convention of Patels living in the US and travels to wedding season in India. Witty, honest and heartfelt, this comedy explores the questions with which we all struggle: What is love? What is happiness? And how in the world do we go about finding them?

One Day in Sarajevo(bs)

Causes and consequences of the assassination that happened in Sarajevo a hundred years ago still continue to reverberate in Europe. On June 28, 1914 Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire Franz Ferdinand sparking World War I that marked the start of the 20th century. As Sarajevo commemorated the centennial of the assassination, different people had different interpretations of what happened in the city a century ago and different emotions about it. ONE DAY IN SARAJEVO tells about various perspectives of the anniversary in Sarajevo combining and contrasting footage filmed by citizens of Sarajevo (with small cameras and mobile phones) with scenes from feature films about the assassination by directors from Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the United Kingdom

Another World(en)

What would drive someone to drop everything and move into a city park in lower Manhattan? In the fall of 2011 hundreds of people did just that as a public protest against corporate greed and with the hope of creating an alternative society. Occupy Wall Street started as an under attended protest that quickly caught fire and capturing international headlines, the imaginations and hearts of people across the globe. Almost overnight the movement transformed the national dialog about economic inequality and corporate corruption. The slogan 'We are the 99 percent' instantly became part of the national lexicon. This documentary is an intimate portrait of several key players who helped create the movement and their wild ride through the rise and fall of Occupy Wall Street.

70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green(en)

Documenting the demolition of Cabrini Green, Chicago's most infamous public housing development, through the stories of three public housing residents whose lives are turned upside down in the name of progress.

Period: The End of Menstruation(en)

As millions of women and girls take shots and pills to stop their periods, the meaning of menstruation changes. Current marketing of hormonal birth control (Depo-Provera, Seasonale, Seasonique, Lybrel, Anya) attracts customers by promising freedom from monthly periods. For many consumers, menstrual suppression eliminates painful monthly flow, giving them more control in their lives. For others, menstrual suppression represents a frightening shift in thinking about the human body and another dangerous experiment on woman’s health. Period: The End of Menstruation? interrogates the cultural and medical side effects of suppression before 'the curse' disappears.

Calendar of the Year(en)

A Path Appears(en)

The film follows intrepid reporters Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn and actor/advocates Malin Akerman, Mia Farrow, Ronan Farrow, Jennifer Garner, Regina Hall, Ashley Judd, Blake Lively, Eva Longoria, and Alfre Woodard to Colombia, Haiti, Kenya, and throughout the United States as they uncover the harshest forms of gender-based oppression and human rights violations, as well as the effective solutions being implemented to combat them.

Seeking Asian Female(en)

Seeking Asian Female is an eccentric modern love story about Steven and Sandy – an aging white man with “yellow fever” who is obsessed with marrying any Asian woman, and the young Chinese bride he finds online. Debbie, a Chinese American filmmaker, documents and narrates with skepticism and humor, from the early stages of Steven’s search, through the moment Sandy steps foot in California for the first time, to a year into their precarious union. Global migration, Sino-American relations and the perennial battle of the sexes, weigh in on the fate of their marriage in this intimate and quirky personal documentary.

Box 25(es)

Documentary about the relation between Panama and the United States, during the building of the Panama Canal.

Where Gods Are Dead(nb)

A Norwegian TV-worker tries to prevent her son, which she has with her former husband, a Serb now living in Jugoslavia, to become a soldier in the starting civil war.

Joan Crawford: Always the Star(en)

Glamorous and hugely popular Joan Crawford raised herself from brutal poverty to Academy Award-winning stardom by guts, determination and hard work. During her 50-year career, she made over 80 films. But her obsessive perfectionism led to the later caricature of coat-hanger-wielding harridan that even the adoration of fans could not counter. Still, she has endured as one of the most popular icons of the movies, an early role model to a million young women who aspired to her image of stylish magnetic power and unquestioned independence.

25 April(en)

A dramatization of the events at Gallipoli using the letters of the soldiers who were there.

A Flickering Truth(en)

Afghanistan's film history might well have have been lost forever, if not for the brave custodians who risked their lives to conceal films from the Taliban regime. This is a chronicle of their attempts to preserve and restore thousands of hours of film.

Don't Blink - Robert Frank(en)

The life and work of Robert Frank—as a photographer and a filmmaker—are so intertwined that they're one in the same, and the vast amount of territory he's covered, from The Americans in 1958 up to the present, is intimately registered in his now-formidable body of artistic gestures. From the early '90s on, Frank has been making his films and videos with the brilliant editor Laura Israel, who has helped him to keep things homemade and preserve the illuminating spark of first contact between camera and people/places. Don't Blink is Israel's like-minded portrait of her friend and collaborator, a lively rummage sale of images and sounds and recollected passages and unfathomable losses and friendships that leaves us a fast and fleeting imprint of the life of the Swiss-born man who reinvented himself the American way, and is still standing on ground of his own making at the age of 90.

Code Name: Butterflies(es)

In the 1950s, Patria, Minerva, and María Teresa Mirabal - who were known by their codename "The Butterflies" - created an underground resistance movement against Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic. On November 25, 1960, Trujillo had all three sisters assassinated. The assassinations turned the Mirabal sisters into national heroines and symbols of feminist resistance. The documentary interweaves interviews with over forty witnesses to the story, including the Mirabal family friends, colleagues, co-revolutionaries, teachers, and most importantly, their surviving sister, Dedé, along with dramatic reenactments and archival footage.

Day Sleeper(en)

A short documentary about a female truck driver in the United Kingdom.

Tutuguri: Tarahumaras 79(fr)

This film was shot in summer 1979. The repeated ritual of Tutuguri that Tranquilino the saweame sang and danced six times in a short, strictly accurate duration. Secret words from which only emerge vowels, dance that builds a sacred space between the four cardinal points of a cross, a black and pagan sign. A native solar rite, prior to the Spanish conquest. The assembly here builds in a single plane the two poles of real time and an expanded space-time, from dual material: Tutuguri and Carreras.

Christmas at Moose Factory(en)

A study of life at Christmastime in Moose Factory, an old settlement mainly composed of Cree families on the shore of James Bay, composed entirely of children's crayon drawings and narrated by children.

Saving Face(en)

Every year hundreds of people - mostly women - are attacked with acid in Pakistan. Follow several of these survivors, their fight for justice, and a Pakistani plastic surgeon who has returned to his homeland to help them restore their faces and their lives.

Los Pintos - Tarahumaras 82(es)

To mark the celebrations of Holy Week, the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico invented (or found) dance-rites in which men paint the face and body. Passion processions depict two kinds of "fariseos" (Pharisees): some dressed in white and crudely daubed with chalk; others, almost naked--feather helmets wearers--fully marked with large white spots. Children, teenagers, young men; all the men of the tribe are organized into a strip under the lead of an older flag carrying dancer. They occupy the site of the village for three days and three nights witn uninterrupted, obstinate drums. Commemoration or preparation for what fight? For the strange figure of Governador leather mask seems to revive the tradition of the leader of nomadic warriors. On Easter morning, the public festivities end abruptly with the appearance of two Pascoleros in body paint, the dual perform a subtle dance: they will be the signal for the up-to-death of Judas.