The film follows Bill’s adventures as a child of a bank robber, raised in a gilded household, who turned his back on American devotion to materialism and went off to live in monasteries and mountains in Taiwan. He pursued a fascination with Buddhism and poetry and traveled to remote regions of China to rediscover an ancient tradition of mountain hermits vital to Chinese culture.
Self
A chronicle which provides a rare window into the international perception of the Iraq War, courtesy of Al Jazeera, the Arab world's most popular news outlet. Roundly criticized by Cabinet members and Pentagon officials for reporting with a pro-Iraqi bias, and strongly condemned for frequently airing civilian causalities as well as footage of American POWs, the station has revealed (and continues to show the world) everything about the Iraq War that the Bush administration did not want it to see.
Maverick underground American/Lebanese musician and ethnomusicologist Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls and Sublime Frequencies), lands as a stranger in Cairo, soon after the 2011 uprisings, and teams up with three young Egyptian musicians for the translation of his old songs into Arabic. Under Bishop’s mentorship, this unlikely collaboration transforms into a band, The Invisible Hands.
Melvyn Bragg explores the dramatic story of William Tyndale and his mission to translate the Bible into English, which made him a threat to the authority of the church and state.
This documentary offers a glimpse into the life of an English neurosurgeon (Henry Marsh) situated in Ukraine as we are exposed to the overwhelming dilemmas he has to face and the burden he has to carry throughout his profession.
Lichter is an episodic tale from Hans-Christian Schmid about the life on the border between Germany and Poland. The film sheds light on the everyday stories of escape and desperateness.
Viktor Navorski is a man without a country; his plane took off just as a coup d'etat exploded in his homeland, leaving it in shambles, and now he's stranded at Kennedy Airport, where he's holding a passport that nobody recognizes. While quarantined in the transit lounge until authorities can figure out what to do with him, Viktor simply goes on living – and courts romance with a beautiful flight attendant.
Modern treasure hunters, led by archaeologist Ben Gates, search for a chest of riches rumored to have been stashed away by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin during the Revolutionary War. The chest's whereabouts may lie in secret clues embedded in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and Gates is in a race to find the gold before his enemies do.
A 1-minute film about the experience of young immigrant children having to translate for their parents. Presented by NextShark.
Beyond Silence is about a family and a young girl’s coming of age story. This German film looks into the lives of the deaf and at a story about the love for music. A girl who has always had to translate speech into sign language for her deaf parents yet when her love for playing music grows strong she must decide to continue doing something she cannot share with her parents.
During a professional conference in Prague, two interpreters in the Hungarian booth hilariously vie for the attention of one listener.
Historical idioms garnish our language but are often hard to translate. This comedy helps to illustrate them and tells the story of two Austrian neighbours, who become enamoured. “Foam-beater" (boaster) Hanspeter throws an eye after an addleheaded Annemarie, but she just "shows him the bird" (indicates that he is chuckoo). He must "jump over his shadow" (take the plunge) and get a foot in her door. Amusement for proverb fans who love to make whoopee, gaze into the pale blue yonder, or get to the point.
Documentary portrait of the actress Romy Schneider, in which director Frederick Baker tries to form an overall picture from the facets of image, myth, real life and screen persona.
A short documentary about the making of Dario Argento's "Phenomena" (1985).
Jago tells the story of an 80 year old sea nomad called Rohani who has spent his life plying the waters of South East Asia’s Coral Triangle. The story is told entirely from Rohani’s perspective, against the spectacular backdrop of the Togian Islands, and recreates events that capture the turning points in his life, as a hunter and as a man. We were able to bring Rohani’s past experiences to life by working closely with his family and friends in the village where he grew up. These are the people you see representing Rohani in the film at various stages in his life. Story telling is a big part of Bajau culture, and a way of preserving traditions through generations, so everyone was very enthusiastic about what we were trying to do and brought lots of ideas of their own, especially Rohani. Although he had never had a camera pointed at him, it certainly wasn’t the first time he’d sat around telling stories. We were just lucky that he let us capture it on film.
Resorting to the images that make up three quarters of the last century, Jean-Louis Comolli chose films that crossed his path fifty years ago, discovering his own history of cinema, and particularly the documentary cinema. Visual score orchestrated by a voice off (his) which lists topics that are important to him - the place of the viewer, the fiction in the documentary, the impact of technical progress on the artistic field ... -, the film weaves unpredictable wires between the excerpts .
Interviews with personalities including John Mellencamp, Spike Lee, Lou Reed, Roseanne Barr, David Byrne, George Michael and more, as they reflect on the 1980s.
Facing community misconceptions, four people diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome find themselves living a fulfilling and ambitious life despite consent and sometimes debilitating effects of the misunderstood disorder.
Sixteen years after his documentary When Louis Met Jimmy, Theroux seeks to understand how he was tricked by a man who became his friend.