With moving stories from a range of characters from her Kahnawake Reserve, Mohawk filmmaker, Tracey Deer, reveals the divisive legacy of more than a hundred years of discriminatory and sexist government policy to expose the lingering "blood quantum" ideals, snobby attitudes and outright racism that threaten to destroy the fabric of her community.
With moving stories from a range of characters from her Kahnawake Reserve, Mohawk filmmaker, Tracey Deer, reveals the divisive legacy of more than a hundred years of discriminatory and sexist government policy to expose the lingering "blood quantum" ideals, snobby attitudes and outright racism that threaten to destroy the fabric of her community.
2008-10-16
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How thick is your blood?
La otra educación (The Other Education) is about the class action suit Rosa Lydia Velez vs the Department of Education, and serves as the storyline to document 30 years of struggles that the families of disabled children in Puerto Rico have suffered. Their only request is the right to an education for their sons and daughters with special needs.
Documents Ku Klux Klan activities in California, Georgia, Chicago, and Ohio.
A sensitive and intimate portrait of Ivanna, a nomadic reindeer herder in the Russian Arctic and mother of five small kids. Ivanna is forced to leave the traditional way of life and emigrate to the city, following her own dreams, due to the quickly deteriorating conditions of life in the tundra. We follow her life for several years.
This documentary analyzes the origins of the Puerto Rican economic development plan of the 1960’s, better known as Manos a la Obra (or Operation Bootstrap). The film examines this economic plan within the framework of Puerto Rican society, with special emphasis on the mass migration of Puerto Ricans to the mainland.
Samuel Grey Horse, an Indigenous equestrian from Austin, Texas, is known for rescuing horses from being put down. After a riding accident lands him in a coma, Grey Horse experiences an afterlife vision that changes his perspective on the world and his place in it.
Women workers stand up to the toxic flower industry in Colombia.
An educational documentary spanning two continents, opening up a much-needed debate about traditional African spiritual systems; their cosmologies, ideologies and underlying ethical principles. Modern science no longer refutes the origins of mankind being in Africa and similarities in the cosmological ideologies of African esoteric systems with those found many established world religions today, suggest that it was not only people that migrated, but also concepts and themes that then provided bedrock for the formation of other systems of belief.
Filmmaker Molly Gandour, in her mid-20s, returns to her childhood home in Indiana to speak with her parents in depth for the first time about her sister's death from cancer sixteen years earlier. The filmmaker comes of age as she weaves a deeply observed portrait of a family unearthing a long ago loss. Unflinching and poignant, Peanut Gallery shows us how we can transform when we begin to fill the silences between those closest to us.
The creation of the Xingu Indigenous Park is reassessed by indigenous peoples and anthropologists. Almost 50 years after the initiative, which had the decisive participation of the indigenist brothers Cláudio and Orlando Villas-Bôas, the older indigenous people still have not forgotten the original lands they left behind. Some want to go back to their old origins.
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.
Friends and admirers of iconoclastic film director Sam Fuller read from his memoirs in this unconventional documentary directed by Fuller's only child, Samantha.
This feature documentary is an exploration of the concept of dirt and impurity. From the slums of Kolkata to Vancouver's Downtown Eastside to a barbeque joint in Central Texas, Dirt digs deep into the webs of meaning and feeling attached to that deceptively simple 4-letter word. An odyssey into all things unclean, the film features animation to make Hieronymus Bosch blush and music from Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
Acoustic Ocean is an artistic exploration of the sonic ecology of marine life in the North Atlantic. Located on the Lofoten Islands in Northern Norway, the video centers on the performance of a marine-biologist diver who is using a life-size model of a submersible equipped with all sorts of hydrophones and recording devices. In this science-fictional quest, her task is to sense the submarine space for acoustic and bioluminescent forms of expression.
Hidden in the heart of Russia, there is a Soviet-era city where thousands of people live and work behind barbed-wire fences monitored by armed guards. It is Ozyorsk (Ozersk), located in the Chelyabinsk Oblast, one of the most polluted places on the planet and home to the largest stockpiles of nuclear material. Its code name: City 40.
REAL BOY is the coming-of-age story of Bennett Wallace, a transgender teenager on a journey to find his voice-as a musician, a friend, a son, and a man. As he navigates the ups and downs of young adulthood, Bennett works to gain the love and support of his mother, who has deep misgivings about her child's transition. Along the way, he forges a powerful friendship with his idol, Joe Stevens, a celebrated transgender musician with his own demons to fight.
When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.
Documentary depicting the lives of child prostitutes in the red light district of Songachi, Calcutta. Director Zana Briski went to photograph the prostitutes when she met and became friends with their children. Briski began giving photography lessons to the children and became aware that their photography might be a way for them to lead better lives.