Four young people from Tanzania and Cameroon complete a year of weltwärts voluntary service in Germany. For each of them, it is their first visit in Europe. The film follows the volunteers throughout their year of service, it expresses different expectations, enthusiasm, goals and challenges. The volunteers describe subjectively their personal experiences as well as their view of Germany. The documentary is a thoughtful and exciting vision of the exchange program seen by four young people.
A young pair from Stuttgart fly to Shanghai to hop aboard the textile business of his father while she prepares for the birth of their son. A story about the ever more common movement of Germans into the East for professional gain.
When a firefighter comes to your house, chances are that their lives were just like yours not too long ago. 70% of all firefighters in Canada are volunteers, meaning in most cases, they were just eating dinner, coaching a team, or even at their actual job. To raise awareness of the need for volunteer firefighters, "Answer the Call" will showcase the unique lifestyle of volunteer firefighters, and have them shed light on the risks and rewards of living a double life.
Documentary about the VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) program.
A documentary based on the book Umbanda no Brasil by the scholar Mata e Silva, who is interviewed by the director. The book studies the Brazilian religion known as spiritism, a syncretism of African beliefs and magical rites, Indian beliefs and images, and Catholic symbols.
The Chinese global machine has been invited to revitalise the ailing Swedish town of Kalmar. The town's mayor has invited a Chinese company to build a trade centre and 300 homes, but all does not go to plan. An amusing and deeply relevant film, which shows the fault lines that emerge when the tigers of the developing world try to expand into Europe.
In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand blue-collar Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.
A 1970s American elementary school program encouraging students to figure out for themselves the universal building blocks of human community — family, work, faith, etc. — inflamed political sensitivities so intensely it was shelved and forgotten. Archive footage of the documentary film series at the program's core, classroom exchanges, and the ensuing controversy frames larger issues of education, politics and ideology.
As beautiful and sleek as it is deadly, 52 Blocks merits special conservation efforts as the United States' only existing native martial culture, as it is indeed, the jazz of the martial arts world. Across the African diaspora, there are manifestations of African-derived warrior-dances, capoeira in brazil, mani in Cuba, ladja in Martinique, pinge in Haiti- yet the US offshoot has remained esoteric, because it was suppressed throughout slavery, Reconstruction and Jim Crow and then obscured in the criminal justice system. The history, interviews and training of the martial arts style that created Breakdance and boxing greats like Mike Tyson.
An account of the victims of the Sierra Leone Civil War and depicts the most brutal period with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels capturing the capital city on January 1999.
Pier Paolo Pasolini sets out to interview Italians about sex, apparently their least favorite thing to talk about in public: he asks children if they know where do babies come from; asks old and young women if they support gender equality; asks both sexes if a woman's virginity still matters, what do they think of homosexuality, if divorce should be legal, or if they support the recent abolition of brothels. He interviews blue-collar workers, intellectuals, college students, rural farmers, the bourgeoisie, and every other kind of people, painting a vivid portrait of a rapidly-industrializing Italy, hanging between modernity and tradition — toward both of which Pasolini shows equal distrust.
In the equatorial forest of Congo Brazzaville and the Central African Republic pygmies live. Over-exploitation and waste of resources have had a significant impact on the lives of Pygmies. The story is based on Mangala an old and wise voice of these disappearing people.
Six months after a tsunami hit South Asia on December 26, 2004, Muslim-American and Sri Lankan-born Dr. M. Rahmi Mowjood led a team of American doctors and medical students on a relief trip. While mentoring medical students and aiding injured villagers, Dr. Mowjood also finds a way to ask someone to become a member of his own family.
Thursday 27th of October 2016 – Teatro Espace, Turin. Mulatu Astatke is a musician, composer, arranger and Ethiopia’s cultural ambassador. He’s known as the godfather of ethiojazz, a unique blend of jazz, traditional Ethiopian music, latin, caribbean reggae and afrofunk. Born in 1943 in Jimma, Mulatu studied music not only in Ethiopia but also in UK and USA. In 2005 he contributed to the soundtrack of Jim Jarmusch’s film “Broken Flowers”, reaching a new public worldwide.
Bikes for Africa is an entertaining, insightful and moving documentary following the life adventures of Hap Cameron and Mandy Todd, and their attempt to help implement a self sustainable bike workshop in rural Namibia with a container load secondhand donated bikes from Melbourne. The film investigates how a bicycle can fundamentally change the lives of rural Africans, and brings to focus the great works of two-wheeled charities Bicycles for Humanity and the Bicycling Empowerment Network Namibia.
A documentary consisting of a series of travelogue vignettes providing glimpses into cultural practices throughout the world intended to shock or surprise, including an insect banquet and a memorable look at a practicing South Pacific cargo cult.
A documentary film telling the story of true friendship and commitment to Japan’s recovery by the international community following the Great East Japan Earthquake. Many of these people dropped what they were doing and dedicated themselves to Japan’s recovery. Many of these them even took it upon themselves to establish non-profit organizations aimed at connecting with and rebuilding Tohoku and its communities.