Japan in Feast

As retailers, wholesalers, and negotiators, Asante women of Ghana dominate the huge Kumasi Central Market amid the laughter, argument, colour and music. The crew of this `Disappearing World' film have jumped into the fray, explored, and tried to explain the complexities of the market and its traders. As the film was to be about women traders, an all female film crew was selected and the rapport between the two groups of women is remarkable. The relationship was no doubt all the stronger because the anthropologist acting as advisor to the crew, Charlotte Boaitey, is herself an Asante. The people open up for the interviewers telling them about their lives as traders, about differences between men and women, in their perception of their society and also about marriage.

Four monks, a royal scholar, and their American guru are fighting to save Bhutan's sacred arts while learning the art of letting go.

A Zen priest in San Francisco and cookbook author use Zen Buddhism and cooking to relate to everyday life.

A portrait of His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, which includes historical footage of China's repression of Tibetan Buddhism in 1959.

This Traveltalk series short showcases the Mexico City police department's various units as they participate in a yearly festival. Included are a marching band, a parade of patrol cars, the motorcycle unit, equestrian unit, and the department's pistol team.

In this Traveltalk short, the symbolic role of cherry blossoms in Japanese culture is explored as well as the traditional Japanese religions of Shintoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism.

This feature documentary is an experiential journey in to the mystical practices of Japanese mountain asceticism. In Shugendō (The Way of Acquiring Power), practitioners perform ritual actions from shamanism, Shintō, Daoism, and Tantric Buddhism. They seek experiential truth of the teachings during arduous climbs in sacred mountains. Through the peace and beauty of the natural world, practitioners purify the six roots of perception, revitalize their energy and reconnect with their truest nature — all while grasping the fundamental interconnectedness with nature and all sentient beings.

When Danish filmmakers Mira Jargil and Christian Sønderby Jepsen try to find balance in their stressful lives, they seek guidance from a renowned Danish HIV researcher turned monk deep in the mountains of Sri Lanka. But their filming process goes differently than expected. When they hear that the renowned Danish doctor and HIV scientist Jan Erik Hansen has burned all boats to live as a Buddhist monk on a mountain in Sri Lanka, the two Danish documentary makers Mira Jargil and Christian Sønderby Jepsen decide to make a film about him. to make. Jan Erik Hansen, as monk Bhante, has become an important voice in the Buddhist community. He has a YouTube channel with many followers, and people from all over the world ask him their life questions. The film project ends unexpectedly when the monk and the filmmakers appear to have different ideas about the film.

A documentary about Cairo Jazz Festival's Amr Salah and his struggle every year to bring people and arts together in a country where 70% of people are under 30 and the Officials do not care about culture too much.

This documentary, produced in 2001, profiles the unique characters found at Texas Renaissance Faires. It screened at a few festivals and was accepted to screen at New Yorks' IFP (Independent Feature Project).

Buddhist monks open up about the joys and challenges of living out the precepts of the Buddha as a full-time vocation. Controversies swirling within modern monastic Buddhism are examined, from celibacy and the role of women to racism and concerns about the environment.

The jaw-dropping story of the spectacular rise and dramatic fall of British music and festival company Pollen. The company was launched in 2014 by two young British brothers, Callum and Liam Negus-Fancey. Riding the wave of the tech boom which saw start-ups like Deliveroo, Airbnb and Uber become ‘unicorn’ giants valued at $1bn or more, the brothers created a simple idea that soon attracted huge investment. Beginning as a ticketing platform – giving festivals goers the chance to earn VIP rewards for selling tickets to their friends – the company tapped into a lucrative area when music festivals and Instagram influencing were flourishing. They promised their customers a ‘bigger life’, gave staff a glamorous, party-fuelled workplace and soon went global.

Folklórny festival – koncert PUĽS-u

Brilliant Moon chronicles the life of the writer, poet, and meditation master Khyentse Rinpoche, one of Tibet's most revered 20th-century Buddhist teachers. Spiritual guide to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Royal Family of Bhutan, his life and teachings were an inspiration to all who encountered him. Richard Gere and Lou Reed provide the narration for his dangerous journey out of China, the subsequent spread of his influence and the search for his reincarnation after his death.

Innucadie (festival du conte et de la légende de Natashquan, 1er édition)

The darkness of the mine, invaded by the miners' light, by the noisy machines and the permanent and intense smell of ore in the air, leads us to an environment in which time and space become confused. A documentary film at Panasqueiras' Mine, between 2008/09. A reality captured by an eye-observer which does not interfere, but follows the compost that grows from the earth and is decomposed by man-machine.

Exploring individual responses to rapid social change, Cowboy and Maria in town follows the parallel lives of its two central characters. Cowboy and Maria have independently landed in Port Moresby, negotiating ways to survive urban life in a city ranked as one of the most dangerous in the world. Cowboy is an ex-raskol (urban bandit) and Maria an inhabitant of a squatter settlement. Unemployed and with a jail record, Cowboy has constructed an electric guitar out of scrap materials and plays on street corners. Maria lives an equally precarious existence, cultivating a seasonal garden in an urban settlement inflamed by frustration and intertribal conflicts. Far from being third world victims, they go about their daily lives with humour and imagination, rising to the challenge of enormous cultural upheaval.

After World War II a group of young writers, outsiders and friends who were disillusioned by the pursuit of the American dream met in New York City. Associated through mutual friendships, these cultural dissidents looked for new ways and means to express themselves. Soon their writings found an audience and the American media took notice, dubbing them the Beat Generation. Members of this group included writers Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg. a trinity that would ultimately influence the works of others during that era, including the "hippie" movement of the '60s. In this 55-minute video narrated by Allen Ginsberg, members of the Beat Generation (including the aforementioned Burroughs, Anne Waldman, Peter Orlovsky, Amiri Baraka, Diane Di Prima, and Timothy Leary) are reunited at Naropa University in Boulder, CO during the late 1970's to share their works and influence a new generation of young American bohemians.

"With characteristic wit and rigor, experimental filmmaker Larry Gottheim here applies his impressionistic editing style to footage collected during his travels in the Dominican Republic. Gottheim’s formal emphasis on repetition and fissures between sound and image resonates here as a mode of sociological reflection (with the fragmentary montage mirroring elements of ritual while also destabilizing the ethnographic gaze). A largely overlooked antecedent to the contemporary blending of avant-garde and ethnographic filmmaking, MACHETTE GILLETTE… MAMA still poses a potent challenge to documentary convention." - Max Goldberg

Shot with stunning elegance and clarity, NAKED SPACES explores the rhythm and ritual of life in the rural environments of six West African countries (Mauritania, Mali, Burkino Faso, Togo, Benin and Senegal). The nonlinear structure of NAKED SPACES challenges the traditions of ethnographic filmmaking, while sensuous sights and sounds lead the viewer on a poetic journey to the most inaccessible parts of the African continent: the private interaction of people in their living spaces.