The Shipibo-Konibo people of Peruvian Amazon decorate their pottery, jewelry, textiles, and body art with complex geometric patterns called kené. These patterns also have corresponding songs, called icaros, which are integral to the Shipibo way of life. This documentary explores these unique art forms, and one Shipibo family's efforts to safeguard the tradition.
A new documentary that follows master Haida weaver Delores Churchill on a journey to replicate a spruce root hat discovered with the Long Ago Person Found. The 300-year-old traveler was discovered in British Columbia and DNA testing discovered living descendants in Canada and Alaska. Her search crosses cultures and borders, and involves artists, scholars and scientists. The project raises questions about understanding and interpreting ownership, knowledge and connection.
Set in Varanasi, an ancient city of India, Tana Bana offers a rare look at the hidden world of Moslem weavers and Hindu traders and how their lives are interwoven through the production of the silk and the beauty it creates. However, as the technology advances, the trade is threatened by computerization and globalization.
The people, the scenery and the industrial traditions of the Stroud valley and the growth of the woollen industry.
Richly detailed amateur ethnographic film on the agrarian economy and society in rural Punjab.
A group of Macedonian women are shown hard at work.
Uses high magnification photography to demonstrate the processes of converting raw fibers into woven cloth.
A Weaverly Path offers an intimate portrait of Swiss-born tapestry weaver Silvia Heyden. The film captures the inner dialogue and meditations of an extraordinary artist in the moments of creation. Heyden works for over a year to create works inspired by the Eno River in Durham, North Carolina. And she shares how nature, music, her Bauhaus inspired education at the School of the Arts in Zurich and her life experiences anchor and inform her art. Heyden was a 20th century modernist whose body of work redefines the art of modern tapestry.
This film explores the traditional crafts of Native American tribes, specifically the Hopi, Navajo, and Iroquois. It highlights the craftsmanship of Hopi basket weaving and pottery, showcasing their techniques and cultural significance. The Navajo's weaving of wool blankets and rugs, as well as their silver jewelry making process, is also detailed. Additionally, the film discusses the Iroquois tradition of carving ceremonial masks from basswood trees. Each craft reflects the unique heritage and artistic expressions of these tribes.
Set in a Burkina Faso organic cotton weaving cooperative, a cacophonous cotton-spinning apparatus eats, digests, and takes a breath. Threads become the organs of a whirling, burping, guzzling machine animated by hands, looms, vats, cogs, and feet. Where does the machine end and the body begin? The weaving cooperative promises equitable remuneration for workers in an industry beholden to its colonial predecessor: today, Burkinabè cotton farmers live in permanent debt to cotton companies financed by European capital. By focusing on the repetitive labor unfolding within a cooperative that claims to serve its workers, Everything Here Holds Its Inverse examines the tension between empowerment and evolving oppressions. Can the ties that bind and define also set free?
A fictitious biography of Aira Samulin, the goddess of dance and importer of all the international dance crazes to Finland for some fifty years. The life story of this extravagant ever-teen, well beyond the usual retirement age, is told inside a fictitious plot about a Master of Ceremonies trying to persuade Aira to stage a show at his cabaret restaurant. Besides Aira Samulin, many other Finnish celebrities appear among the eccentric lineup auditioning for the show, playing more or less their fictionalised selves.
Serial killer Aileen Wuornos writes down her darkest secrets for her best friend while on Florida's death row; now, for the first time, those secrets are revealed in detail.
In 2009, a man and two accomplices try to evict members of the Indigenous community of Chuschagasta in northern Argentina. Claiming ownership of the land and armed with guns, they kill the community’s leader, Javier Chocobar. The murder is caught on video. It takes nine years of protests before court proceedings are finally opened in 2018. During all this time, the killers remain free. The film combines the voices and photographs of the community with courtroom footage to explore the long history of colonialism and land dispossession that led to this crime.
The diagnosis of mantle cell lymphoma not only ruined Albert Farkas' summer day when he received it. He narrates scenes from everyday life with the diagnosis. Josephine Ahnelt's short documentary shows Farkas' self-assertion through his humor, with which he defies the initial low point.
Une année au front : dans les coulisses de "Un long dimanche de fiançailles"
An anti-war documentary featuring original on-the-ground footage and interviews from the 1999 NATO war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Watch the 78 days of untold destruction, bombing bridges, hospitals, schools, and dropping up to 11 tons of depleted uranium across the country that NATO considers a successful “humanitarian intervention” in Yugoslavia. Filmmaker Gloria La Riva lifts the veil of imperialist propaganda to reveal the humanitarian crisis caused by the war.
Alltagsgeschichte – Donauinsulaner
A special retrospective of Peter Davison's tenure as the Fifth Doctor.
Alltagsgeschichte – Am Würstelstand
A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.