Megacities is a documentary about the slums of five different metropolitan cities.
On the Kainai (Blood) First Nations Reserve, near Cardston, Alberta, a hopeful new development in Indigenous enterprise. Once rulers of the western plains, the Bloods live on a 1 300-square-kilometer reserve. Many have lacked gainful employment and now pin their hopes on a pre-fab factory they have built. Will the production line and work and wages fit into their cultural pattern of life? The film shows how it is working and what the owners themselves say about their venture.
Mögöbalu, Les Maîtres des Tambours d'Afrique
Working men and women leave through the main gate of the Lumière factory in Lyon, France. Filmed on 22 March 1895, it is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made, although Louis Le Prince's 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene pre-dated it by seven years. Three separate versions of this film exist, which differ from one another in numerous ways. The first version features a carriage drawn by one horse, while in the second version the carriage is drawn by two horses, and there is no carriage at all in the third version. The clothing style is also different between the three versions, demonstrating the different seasons in which each was filmed. This film was made in the 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and at a speed of 16 frames per second. At that rate, the 17 meters of film length provided a duration of 46 seconds, holding a total of 800 frames.
MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is the striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris.
Jean-Luc Godard brings his firebrand political cinema to the UK, exploring the revolutionary signals in late '60s British society. Constructed as a montage of various disconnected political acts (in line with Godard's then appropriation of Soviet director Dziga Vertov's agitprop techniques), it combines a diverse range of footage, from students discussing The Beatles to the production line at the MG factory in Oxfordshire, burnished with onscreen political sloganeering.
When a massive Chinese factory complex attempts a high-stakes expansion in rural Ethiopia, three women in search of prosperity have their faith in industrialization tested to the limit. Filmed over four years with singular access, Made in Ethiopia lifts the curtain on China’s historic but misunderstood impact on Africa, and explores contemporary Ethiopia at a moment of profound crisis. The film was awarded the Jury Special Mention at Tribeca Festival.
As a decades-old state-run aeronautics munitions factory in downtown Chengdu, China is being torn down for the construction of the titular luxury apartment complex, director Jia Zhangke interviews various people affiliated with it about their experiences.
African drummer leaves village, makes it big in the world. Great drumming!!
Since the 1970s and the influx of European, Chinese, Russian, and Turkish trawlers, West African waters have been overexploited. Whether for fishing or fishmeal production, these foreign powers have endangered the livelihoods of local fishermen and artisans.
A team of journalists investigate how human trafficking and child labor in the Ivory Coast fuels the worldwide chocolate industry. The crew interview both proponents and opponents of these alleged practices, and use hidden camera techniques to delve into the gritty world of cocoa plantations.
A cinema verite study of the world of the blue-collar worker and the economic and psychological bind in which he is caught.
Chris Worthington sets out to document what the future of evangelism looks like. He invites you to get stranded in a West African dust storm, get shot at on the way to a 400,000 person Gospel event, and ultimately discover that it’s no longer about a select few famous evangelists, but about an entire generation of people just like YOU.
The story of the factory worker Pietro Perotti, who worked at Fiat Mirafiori from 1969 to 1985 and participated in the workers’ protests by overseeing communications inside the factory, making stickers, wall posters, texts and drawings in the bathrooms, figures out of papier-mâché and foam rubber, and turning the protest marches into “street theatre.” With his movie camera, Perotti immortalized the situations and workers’ protests at Mirafiori until 1974. Thanks to this unpublished material, the movie paints a fresco of factory life in what used to be Europe’s biggest metalworking factory.
This documentary will explore the Afro-Caribbean dance, ‘whining’ alongside the practice of twerking to analyze respectability politics, pressures to accommodate whiteness, and gendered criticism of sexual expression within the Black diaspora. Using archival footage of West African dance, expert opinion from dancing and gender studies professors, and the active participation of partygoers in a dance experiment, Watkins will paint the picture of the defiance, autonomy, and ancestral veneration intrinsic to these traditional movement styles.
Steve Glew, a small-town Michigan farmer, boards a plane for Eastern Europe soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall. His mission is to locate a secret factory that holds the key to the most desired and valuable pez dispensers. If he succeeds, he will pull his family out of poverty and finally find a purpose in his mundane life.
In 1989, this film was part of the PAMEZ project in Senegal which was part of the sea program of the CCFD, Catholic Committee against Hunger and for Development. It presents the economic and social role of women in the Casamance region for the development of fishing. These women who process and market fish, who are responsible for management, have a voice and express their opinion.
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In a futuristic, antiseptic food factory, workers select healthy chicks, while the rejects are carried along a conveyor belt until they are crushed by a mallet and drop into a garbage bin. A single black chick appears among the yellow and is shoved toward the garbage bin. Before the mallet strikes, the gasping chick rebels.
In the lead-up to the festive bonanza, an exclusive look inside the chocolate-maker's inventing room, and its 'chocolate imaginarium' too. Prepare for special choc drinks and cranberry treats.