In the heyday of the jute industry, millions of people in Bengal made their living doing this laborious work, which has hardly changed since the industrial revolution. The 100-year-old machinery has been endlessly repaired. State aid kept this sustainable alternative to plastic going, but its future looks bleak.
Travel films have an established format with their own conventions, history and baggage. It is a medium that has all too often sought to control, define and dictate perceptions of ”other” places. Comprised of footage shot while travelling on group excursions across Russia in 2019, An Uncountable Number of Threads is an attempt to draw out the ethical restrictions of a travelogue, while questioning how (and why) to make one. At times there is an awkward tourist-gaze, aware of its outsider position. But as a self-reflexive work that considers its own creation, it ultimately unravels, as the artist rationalises themselves out of a particular way of working, inviting the viewer into their uncertainty.
In a drought-struck region in India, suffering from climate change and a high suicide rate amongst farmers, a group of resilient women farmers, who recently lost their husbands, is coming together with a local psychologist to learn counselling and help others in grief.
The anti-Slumdog Millionaire in documentary form, "Buzz" charts the tumultuous rise of India's most famous tattoo artist as he struggles to overcome the demons of his poverty-stricken childhood through art.
A journey that follows the Ganges from its source deep within the Himalayas through to the fertile Bengal delta, exploring the natural and spiritual worlds of this sacred river.
A strange story from Somerset, England about a filmmaking farmer and the inspiring legacy of his long-lost home movies.
To popularize the idea of automobile travel, Ford Motor Company produced Ford Educational Weekly, a film magazine distributed free to theaters. One 1916 series featured "Visits to American Cities." In this episode, Los Angeles is featured at the very beginning of the boom created by oil, movies and aircraft. On the occasion of its centennial in 1953, Ford donated its film to the National Archives and Records Service; this copy derives from a fine grain master printed from the Archive's preservation negative. Music by Frederick Hodges.
A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.
When Tomoko finds some messages for a 'Mr Smith' on a lost mobile phone, she finds herself on an 'Alice in Wonderland' journey through Tokyo's boulevards and back alleys. From the tyranny of symmetry in soaring office blocks - to buildings that look like space-ships, this creative documentary shows us the city's soul.
The story of Sri Prem Baba, spiritual master and humanitarian leader with followers around the world, begins when a 14-year-old from Sao Paulo, Brazil, had a vision that said: 'go to Rishikeshi, India'. This story is delightfully told by himself leading us through the odyssey that would turn an ordinary boy into Prem Baba. Memories of friends, admirers and followers take us along the paths of the prosperous therapist who sank into a deep existential crisis and finally found India, where he would devote himself, after much debate, to his master and his destiny. A rich journey of enlightenment that brings us precious reflections on the meaning of life and the role of each one on this planet.
Early film of a crowded street scene in an unidentified Indian city.
Sixteen year olds Palani and Karthik want to become "ladyboys." They're bullied in school and beaten by their families. Their parents would like to see them grow up as normal boys, but they're falling deeper and deeper into the world of the "Aravanis." Loved as dance performers but hated as homosexuals, their stories emblazon the inner conflicts of India's gender culture today.
A vast white wilderness that stretches across the south of our planet; a giant natural laboratory that has long occupied the human psyche. Antarctica is a continent of remote natural wonder. For brief moments each year this hauntingly beautiful landscape opens up, beckoning scientists and explorers from around the world to investigate its frozen secrets. 'Journey into the White Desert' takes us on a mesmerizing visual adventure into this mysterious continent, introducing us to a team of South African scientists, researchers and explorers who have braved the inhospitable continent in the quest to learn its secrets. The film explores South Africa's role in the greatest wilderness on earth and showcases some of the groundbreaking research that could make the difference to our survival on this planet.
The Mancuso family has practiced transhumant grazing for generations, moving the herd of Podolica cattle from the Marcedusa countryside to the large Sila forests.
It documents the life of a couple of grandparents in their rural home, showing their connection with nature and their daily tasks. Through simple recordings, the director, their granddaughter, explores the importance of family ties.
The reception ebbs and flows as the unfamiliar landscape whirls by the window of a plane or train or car. Communication is delayed, fragmented, interrupted. Memories of a distant country.
Cyrille, a young gay farmer from Auvergne, has only one friend, a homosexual like him. One day, he goes on vacation to a beach in Charente Maritime. He cannot swim and sees the sea for the first time. It was there that he met the director Rodolphe Marconi who decided to devote this sensitive and gentle portrait to him, plunging us into an agricultural world in crisis and into a life often lonely and made up of hard work rarely pays off.
Best friends Hazel Findlay and Maddy Cope journey to the rocky outer reaches of Mongolia, on a quixotic search for new trad routes.
An exploration of the 'respectable' and 'immoral' stereotypes of women in Indian society told from the point of view of two striptease dancers in a Bombay cabaret.
A short film showing the industrial process of jute works in India.