Jan 69

Klec

In post-WWII Communist Czechoslovakia, several characters considered bourgeois are sentenced to work in a junkyard for rehabilitation. Among them is a young man who pines for a female convict.

Pasťák

A day in the life of Arnošt, a soldier staying in Josefov. A sense of desperation permeates the environment as well as the mind of the protagonist. It is sunday, and saturday left just a hangover. Days go by, nothing changes. A metaphor for the political situation in the Czech lands at a time where depicting a soldier as a drunk was considered out of place to say the least.

An allegory set in an archetypal Czech village, it tells of what happens when a sequence of mysterious events take place, including the disappearance of the stationmaster. While everything has a rational explanation, collective paranoia takes hold and everyone’s worst instincts are released. Interrogations, the abolition of rights and the search for scapegoats ultimately lead to murder

Matylda (Jaroslava Ticha), who lives in the Czech countryside, is trying to arrange burial plans for her dying husband, Jan (Ludvik Kroner). While Matylda hopes to have a funeral for Jan in the small town where they once lived, there are complications. Years earlier, Jan spoke out against the Communist government and was consequently expelled from the town. When Matylda fails to convince a local politician to allow the ceremony, she uses her husband's funeral as a public show of dissent.

A run-of-the-mill family is terrorized by strangers dressed in military garb who invade their private realm.

Král Ubu

Senior ministry official Ludvik and his wife Anna come back from an official party only to find their home has been broken into and is riddled with listening devices. A harrowing night follows as the couple becomes more and more paranoid that they’re being targeted by the government.

The Magpie in the Wisp

From a graffiti artist speaking out against domestic violence in the favelas of Brazil to a dancer rehabilitating sex-trafficking survivors in India, Little Stones profiles four women, each of whom are contributing a stone to the mosaic of the women’s movement through their art. The film and accompanying education initiative have been designed to raise awareness about global women’s rights issues, and to celebrate creative, entrepreneurial, and arts-therapy based solutions to the most pressing challenges facing women globally.

The life stories of four families who were confronted with organ donation or transplantation issues. With humility and great generosity, the characters reveal to us the suffering, feelings, happiness that have surrounded these exceptional moments.

William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy some nice thoughts in The Birth of a Timeless Legacy doc, which tells about the way Star Trek came to be.

Three perfect strangers, a selfless flight attendant, an overworked lawyer, and a down and out paramedic go about a normal day when a single action turns there lives upside down and puts their seemingly separate stories on a collision course converging on the moment that defined this generation.

This documentary focuses on the Civil Rights Movement in the heavily segregated steel industry and its equally segregated union, The United Steelworkers of America (USWA), at the time when this industry—devastated by mismanagement and global competition—began to crumble. It is a powerful picture of black working-class life in the latter part of the 20th century, told in a combination of interviews and documentary footage. Through live testimonials and revelatory archival materials, Struggles shows the contributions of African Americans to the steel industry and to the labor movement more generally. (via cinema.indiana.edu)

American Alley traces the lives of Korean and immigrant women who provide sexual services to U.S. military personnel stationed near the camptown area called “American Alley” in South Korea. The film depicts the changing landscape of camptown life and sexualized labor as women from Russia and the Philippines replace Korean women as entertainers in GI clubs. The documentary skillfully situates these changes in the context of U.S.–South Korean relations and new gender and racial politics in South Korea. (via cinema.indiana.edu)

It won't take long to fall in love with the subject of Painted Nails, Van Hoang, a Vietnamese nail salon owner who serves an ethnically diverse group of working class women with acrylic nails and intricate airbrush designs. Through the course of the film, Van unintentionally becomes a contemporary Norma Rae or Erin Brockovich. Painted Nails brings us unprecedented insight into the personal nature of the political movement to regulate one of the fastest growing industries in the U.S. Major loopholes in the federal law dating back to 1938 allow the 50-billion-dollar cosmetics industry to put unlimited amounts of chemicals into personal care products with no required testing, monitoring of health effects, or labeling requirements. (via Kanopy)

Victoria vs South Australia

Best of the AFL Brownlow Medal

A history of the best football team in the AFL