The Missing Picture

This is the original version of the much heralded "Raising The Bamboo Curtain" narrated and produced by legendary travel filmmaker Rick Ray. (Rick later sold partial rights to this program to another producer who hired Martin Sheen to narrate - that cut down and rewritten version is not the same). Sneaking his cameras past Burmese and Cambodian customs officials and getting around the country to produce one of the best travel docs ever made, Rick has outdone himself - again!

In 1972, during Cambodia's civil war, a sandstone statue was torn from the age-old Koh Ker temple. Measuring 1.58m high and weighing 110 kilos, it depicts a prince and belongs to a collection that retraces the epic of the Mahabharata. The sculpture was first sold at auction in London in 1975, via a strange British art dealer based in Bangkok, and reappeared in 2011 at Sotheby's in New York with a bid of $2.5 million. A sale that was ultimately prohibited. In the meantime, experts from the École française d'Extrême-Orient, an American lawyer commissioned by Phnom Penh and UNESCO mobilized the Heritage Police across the Atlantic to denounce the theft of a cultural asset. In 2013, the work was returned to Cambodia. A captivating investigation into the international mafia of antiquities trafficking.

Prajna is the Sanskrit word for radiant wisdom, and yatra is the word for pilgrimage or spiritual journey. This visually stunning documentary is a cinematic pilgrimage exploring the lost civilization of Angkor in Cambodia, including the largest temple in the world, the magnificent Angkor Wat. The journey continues to sacred sites of the natural world, Hindu Bali, jungles of Java, and discovering Buddhist Borobudur. A John Bush film.

It is May 8, 2024, and Israel is preparing to launch a destructive military operation in Rafah. Tahani, a Palestinian woman who has been internally displaced multiple times since the beginning of the attacks on Gaza, wonders where she and her children can find refuge once again. The film provides a glimpse into her family’s life before and after October 7, depicting the anguish of a mother who, marked by a painful loss, struggles to find peace.

An optician grapples with the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-1966, during which his older brother was exterminated.

While serving with the African Union, former Marine Capt. Brian Steidle documents the brutal ethnic cleansing occuring in Darfur. Determined that the Western public should know about the atrocities he is witnessing, Steidle contacts New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof, who publishes some of Steidle's photographic evidence.

A documentary chronicling the adolescent years of Elie Wiesel and the history of his sufferings. Eliezer was fifteen when Fascism brutally altered his life forever. Fifty years later, he returns to Sighetu Marmatiei, the town where he was born, to walk the painful road of remembrance - but is it possible to speak of the unspeakable? Or does Auschwitz lie beyond the capacity of any human language - the place where words and stories run out?

In this moving documentary, Oscar-nominated filmmakers Peter LeDonne and Steve Kalafer chronicle the extraordinary life of Immaculée Ilibagiza, a young African woman who escaped genocide in Rwanda and ultimately found refuge in the United States. Seeking shelter with an Episcopalian minister, Immaculée hid from her attackers inside a bathroom for three long months but stayed centered through prayer and faith.

The biggest trial of Nazi war crimes ever: 360 witnesses in 183 days of trial - a stunning and gripping portrayal of the most terrible massacre in history.

In search of the lucrative matsutake mushroom, two former soldiers discover the means to gradually heal their wounds of war. Roger, a self-described 'fall-down drunk' and sniper in Vietnam, and Kouy, a Cambodian refugee who fought the Khmer Rouge, bonded in the bustling tent-city known as Mushroom Camp, which pops up each autumn in the Oregon woods. Their friendship became an adoptive family; according to a Cambodian custom, if you lose your family like Kouy, you must rebuilt it anew. Now, however, this new family could be lost. Roger's health is declining and trauma flashbacks rack his mind; Kouy gently aids his family before the snow falls and the hunting season ends, signaling his time to leave.

Between 1904 and 1908, when Namibia was still called German South West Africa and a German colony, up to 60,000 Ovaherero and 10,000 Nama died at the hands of German colonialists. The crimes of the German colonial rulers went down in history as the first genocide of the 20th century. The Afro-German presenter and influencer Aminata Belli travels to the African country to investigate the extent to which the legacy of the German colonial era affects the present day of Namibian society. She pays particular attention to the involvement of the Protestant Church in the subjugation of the indigenous people and the sense of guilt of the descendants of the German settlers as well as the Germans themselves. To do this, the fashion journalist interviews various people on site and pretends to be interested in the following questions: Were the missionaries of the time guilty? How does a country heal when horrific things have happened there? And is reconciliation possible?

Montage film by Aymeric Caron, broadcast at the French National Assembly on May 29, 2024. “Is it a dream or a reality? » demands a little girl stunned by her injuries. It is a nightmare, without a doubt, and nothing can justify it, neither the crimes of October 7 nor the detention of Israeli hostages by Hamas. Condemning all the crimes of October 7, before and after, condemning anti-Semitism and all forms of racism is common sense. However, it seems that this needs to be clarified. Everyone present normally wishes that the surviving hostages can one day be reunited with their families and that the massacre in Gaza stops immediately. But to follow through with the process is to see things face to face, to see what has been happening in Gaza since October 7, what the Israeli army is doing, what the television channels are not showing.

Two Dutch lawyers, Michiel Pestman and Victor Koppe, travel to Cambodia in 2011 to defend Nuon Chea in an international tribunal. Nuon Chea, also known as Brother No. 2, was the second man after Pol Pot in the Khmer Rouge regime. He is being charged with mass murder and crimes against humanity. For four years, the documentary follows the lawyers in their attempt to give this man a fair trial, but the UN tribunal is beset by local interests and a government which consists partly of other former members of the Khmer Rouge who would really like all of the blame to rest solely on the defendant. What should've been the crowning achievement in the careers of the lawyers turns out very different.

Jazz and decolonization are intertwined in a powerful narrative that recounts one of the tensest episodes of the Cold War. In 1960, the UN became the stage for a political earthquake as the struggle for independence in the Congo put the world on high alert. The newly independent nation faced its first coup d'état, orchestrated by Western forces and Belgium, which were reluctant to relinquish control over their resource-rich former colony. The US tried to divert attention by sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to the African continent. In 1961, Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba was brutally assassinated, silencing a key voice in the fight against colonialism; his death was facilitated by Belgian and CIA operatives. Musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach took action, denouncing imperialism and structural racism. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev intensified his criticism of the US, highlighting the racial barriers that characterized American society.

Documentary chronicling the government relocation of 10,000 Navajo Indians in Arizona.

Based upon documentation of forced confessions made during the Khmer Rouge era in Cambodia, this film reconstructs the relationship of a young woman, Hout Bophana, and Ly Sitha before they were tortured in executed in 1977.

Documentary of the S-21 genocide prison in Phnom Penh with interviews of prisoners and guards. On the search for reasons why this could have happened.

Portrait of Andy Goldsworthy, an artist whose specialty is ephemeral sculptures made from elements of nature.

A documentary about the history of Ukrainian Cossacks in the Kuban.

Angkor et Les Mystères de L'Empire Khmer