Home of the Brave

A filmed conversation between Winton Dean and Jonathan Balcon about their fathers Basil Dean (1888 –1978) and Michael Balcon (1896 –1977). Both men helped to pave the way for the British film industry.

Somewhere in the world right now--much closer than you think--people are playing with trains. You might not see them at first, but they're there. In basements. In garages. In converted Army barracks. They're among the world's most compelling underground communities.

Celebrated filmmaker and photographer Cheryl Dunn turns her lens on the pioneers and masters of New York street photography. Dunn profiles artists spanning six decades, including Bruce Davidson, Mary Ellen Mark, Jill Freedman, Jeff Mermelstein and Martha Cooper, revealing that these shooters are as colourful and unique as the subjects they’ve relentlessly documented. Everybody Street explores the passion that compelled Freedman to spend years riding in squad cars during the most violent years in the city; Bruce Gilden’s drive to thrust his camera in people’s faces to capture a moment; and Martha Cooper’s dedication to chasing graffiti on passing subway cars in the Bronx. The film is a definitive look at the iconic visionaries of this often imitated art form.

In 1970, hundreds of hippies followed Stephen Gaskin on a journey from San Francisco to Tennessee, where they founded a legendary commune known as the Farm. Within this self-sustaining society based on non-violence, vegetarianism and respect for the earth, members willingly took a vow of poverty, lived in converted buses, grew their own food and home-delivered babies. Born and raised in this alternative community, filmmakers and sisters Rena and Nadine return for the first time since leaving in 1985. Finally ready to face the past after years of hiding their upbringing, they chart the rise and fall of America’s largest utopian socialist experiment and their own family tree. The nascent idealism of a community destroyed, in part, by its own success is reflected in the personal story of a family unit split apart by differences. American Commune finds inspiration in failure, humour in deprivation and, most surprisingly, that communal values are alive and well in the next generation.

Narrated by Oprah Winfrey, this is the moving and inspiring story of a disabled orphan who overcame poverty and prejudice to become a world hero after he rode a bicycle with one leg across the nation of Ghana.

The body and specifically the "woman's body" is often used as a focus for questions of origin, subject-object relations, political resistance and sexuality. Valie Export's notion of "body language" poses an ironic relation to these questions that acknowledges "the end of the body" or at least the final break with the way in which we understand it to be a biological, existential, or metaphysical entity. Export has broken away from any notion of unity - either body, space, or time - into the fragmented world of doubling and difference that is caught in representation.

Sun Come Up tells the story of some of the world's first environmental refugees, the Carteret Islanders. The film follows relocation leader Ursula Rakova and a group of young families as they search for new homes in war torn Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea.

Pascual Iranzo is a famous and eccentric hairdresser from Barcelona with a unique idea of what it means to cut hair —and stylism— and an even more particular way of understanding the world. At 87 years of age, he maintains his supreme artistic skills and his incredible vitality. Between scissors, friends and cocktails, he is a man who never stops transforming and reinventing himself.

Interweaving the forms of personal filmmaking, abstract animation, and the rock opera, this animated musical documentary examines the rise and fall of a nearly-defunct poster and postcard wholesale business; the changing role of physical objects and virtual data in commerce; and the division (or lack of) between abstraction in fine art and psychedelic kitsch. Using alternate lyrics as voice over narration, the piece adopts the form of a popular rock album reinterpreted as a cine-performance.

In 1977, when she was four years old, Albertina Carri's parents vanished without a trace, victims of Argentina's brutal military junta. In this fresh and politically daring film, the young Argentinian filmmaker attempts to unravel the mystery, piecing together her memories and fantasies in a quest to understand her parents' untimely fate.

Director Sonja Lindén's personal and sensitive quest to the core of the modern information society where technology and human beings get more and more entwined. This documentary explores our society on the verge of turning ubiquitous - a wireless society, where the laws of time, space and distance are revolutionizing the concept of liaison. Do the consequences of the technological revolution increase our freedom, or do they limit us? Is it possible to find a balance between one's natural rhythm and the society that spins at an ever increasing and demanding speed? Are we chasing echoes of our lost inner wholeness in our everyday lives, which are becoming busier and more fragmented than ever before?

Who, apart from moviegoers, knows Alice Guy (1873-1968) today? However, she was the first woman behind the camera and the first female director and producer of fiction films in history.

Tales of Two Who Dreamt is set in a housing block in Toronto and pivots on representation and self-representation. Here, a Roma family rehearses the stories of their past for the upcoming hearing on their residency status.

The Pink Panthers have stolen over £270m in diamonds in more than 241 robberies in cities from Paris to Tokyo. The film explores the rise of the group during the 1990s Balkan conflict when economic sanctions imposed on Serbia fueled illegal activities. The criminals reveal an underworld driven by fast wealth and paranoia, while the detectives and inspectors, who are working with Interpol, are on a mission to stop their crime spree with growing success.

It’s not uncommon for a film to have a moving love story at its core. Yet this particular set-up is unusual. The lovers here are Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan, both important representatives of post-war German-language poetry. The story of the relationship between the Austrian and the Jew from Czernowitz is told through their nearly 20-year correspondence (1948–1967). Or, more precisely, by a young woman and a young man reading from their letters in a studio in Vienna’s venerable Funkhaus.

Jakub, The Old Believers, and Piemule are three documentaries about forgotten people by director Jana Sevciková. All three are distributed on the same DVD under the name Old Believers. Piemule offers a close look at the descendants of Czech immigrants in Romania.

War is a compelling stimulus to the imagination, creating some of our richest and most powerful artistic inspiration. Oscar-winning actor Eddie Redmayne takes an intensely emotional journey, visiting artists’ studios, museums and travelling to battlefield locations to shine a powerful light into the abyss of warfare, where War Artists have left a unique legacy.

This documentary interweaves celluloid and voice recordings by Maya Deren, and colleagues who knew her firsthand: Jean Rouch, Jonas Mekas, Alexander Hammid, Cecile Starr etc. Maya Deren (1917-1961) was an experimental filmmaker. In the 1940s and 1950s she made several influential avant-garde films, such as Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). Images from this and her other work are used in this documentary. You can also hear her voice, as well as accounts by contemporaries such as Jean Rouch and Jonas Mekas.

With Olin's 85-year-old father as guide, we experience Norway's most adventurous valley, Oldedalen in Nordfjord. He grew up here, and here generations before him have lived in balance with nature.

Sixty-six adolescents, residents of Favela da Maré, were selected to participate in a dance show led by the choreographer Ivaldo Bertazzo, which incorporated their own daily experiences. Ten years later, directors David Meyer and Helena Soldberg search for some of the participants of this experience.