In a poetic hour and a half, director Mani Kaul looks at the ancient art of making pottery from a wide variety of perspectives.
To the city come men, women, fruits, flowers, vegetables, goats and sheep – all ready for consumption. It is the process of consumption/exploitation that forms the core of the film.
After the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004, widowed women struggled to receive aid due to their social status. Following the story of Mrs. Manjula along with many other women from Tamil Nadu, the challenges faced by millions of widows across the country are illuminated. From being ostracized to denied basic rights and economic opportunities, widows in India endure a cycle of discrimination and marginalization. “Kalangarai” meaning "lighthouse" in Tamil, is an organization dedicated to empowering women through initiatives such as self-help groups and educational programs. Throughout the film, "Lighthouse" illustrates the emotional journeys and resilience of these women, as well as the active change that Kalangarai strives to achieve. This documentary urges global awareness and support for widowed women’s rights, as the women’s struggles depict the intersectionality of gender, poverty, and social injustice.
A documentary about a 78-year-old Indian woman in New York who is the world's most passionate theatergoer. Nicki Cochrane has been seeing a play every day for more than 25 years, acquiring free tickets using a variety of ingenious means.
Traceable follows Laura Siegel, a fashion designer who takes a critical look at the fashion supply chain and fast fashion industry, travels through India in order to meet and work together with the artisans who create the majority of the clothing that we wear. The film explores our growing disconnect of how and who makes our clothing, thus instilling a need for traceability in the fashion industry.
Technicolor scenes from an Indian Durbar, held for the Maharaja of Alwar in Rajasthan.
Set in a small town in the region of Tamil Nadu, in southern India, the film follows the days and works of a hijra family. Silky, Mahima, Trisha, Durga, Kuyili, Priyanka, Vasundhara and Yamuna, under the firm protection of their guru Lakshmi Ma, deliver snippets of their marginal but sovereign existence. From a millenia-old sacred tradition to getting by every second, "Guru" composes with them a poem of intertwined voices in which the world is a tough playground, where the third gender is primarily the resistance force of a life shared.
The gang embarks on a trade mission to India. Equipped with three old British cars and a range of uniquely British products, they set off on an epic road trip across one of the world's most fascinating and challenging countries.
Chronicles from Kashmir seeks to create a sense of “balance”: between differently positioned voices that emerge when speaking about Kashmir; between differently placed narratives on the “victim”/“perpetrator” spectrum. While there is an inevitable streak of political commentary that runs throughout the work – a political current that cannot be escaped when talking about Kashmir – Chronicles from Kashmir does not espouse any one political ideology. We see ourselves as being artists and educators, using aesthetics and pedagogy to engage audiences with diverse perspectives from/about the Valley.
More and more people are suffering from wheat and gluten intolerance. Wheat protein was long considered to be the cause of this scourge, and today gluten free products are on all the supermarket shelves. However, there is now increasing suspicion that it is not wheat but how it is processed that makes bread a potentially unhealthy food. Industrial processes simply do not give bread enough time to mature. More and more bakeries are reacting to this by introducing former production methods and ingredients such as champagne rye, emmer or in vogue chia seeds. Bread is baked according to old recipes, sometimes using home grown and home milled grains.
A unique project, the popular science series "Bread" is shooting around the world, interviews with scientists and world-class experts. There are 4 series in the project: "Immortality", "Money", "Hunger" and "Gene". This is a story about how bread controlled the destinies of continents and empires, how the rise of some civilizations and the fall of others depended on it, how in different countries and at different times it performed the function of money. This is the first time such a complete study of bread and grain is being carried out on a television screen. The focus is on the most interesting events in the history of Russia, Italy, France, Germany, England, China, Egypt and other countries.
Each grain crop - wheat, rye, rice and corn - has been "creating" a special type of person for centuries. For example, rye formed the Slavic culture, wheat influenced the inhabitants of almost all of Central Europe and a significant part of Asia, corn formed the inhabitants from Mexico to Nicaragua, and rice - representatives of Japan, India and China. Today, genetic engineers are trying to create the bread of the future. It is likely that after some time we will have three-dimensional food printers in our kitchens that will be able to "print" buns, loaves or confectionery. However, scientists are convinced that only part of the components for the "printer" will be chemical, and the rest of the components will continue to be grown on earth. At the same time, some researchers believe that genetic engineering may turn out to be a "Pandora's box", while others are sure that they can no longer do without it.
Film showing the Viceregal party entering Delhi on lavishly decorated elephants, as part of the Coronation durbar of 1903.
A group of Macedonian women are shown hard at work.
Life on the road in India, showing the traffic, people and animals.
Hindu temples at Benares and Belur and the mythologies associated with them.
The majestic rebirth of Manchester's Bradford Colliery and other stories.
An evocative and unsettling journey through christian and also deeply communist Kerala. Amidst red flags and altar boys, between the sea and the jungle, mixing the language of reportage and that of fable, the unedited docufilm tells the touching, profound, at times funny stories of a group of priests and nuns in the days leading up to Easter.
The making of the James Bond movie Octopussy (1983) in Udaipur, India during 1982.
Set in Varanasi, an ancient city of India, Tana Bana offers a rare look at the hidden world of Moslem weavers and Hindu traders and how their lives are interwoven through the production of the silk and the beauty it creates. However, as the technology advances, the trade is threatened by computerization and globalization.