Openland

Kenny Wayne Shepherd's reverence for his musical roots are center-stage on Ten Days Out...Blues From The Backroads. The guitar-slinger is featured with the Double Trouble rhythm section of bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton performing with some of the greatest blues players of our time as well as lesser-known but historically significant bluesmen. Traveling to their hometowns to record everywhere from juke joints to front porches, from New Orleans to Kansas, Shepherd celebrates and becomes part of blues history with Ten Days Out...Blues From The Backroads.

On February th 1970, Carlos Castañeda de la Fuente tried to assassinate the Mexican President to avenge the Tlatelolco massacre from October 2nd 1968, defying the most repressive regime in the contemporary Mexican history. Forty years later, this failed avenger survived the system´s disproportionate retaliation, only to wander Mexico City´s streets as a vagrant.

First broadcast in 1987 on the UK's Channel 4, Bombin' is a documentary about Afrika Bambaataa's Zulu nation bringing American hip-hop culture to the UK for first time. The main focus is the graffiti art of Brim and the variety of reactions he is faced with from the British public and press.

After the India of Varanasi’s boatmen, the American desert of the dropouts, and the Mexico of the killers of drugtrade, Gianfranco Rosi has decided to tell the tale of a part of his own country, roaming and filming for over two years in a minivan on Rome’s giant ring road—the Grande Raccordo Anulare, or GRA—to discover the invisible worlds and possible futures harbored in this area of constant turmoil. Elusive characters and fleeting apparitions emerge from the background of the winding zone: a nobleman from the Piemonte region and his college student daughter sharing a one-room efficiency in a modern apartment building along the GRA.

What kind of power is accessible through the discovery of a voice? Morgan Quaintance interlinks two anti-racist and anti-authoritarian liberation movements in South London and Chicago’s South Side with his own biography to explore what happens when speech is ignored, and the voice fades.

Macadam Cowboy

'Amy, is narrated by a model (Liisa Repo-Martell) who’s painfully uncomfortable with her own body and “old woman’s” face. Astonishing closing image is a tightly composed telephoto shot on the start of a marathon race among young schoolgirls, dashing toward and then across the screen in ultra-slo-mo, and accompanied by a girls’ chorus hauntingly singing Brian Wilson’s God Only Knows. Widely eclectic lensing and looks in various media and in color and black-and-white flow nicely from one section to the next, aided by gifted editor Mark Karbusicky.' ~ Robert Koehler, Variety - Part 7 of 7-part bio-feature Public Lighting (2004).

12 years ago, Rolf suffered a violent accident that caused him severe amnesia. During his long rehabilitation, Rolf had to rebuild his identity from scratch and, while doing so, he invented a flying machine that would give him the freedom of a bird. In a very intimate following of a four year period we discover Rolf´s way of perceiving the world and the contradictions of a character who suffers at discovering that he has fathered two girls and that he has to make up his mind either at becoming an adult or persuing his life long dream of the flying machine.

For the Yamakasi the "Art of Displacement" is a way of life. Racing through the new cities that ring Paris, climbing walls, swinging from balconies and leaping across rooftops, they transform the oppressive concrete architecture into places of fantasy, possibility and play. The heart of our documentary is the story of how the Yamakasi are transforming the youth of the suburbs, and themselves, through discipline, will and desire. Now, as the Art of Displacement is being embraced as an extreme sport and urban pastime, will the social message be transmitted as well? What is it for the new generation?

Tranquillement, pas vite

With intertwined life stories, this film starts from the questions: Is Ecuadorian society essentially mestizo? What is a mongrel? This documentary aims to bring to the fore issues that have been poorly resolved both in the way in which Ecuador defines itself as a country, and in the subjectivity of its inhabitants.

"I was visiting Jerome Hill. Jerome loved France, especially Provence. He spent all his summers in Cassis. My window overlooked the sea. I sat in my little room, reading or writing, and looked at the sea. I decided to place my Bolex exactly at the angle of light as what Signac saw from his studio which was just behind where I was staying, and film the view from morning till after sunset, frame by frame. One day of the Cassis port filmed in one shot." -JM

Since more than 10 years the director Darío Aguirre lives between two totally different worlds, Germany and Ecuador. He decides to make an extraordinary journey, visiting five unknown men called Darío Aguirre as well: One in Mexico and four in Argentina. Meeting each other develops into a reconcilement with their own past lives and permits a brief glance into the protagonists’ present time. For two months Darío shares five different lives, adapting himself to situations and activities he has never done before.

French actors Lucien Jean-Baptiste, Aïssa Maïga, Sonia Rolland, Deborah Lukumuena, Marie-France Malonga, Gary Dourdan and others speak up on the reality of black actors in the French movie industry.

Exploration of prejudice and culture clash that a group of Laotian Buddhist refugees must endure in Rockford, Illinois.

Serena is drawing the portrait of Enzo. In a cozy and intimate atmosphere, he tells us his story. This life is extraordinary, because it is a life of a Female-To-Man (FTM) transgender.

Utopiaggia - Un rêve de liberté en Italie

A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.

Documentary about the life and work of Mário Eloy, one of the greatest painters of the second generation of modernism in Portugal.

Mother India is home to many castes, tribes and religions and one common factor that brings this diverse country all together is Jewelry. Come explore the deep history and culture of the jewelry of India dating back more than 5000 years. As we explore the history we also take you into Bangalore, India and talk to local Jewelry Stores and Jewelry Artisans as they share their stories and their family history of their involvement in jewelry going far back into their family ancestry.