Punk Jews

The passionate advocates of the ‘Cigar Box Guitar Revolution’ express their love of making unique instruments and the democratic, re-cycling ethos of the movement. Many are from the UK’s northern, post-industrial towns, recreating self-identity through hand-made guitars. Their emotional connection with their instruments creates a unique sound which is quite magical. A cinematic short, subsequently commissioned by the BBC as Cigar Box Blues. Festivals include: Woodstock, Nashville, Albuquerque (Honourable Mention)

The people of Antiquity had little problem with nudity and would not find graphic depictions of sexual acts as morally suspect or obscene. But Christianity changed perspectives, bringing in notions of shame and the negation of the body. This documentary looks at the erotic in art over the last two thousand years.

Eu, Punk

The forceful feature-length documentary Journey to Jah by Noel Dernesch and Moritz Springer catches the global phenomenon of crossing borders by documenting the experiences of integration in a foreign culture. The film follows the internationally acclaimed European musicians Gentleman and Alborosie, which found a new spiritual home within the reggae culture while Jamaican singer Terry Lynn takes the other direction integrating European styles into her music.

“Balance of Life” is a film about life’s and human kinds’ fight to find the balance between our own evolving life style and the nature of the planet we inhabit. The human race is drifting further and further away from its real roots and from what being a human is really about. The speed of development has increased to a state where humans have a hard time keeping up. We find ourselves in a situation where both our own and the planets’ wellbeing is severely threatened. As a last resort human is relying on faith to find the balance. Is faith the last defense of man or is this world guided by forces greater than us? Is this force God, evolution or just the mere sum of coincidences that formed the universe, the natural order and laws of physics?’ Watch it here (https://vimeo.com/51203265)

A detailed chronicle of the famous 1969 tour of the United States by the British rock band The Rolling Stones, which culminated with the disastrous and tragic concert held on December 6 at the Altamont Speedway Free Festival, an event of historical significance, as it marked the end of an era: the generation of peace and love suddenly became the generation of disillusionment.

Self-effacing Hungarian pianist, József, has a unique talent for fusing contemporary jazz with traditional Roma music. This new sound catches the attention of the acclaimed saxophonist Tim Ries and the two begin performing together. József dreams of escaping his humdrum life and making it big in the home of jazz: America. Along the way, he conquers his demons and learns that when shooting for the stars, success is not the destination, but the journey itself.

With his startlingly outrageous behavior, GG Allin became one of the most infamous performers in the history of rock and roll. GG Allin: Live & Pissed 1988 contains a collection of live performances, television appearances, and interviews that pain a full portrait of the controversial singer. The DVD release of the documentary contains a San Francisco concert appearance.

The director goes back to her roots in Pangnirtung, amongst her family and community. It leads her to another journey: to Qipisa, the outpost camp from where they were uprooted.

Award-winning comedian Rich Hall takes a country music journey from Tennessee to Texas to look at the movements and artists that don't get as much notoriety but have helped shape the genre over the years. With the help of prominent performers and producers including Michael Martin Murphey, Robbie Fulks and Ray Benson, Rich explores the early origins of country music in Nashville and Austin. He visits the rustic studios where this much-loved sound was born and discovers how the genre has reinvented itself with influences from bluegrass, western swing and americana.

Decolonising the Curatorial Process is a forty-minute documentary which explores decolonial strategies in an academic and curatorial context. The film features academics, activists and practitioners, and contains case studies of institutions that are deploying critical, self-reflective forms of curatorial practice. The Museum of London Docklands exhibition on slavery and the sugar industry is examined as an example of how an institution can decolonise the curatorial process, utilise the work of artists in a museum context, and critically examine East London's imperial history. The Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford, who are working with Maasai activists from Kenya and Tanzania on a project centred on repatriating the museum's collection of sacred Maasai artefacts, also features in the film.

A documentary revealing an observation on three barbershops throughout the course of one summer's day in the city of London - Hackney, Herne Hill, and Catford.

Flipside is a documentary about the world of wax records in Russia. The film unveils the story of the legendary medium for records, very popular in the USSR, undeservedly forgotten in the years of the perestroika and raised from the ashes nowadays. What is the place of the wax record in the world of digital technologies? Who are the people that collect, sell and buy wax records today, and why do they do this? Who are those that try their best to impede them? Why do disk jockeys and musicians continue to idolize wax records? How did the wax record players make it back from garbage cans to the luxury HI-END shops? You will find answers to all these questions in a unique film for music fans, a trip through the world of music in the 20th century, at high speed, to the most sincere and humane format of the music.

In the early 1970s, rubber was still king in Akron, Ohio. But just a few short years later, Akron's most important product was, ever so briefly, music. In the mid-1970s, a group of local bands took over an old rubber workers' hang-out in downtown Akron called The Crypt and created a mix of punk and art rock that came to be known as "the Akron Sound." And for a while, it was almost "the next big thing." Almost. It's Everything, and Then It's Gone, a Western Reserve PBS production written and directed by Phil Hoffman., takes viewers back to a time when the music really did mean everything. And for the men and women in these local bands, it was a way out of the factory.

A newly expanded version of the original Grace documentary, featuring new interviews with band members and producer Andy Wallace as well as unseen footage of Jeff and the band at Bearsville Studio recording Grace. Included in Grace (Legacy Edition), a newly remastered version of the album.

Bubble is a short film performed by Zeena Parkins and the Plastic Girls, Eleanor Hullihan and Erin Cornell in a public park in Brooklyn, NY.

Call Me Iggy

The Road Forward is an electrifying musical documentary that connects a pivotal moment in Canada’s civil rights history—the beginnings of Indian Nationalism in the 1930s—with the powerful momentum of First Nations activism today. Interviews and musical sequences describe how a tiny movement, the Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood, grew to become a successful voice for change across the country. Visually stunning, The Road Forward seamlessly connects past and present through superbly produced story-songs with soaring vocals, blues, rock, and traditional beats.

Toronto filmmaker Charles Officer profiles the young people of Villaways Park, a housing project on brink of historic change.

This documentary, shot entirely on location in Havana, includes many band members' insights into this revival, and features performance footage of an All-Stars' concert at the city's Salon of Dreams.