Small Happiness

Su has set up a restaurant without a permit. Unsurprisingly, the authorities send him away. Su then decides to go back home to the countryside, where his wife and children still live. He isn't exactly welcomed back with open arms.

Thomas Haemmerli is about to celebrate his fortieth birthday when he learns of his mother's death. A further shock follows when he and his brother Erik discover her apartment, which is filthy and full to bursting with junk. It takes the brothers an entire month to clean out the place. Among the chaos, they find films going back to the 1930s, photos and other memorabilia.

Draussen bleiben

Ruralista: você não nos alimenta e não nos representa!

Here's a Special Edition DVD that captures the most dramatic and exciting moments from the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, the competition was held in Beijing, People's Republic of China from August 8 to August 24, 2008. Ten thousand five hundred athletes competed in 302 events in 28 sports. The 2008 Summer Olympics did bring athletes from around the world together as they competed for the bronze, silver and gold medals. More importantly, television coverage united citizens from all nations, who rooted for their own countrymen as well as the world's best athletes. These games were the first to be produced and broadcast entirely in high definition, and did garner upwards of four billion viewers. This exclusive highlights DVD features the greatest athletes in the world, united in the most important competition of their lifetimes.

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A family from the Sierra Negra in Puebla spend their days between the cycles of the earth. From time to time, the parents feel anxious when they think what will happen to their beloved “yen Tochi” (the Rabbit), their youngest child, when they are not there to take care of him.

Leading Chinese Sixth Generation filmmaker Jia Zhangke returns home to Fenyang in Shanxi province after winning the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival for Still Life (2006). The experiences of his childhood, the people he grew up with, and the changing landscape of his home town gave Jia the inspiration to make his first films. The documentary forms a poignant inquiry into the past of the director's life and Chinese society at the same time.

An ejaculate of sperm swim through a uterus. At the branches of the Fallopian tubes, half go one way and half the other. Down one tube toward the sperm bounces a female head, singing, happily on her way. Four sperm zero in; she panics but can't avoid them. Pow! they hit her full force and disappear into her. The decision she makes and what she does next change the course of her life in a major way.

Documentary film about Tony Halme, masculinity and populism. The film follows how Tony Halme created a mythical, highly masculine freestyle wrestling character, The Viking, who gained fame both in the ring and in the public eye and eventually became captivated by it. With his brash speeches, Halme fired the starting shot for the rise of the Finns Party. The voice of a forgotten section of the population, a protest against the ruling elite, were the building blocks of Halme's popularity. Halme's great popularity has served as a good example of a populist figure, admired within the deep ranks of the nation, who comes from outside the political elite and changes the direction of politics. Also, despite - or perhaps because of - his openly racist statements, he was part of changing the political climate in Finland to a more acrimonious one.

The implantation of African traders in Guangzhou is a recent phenomenon, on which Marie Voignier reports through her interlinking portraits of Jackie, Julie, Shanny who have come to set up their business on site. Amidst the monstrous accumulation of merchandise on the endless markets of the megacity, the film follows these African businesswomen grappling with the globalised Chinese economy.

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is the striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris.

The supermarket chains used to seem unbeatable, capturing the lion’s share of the grocery market. But for some years now they have been in crisis. In the wake of a fierce price war, retailers are resorting to increasingly aggressive commercial negotiation methods at the expense of suppliers, farmers and producers. Further competition is coming from the tech giants as Amazon and Alibaba invest in the food industry. What are the implications of all these changes on working conditions, the quality of our food and the future of our planet?

Joris Ivens and wife Marceline Loridan took their cameras into Pharmacy No. 3 in Shanghai, which in addition to dispensing drugs manages an outreach program of medical services, an extension of the pharmacy’s in-house medical care center.

Nando, a young horse wrangler in a rural Mexican village, has taken his own life following a disagreement with his father. Caballerango shows the boy’s family members and townspeople as they reckon with the new realities borne out of this inexplicable tragedy. Each account of Nando’s story reveals a different aspect of this rural town, which is deeply affected by modernization. The confrontation between the centuries-old ways of life and the modern-day world seems to be creating serious identity crises among the younger generation. The story is told in a patient, observational style with methodical shots of the landscape, ranches, and of the two white horses, whom Nando and his father tended to. Those horses, the last to see Nando alive, connect us to an ethereal sensation of almost otherworldly mystical beings.

This documentary on the "youth movement" of the late 1960s focuses on the hippie pot smoking/free love culture in the San Francisco Bay area.

A Hundred Years of Happiness; an observational documentary, is a personal portraiture of a Vietnamese farming family and their daughter Tram. While her father instils in her the importance of familial obligation to care for one’s ageing parents, her mother desires a secure future devoid of economic hardship. Determined to fulfil both her parent’s wishes, Tram pursues a new life in South Korea as a migrant bride, but her fast-tracked journey leaves little time for reflection.

The last representatives of Mixteco culture inhabit a village in the Sierra Madre. Deprived of their identity by modern civilization, they are facing an even bigger threat: a landslide that may destroy the village during the next torrential rains. The mayor tries to prevent the disaster. He wants to invite a geologist, so that the approaching danger can be officially confirmed. But no help is coming and the inhabitants must simply wait for the disaster.

A new film compiled from the BFI National Archive's unparalleled holdings of early films of China, features films from 1900-48 filmed across China. The cinematic journey of Around China with a Movie Camera contains many films which may never have been seen in China, or at the very least not for over 70 years. These travelogues, newsreels and home movies were made by a diverse group of British and French filmmakers, some professionals, but mainly enthusiastic amateurs, including intrepid tourists, colonial-era expatriates and Christian missionaries.

The Shoe Shiner's Journey