Off by Heart

In 1947, two years after the end of the Second World War, Film Journal No. 1 was released in Sarajevo. Fifty years later, after the collapse of the Communist bloc, this newsreel was lost in the confusion of the fighting in Yugoslavia. In Journal No. 1 Hito Steyerl attempts to find out how the footage got lost and what was on this document from the Sutjeska studio. In the simultaneous projection of Journal No. 1 the ‘unattainability of an historical zero hour of the national identity’ takes concrete form: The lost newsreel reports on a literacy campaign as well as Muslim women confidently removing their headscarves. We listen however to eyewitnesses trying to recapture the lost content and we see the artist Arman Kulasic making a number of drawings that resemble the story-boards for the lost film. What appears to be moments of great change remain limited by subjective and uncertain memory. The film was premiered at documenta 12.

In 2013, three women emerged from a flat in Brixton. They had been held there for decades by Aravindan Balakrishnan, a revolutionary Maoist who controlled the women with brainwashing techniques and tales of a sinister, world-controlling machine he called 'Jackie'.

Materia oscura tells the story of a war zone in peacetime. The film location is the Salto di Quirra test range (Sardinia, Italy) where, for over fifty years, governments around the world have tested 'new weapons' and where the Italian government has carried out controlled explosions of old weapon stocks, inexorably endangering the territory.

Nominated for an Academy Award, this live-action short film playfully chronicles the construction of the Tishman Building at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City.

A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.

In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.

Documentary about a Jewish senior citizens' acting group on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The film covers both the progress and impediments of a play the group is mounting about senior citizens looking for love and the life/love stories (past, present, and predictions) of the players.

Eighteen months in the life of 89 years old Viola Dees as she tries of persuade Los Angeles authorities that she can care for her grandson, 9-year-old Walter.

Sing! is a 2001 American short documentary film about the Los Angeles Children's Chorus, directed by Freida Lee Mock. How do squeaky-voiced 8 year olds become amazing singers? Sing! tells the story of how a community group, amid severe cutbacks in the arts, is able to develop a children's chorus that is one of the best in the country. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

The Collector of Bedford Street is a 2002 documentary film about director Alice Elliott's neighbor, Larry Selman, a community activist and fundraiser who had an intellectual disability. When Larry's primary caregiver becomes unable to care for him, his New York City neighborhood community rallies together to protect his independent lifestyle by establishing an adult trust fund in his behalf. The film was nominated for the 2002 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject.

Baba, a young Ghanaian woman, goes in search of her father for his blessing on her impending marriage. This turns to a nightmare as he insists she a different man, and that she undergo female genital mutilation as is the custom in his tribe. She is forced to flee her father's village, seeking refugee status in the U.S. Instead she becomes enmeshed in the U.S. immigration system.

A powerful documentary about five women whose lives have been irrevocably altered by the Rwandan genocide. With the country left nearly 70% female in the wake of the massacres, "God Sleeps In Rwanda" is a lucid portrait of the much larger change affected by women in the East African country.

Lieutenant Laurel Hester is dying. All she wants to do is leave her pension benefits to her life partner - Stacie, so Stacie can afford to keep their house. Laurel is told no; they are not husband and wife. After spending a lifetime fighting for justice for other people, Laurel - a veteran New Jersey detective - launches a final battle for justice. Knuckle-biting, dramatic Freeheld chronicles a dying policewoman's bitter fight to provide for the love of her life.

Villagers in a remote district of central China take on a chemical company that is poisoning their water and air. For five years they fight to transform their environment and as they do, they find themselves transformed as well.

This film from the Second World War is a report on how Canadian women were trained to handle many kinds of work in the Canadian Women's Army Corps, the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service. Basic training, everyday life in the forces and the contribution of women to Canada's fighting strength are illustrated.

Sixteen-year-old Jewel Wilson is the next generation in a long line of prolific Inupiat subsistence hunters in Unalakleet, Alaska. Her ability to hunt moose is hindered by two pressing issues – scarce wildlife and the pressures of high school life. Finding sufficient food competes with track practice and homework in Jewel’s multilayered world. Along with her father, Jewel turns to the land to feed their family and finds that their village’s way of life is endangered by the same environmental shifts that could affect us all. In hunting moose, we see that Jewel is also hunting for answers. How will her village survive if subsistence hunting is threatened? Can she honor the traditions of her Elders while navigating the pressures and anxieties of a modern, connected teenager? "Jewel’s Hunt" proves to be both physical and philosophical in this insightful exploration of what it means to come of age in complicated times in Unalakleet, Alaska.

In their debut documentary Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor take as their point of departure the compelling 18th Century figure, Ambrose O'Higgins, and attempt to retrace his remarkable journey from Ireland to Chile.

A filmmaker makes a film about a young woman who baths in a public fountain, casting herself in the role.

The strange story of John McAfee, who went from millionaire software mogul to yogi, Kurtz-like jungle recluse to potential murderer, and most recently a prospective presidential candidate for the American Libertarian Party.

A personal journey in search of two grandfathers: Remo, a self taught Ecuadorian doctor who wants to discover immortality, and Juan, communist militant who was assassinated during the Chilean military dictatorship in 1973. A granddaughter who grows between exile and a magical universe. Two stories, a close one and a buried one. Two dreams reflected in two landscapes: one with leafy mountains; the other, arid and deserted.