In Mexico, a country where indigenous people are increasingly displaced and discriminated against, Lupita, a survivor of one of the worst massacres in the country’s history, finds her voice in a movement led by indigenous women. The film intimately follows Lupita, a Tzotzil Maya woman, as she takes on the responsibility to be the spokeswoman of her people. Part lyrical testimony, part tribute to 500 years of indigenous resistance, this film mediates the point-of-view of a brave woman who must balance the demands of motherhood with her high stakes choices to reeducate and restore justice to the world.
Documentary that accompanies the exchange between the mestizo urban artist Xadalu and the filmmaker of the Mbya Guarani ethnic group Ariel Kuaray Ortega. As part of his artistic quest, Xadalu goes on an immersion in Guarani territory, accompanied by Ariel. While traveling between villages, Xadalu transforms his experiences into art. After this period, Xadalu travels spreading his work through the streets of several cities. Ariel accompanies him filming wherever they go. Xadalu introduces Ariel to a new world: the world of street art. United in the same fight for the indigenous cause, Xadalu and Ariel cross over for special places and experiences, while their relationship evolves and changes.
Ingrid Betancourt was the world’s most famous hostage. On February 23rd 2002, Ingrid, a presidential candidate in Columbia’s elections, was kidnapped by the left-wing FARC rebel group along with her assistant and friend Clara Rojas. She was held for over six years in the jungle. This is the first documentary account of what happened in the jungle in her words and those of fellow hostages. In a truly remarkable interview Ingrid relives stories of escape and betrayal, love and hate, terror and extraodinary courage.
With no Forest left to hunt and no land to cultivate, the Maby-Guarani depend on the sale of their handcraft to survive. Three young Guarani filmmakers accompany the daily life of two comunities united by the same history, since the first contact with the Europeans until the intense coexistence with today’s White people.
Documentary about the kolla people living in North Western Argentina.
Xapiri is a Yanomami term that characterizes the shamans, male spirits (xapiri thëpë) and also auxiliary spirits (xapiri pë). Xapiri is an experimental film about Yanomami shamanism that was filmed during a meeting of 37 shamans at the Watoriki Reserve, Roraima, in March of 2011. The film was designed to take into account two different notions of image: those of the Yanomami and ours. Therefore, it does not set out to explain shamanism, its methods or procedures, but to allow different cultures to visualize and feel the way in which the shamans “embody” the spirits, their bodies and voices.
It is with an old bus an about thirty snakes that Franz Florez struggles for the preservation of nature in Colombia, one of the most environmentally diverse country in the world. His snakes are his pass to enter the deep jungle, where guerrillas fight the regular army and where narco-traffickers meet coca growers. Facing the threat of the industrial exploitation of these preserved areas, he tries to gather support among the population, including the armed actors.
A documentary on the war between the Guatemalan military and the Mayan population, with first hand accounts by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú.
La Negociación
The journey of a young candidate running in the Pessamit community band council elections.
This feature-length documentary by Alanis Obomsawin examines the plight of Native people who come to Montreal searching for jobs and a better life. Often arriving without money, friends or jobs, a number of them quickly become part of the homeless population. Both dislocated from their traditional values and alienated from the rest of the population, they are torn between staying and returning home.
Ikátena
Amá is a feature length documentary which tells an important and untold story: the abuses committed against Native American women by the United States Government during the 1960’s and 70’s: removed from their families and sent to boarding schools, forced relocation away from their traditional lands and involuntary sterilization. The result of nine years painstaking and sensitive work by filmmaker Lorna Tucker, the film features the testimony of many Native Americans, including three remarkable women who tell their stories - Jean Whitehorse, Yvonne Swan and Charon Aseytoyer - as well as a revealing and rare interview with Dr. Reimart Ravenholt whose population control ideas were the framework for some of the government policies directed at Native American women.
A documentary about Áillohaš (Nils-Aslak Valkeapää), a musician, painter, and poet of the Sámi people in Finland.
This feature-length documentary chronicles the Sundance ceremony brought to Eastern Canada by William Nevin of the Elsipogtog First Nation of the Mi'kmaq. Nevin learned from Elder Keith Chiefmoon of the Blackfoot Confederacy in Alberta. Under the July sky, participants in the Sundance ceremony go four days without food or water. Then they will pierce the flesh of their chests in an offering to the Creator. This event marks a transmission of culture and a link to the warrior traditions of the past.
With "sealfies" and social media, a new tech-savvy generation of Inuit is wading into the world of activism, using humour and reason to confront aggressive animal rights vitriol and defend their traditional hunting practices. Director Alethea Arnaquq-Baril joins her fellow Inuit activists as they challenge outdated perceptions of Inuit and present themselves to the world as a modern people in dire need of a sustainable economy.
A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.
The creation of the Xingu Indigenous Park is reassessed by indigenous peoples and anthropologists. Almost 50 years after the initiative, which had the decisive participation of the indigenist brothers Cláudio and Orlando Villas-Bôas, the older indigenous people still have not forgotten the original lands they left behind. Some want to go back to their old origins.
A documentary account by award-winning filmmaker John Ferry of the events that led up to the 1969 Native American occupation of Alcatraz Island as told by principal organizer, Adam Fortunate Eagle. The story unfolds through Fortunate Eagle's remembrances, archival newsreel footage and photographs.
Surviving Columbus: The Story of the Pueblo People follows the past 450 years of Pueblo history. It explores the Spanish colonial period of the 18th century, Mexico's independence in the early 19th century, and then as part of the USA.