Kalo (taro) production on each of the major islands of Hawai'i circa 1994. Meet the amazing people who love and continue to cultivate taro on lo'i that in some cases has been in the family for generations and centuries! Young, old, and family growers on Maui, Moloka'i, Hawai'i, O'ahu, and Kaua'i islands. Includes history/culture of kalo, Issues related to land and water, uses of kalo, and prospects for the future.
Concerned about the declining health of people all around them, Native American women are sparking physical and spiritual rejuvenation through reclaiming traditional foodways.
Keeping the Vision Alive is a documentary film containing the voices and images of Korean women filmmakers-both senior filmmakers and also the peers of director Yim. The film is Yim’s homage to both contemporary Korean women filmmakers, written by a filmmaker of the same age, and also to the history of women filmmakers in Korea. Yim does not reveal her own voice or opinion and lets the voices and images of the filmmakers speak for themselves through a non-interventionist camera. From the pioneers, Park Nam-ok, and Hwang Hye-mi, who directed First Experience in 70’s, to recent filmmakers, Byun Young-joo and Jang Hee-sun, the film traces their experiences, troubles, concerns and thoughts as women and women filmmakers. Keeping the Vision Alive calmly and enthusiastically encourages and celebrates the struggles, the resistance and the survival of women filmmakers in a conservative Korean film industry and a male-dominated and sexist social system. (Kwon Eun-sun)
What does blood have to do with identity? Kendra Mylnechuk, an adult Native adoptee, born in 1980 at the cusp of the enactment of the Indian Child Welfare Act, is on a journey to reconnect with her birth family and discover her Lummi heritage.
When French writer Marguerite Duras (1914-96) published her novel The Sea Wall in 1950, she came very close to winning the prestigious Prix Goncourt. Meanwhile, in Indochina, France was suffering its first military defeats in its war against the Việt Minh, the rebel movement for independence.
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.
"The Ninth Island" tells the story of Hawaii’s indigenous population and its struggles to stay connected to its ancestral home.
While Germany sits as one of the major democratic models, an ex-prisoner of the Stasi delivers from his former cell a frightening testimony that questions the sustainability of our contemporary democracies.
A man that is a stranger, is an incredibly easy man to hate. However, walking in a stranger’s shoes, even for a short while, can transform a perceived adversary into an ally. Power is found in coming to know our neighbor’s hearts. For in the darkness of ignorance, enemies are made and wars are waged, but in the light of understanding, family extends beyond blood lines and legacies of hatred crumble.
Province of Ciudad Real, Spain, December 29, 1990. During the annual march to the Herrera de la Mancha prison, held in support of the members of the terrorist gang ETA imprisoned there, the Basque rock band Negu Gorriak holds a concert, which is recorded, edited on video and turned into a tool of vindication. Decades later, a film crew tries to elaborate a personal essay around this event and its meaning.
This hour-long documentary is a provocative look at a historical event of which few Americans are aware. In mid-January, 1893, armed troops from the U.S.S Boston landed at Honolulu in support of a treasonous coup d’état against the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen Lili‘uokalani. The event was described by U.S. President Grover Cleveland as an "act of war."
This short film follows Tonisha, Toneil and their family as they reclaim their Navajo history and reconnect with ancestors within the canyon walls.
Examines the life, work, and cultural significance of Gloria Anzaldúa, poet and visual artist, and those she inspired in women's Chicano art. The work highlights the struggle for women's and gay rights.
Self-portrait of a 38-year-old mother from Abitibi, struggling with breast cancer.
Radical feminist Andrea Dworkin's expose on the pornography industry.
For years, right-wing politicians and pundits have repeatedly criticized the left for playing “the race card” and “the woman card.” This new film turns the tables and takes dead aim at the right’s own longstanding – but rarely discussed – deployment of white-male identity politics in American presidential elections. Ranging from Richard Nixon’s tough-talking, law-and-order campaign in 1968 to Donald Trump’s hyper-macho revival of the same fear-based appeals in 2020, "The Man Card" shows how the right has mobilized dominant ideas about manhood and enacted a deliberate strategy to frame Democrats and liberals as soft, brand the Republican Party as the party of “real men,” and position conservatives as defenders of white male power and authority in the face of transformative demographic change and ongoing struggles for racial, gender, and sexual equality.
Journeying across Varanasi, Lucknow, and Muzzafarpur in India, this documentary film traces the lost traditions and the culture of tawaifs (courtesans of North India), particularly through a song sung by Rasoolan Bai, "Lagat karejwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar" and its lesser known, earlier version "Lagat jobanwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar" (recorded in a 1935 Gramophone recording). Weaving the past with the present, the film spans between personal stories as it interacts with historical events, ultimately leading to the decline of a great art form.
A documentary about a beloved South Bronx matriarch and former "First Lady" of the Savage Skulls gang struggling to remain visible in a rapidly gentrifying community she helped rebuild in the 1980s. With one foot firmly grounded in the outlaw life and the other as an activist and spiritual advisor, Lorine Padilla straddles the complexities of multiple worlds.
Documentary about the 1980 New Mexico State Penitentiary Riots in which 33 inmates were killed.
A slice of the eccentric lives of Roca and Sammy, two members of the Gay Inmates Organization detained at the Pampanga Provincial Jail, intertwined with animated sequences of an inmate's incarceration story.