What does it mean to be awake in a world that seems satisfied to be asleep? Kris and Michal push their experiences of life and love to a breaking point as they restlessly roam the city streets in search of answers, adrift in the euphoria and uncertainty of youth.
The story of the often contradictory and always audacious public figure, Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci, the former Mayor of Providence, RI. The film tracks Cianci's entanglements with city council opposition, union skirmishes, personal scandals, and criminal indictments. The result is a fascinating study of American local politics and a surprising tale of a man who, in the words of one commentator, "has a city as his mistress."
Hutton's most impressive work ... the filmmaker's style takes on an assertive edge that marks his maturity. The landscape has a majesty that serves to reflect the meditative interiority of the artist independent of any human presence. ... New York is framed in the dark nights of a lonely winter. The pulse of street life finds no role in NEW YORK PORTRAIT; the dense metropolitan population and imposing urban locale disappear before Hutton's concern for the primal force of a universal presence. With an eye for the ordinary, Hutton can point his camera toward the clouds finding flocks of birds, or turn back to the simple objects around his apartment struggling to elicit a personal intuition from their presence. ... Hutton finds a harmonious, if at times melancholy, rapport with the natural elements that retain their grace in spite of the city's artificial environment. The city becomes a ghost town that the filmmaker transforms into a vehicle reflecting his personal mood.
Double Barrel follows surf and travel journalist Angie Takanami’s journey to Peru to document Peruvian surf guide Harold Koechlin’s dream of protecting Peru’s world-class surf breaks. After a chance meeting, the two compared tales of living through natural and human-inflicted disasters, and their dreams for sustainable surf development and tourism. Focussed in the oil-dominated town of Lobitos, Harold is working together with the local and international community and is determined to preserve the locals’ right to a clean ocean and environment to give towns like Lobitos a more sustainable future.
A look at NYC’s gentrification and growing inequality in a microcosm, Class Divide explores two distinct worlds that share the same Chelsea intersection – 10th Avenue and 26th Street. On one side of the avenue, the Chelsea-Elliot Houses have provided low-income public housing to residents for decades. Their neighbor across the avenue since 2012 is Avenues: The World School, a costly private school. What happens when kids from both of these worlds attempt to cross the divide?
The Fall of Womenland is a fascinating documentary on the unique sexual culture of the Mosuo people — a small minority situated in the southwest of China — and one of the last remaining matriarchal societies in the world. Without a formal marriage contract, the Mosuo traditionally build relationships based on free love and sexual satisfaction (‘walking marriages'). But can the sexual liberty and power of the Mosuo women survive as modern Chinese society slowly encroaches their ancestral land? The film explores the present reality for the Mosuo people as well as the dangers that threaten their inherited way of life.
Séfar (in Arabic: سيفار) is an ancient city in the heart of the Tassili n'Ajjer mountain range in Algeria, more than 2,400 km south of Algiers and very close to the Libyan border. Séfar is the largest troglodyte city in the world, with several thousand fossilized houses. Very few travelers go there given its geographical remoteness and especially because of the difficulties of access to the site. The site is full of several paintings, some of which date back more than 12,000 years, mostly depicting animals and scenes of hunting or daily life which testify that this hostile place has not always been an inhabited desert. Local superstition suggests that the site is inhabited by djins, no doubt in connection with the strange paintings found on the site.
An experimental ethnographic documentary that criticizes the colonizer view of anthropology.
A deep dive into contemporary Brazilian music. Guided by the composer, anthropologist and ethnomusicologist Kilza Setti and the Hésperides Música das Américas nucleus, the documentary takes us to a world where contemporary music, the Guarani and Timbira peoples, the colonization of America and poetic professions meet.
In Bolivia, the glaciers are melting. Samuel, an old ski lift operator, is looking out of a window on the rooftop of the world. Through generations his family lived and worked in the snowy mountains, but now snow fails. While scientists are discussing and measuring ominous changes Samuel honors the ancient mountain spirits. Clouds continue to drift by.
Raised in one of the most violent outskirts of Fortaleza, the Cruz brothers had their lives shaped by music to the point that their parents turned the house where they live into a school.
Big Science - Was Tiere denken
In GLOBAL METAL, directors Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn set out to discover how the West's most maligned musical genre - heavy metal - has impacted the world's cultures beyond Europe and North America. The film follows metal fan and anthropologist Sam Dunn on a whirlwind journey through Asia, South America and the Middle East as he explores the underbelly of the world's emerging extreme music scenes; from Indonesian death metal to Chinese black metal to Iranian thrash metal. GLOBAL METAL reveals a worldwide community of metalheads who aren't just absorbing metal from the West - they're transforming it - creating a new form of cultural expression in societies dominated by conflict, corruption and mass-consumerism.
Inspired by Steven Blush's book "American Hardcore: A tribal history" Paul Rachman's feature documentary debut is a chronicle of the underground hardcore punk years from 1979 to 1986. Interviews and rare live footage from artists such as Black Flag, Bad Brains, Minor Threat, SS Decontrol and the Dead Kennedys.
The history of Amos, a town in Abitibi-Témiscamingue (Quebec).
Sylvia Kristel – Paris is a portrait of Sylvia Kristel , best known for her role in the 1970’s erotic cult classic Emmanuelle, as well as a film about the impossibility of memory in relation to biography. Between November 2000 and June 2002 Manon de Boer recorded the stories and memories of Kristel. At each recording session she asked her to speak about a city where Kristel has lived: Paris, Los Angeles, Brussels or Amsterdam; over the two years she spoke on several occasions about the same city. At first glance the collection of stories appears to make up a sort of biography, but over time it shows the impossibility of biography: the impossibility of ‘plotting’ somebody’s life as a coherent narrative.
A documentary about the histoy and linguistic ties of the Finno-Ugric, and Samoyedic peoples. Speakers of the Kamassian, Nenets, Khanty, Komi, Mari, and Karelian languages were filmed in their everyday settings in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The footage was shot in Altai Krai, the Nenets Okrug, Khantia-Mansia, Uzbekistan, the Komi Republic, Mari el, Karelia, and Estonia. The first documentary in Lennart Meri's "Encyclopaedia Cinematographica Gentium Fenno - Ugricarum (1970 - 1997)" series.
Sequel to the "The Waterfowl People". The author interprets the kinship, linguistic and cultural relationships of the Finno-Ugric peoples. Finns, Vepsians, Votes, Setos, Erzya-Mordvinians, Mansi, Hungarians, Sami, Nganasans, and Estonians appear in the film. The film was shot in 1977 on location in northern Finland, Sapmi, Vepsia, Votia, Mordovia, Khantia-Mansia, Hungary, the Taymyr Peninsula, the Setomaa region in Estonia, and on the Estonian islands of Saaremaa and Muhu. Footage was also shot in 1970 in the Nenets Okrug. The second documentary in Lennart Meri's "Encyclopaedia Cinematographica Gentium Fenno - Ugricarum" series.
A three-act film-essay about memory and the historical-cultural ties of the Finno- Ugric peoples. The first chapter is dedicated to ancient Bearese of memory, such as Karelian cliff drawings, Kalevala runo song and Khanty bear feast rituals. the second act portrays the visit of Elias Lonnrot, compiler of the Finnish national epic Kalevala, to Estonia and his meetings with local intellectuals. Part three re-enacts an ancient smelting and blacksmith ritual set to Veljo Tormis' cantata 'curse upon iron'. Filmed in 1985 in Uhtuo, Karelia; in Khantia-Mansia at the Agan river, a tributary of the Ob; and in Estonia (Tallinn, Kuusalu, Tartu, Voru, Litsmetsa in Voru county, Lullemae, Karula, Rongu, Narva, and at a bend of the Pirita river). The third documentary in Lennart Meri's "Encyclopaedia Cinematographica Gentium Fenno - Ugricarum" series.
In the same vein as Meri's other documentations, this one takes advantage of the glasnost policy to discuss the social and ecologic impact of the Russian oil industry on the natives and the lands they inhabit.