Just after midnight on 10 March 1945, the US launched an air-based attack on eastern Tokyo; continuing until morning, the raid left more than 100,000 people dead and a quarter of the city eradicated. Unlike their loved ones, Hiroshi Hoshino, Michiko Kiyooka and Minoru Tsukiyama managed to emerge from the bombings. Now in their twilight years, they wish for nothing more than recognition and reparations for those who, like them, had been indelibly harmed by the war – but the Japanese government and even their fellow citizens seem disinclined to acknowledge the past.
An unnamed passer-by is forced to trace a circular route inside an abandoned tram station, facing loss and time. The broken walls act as a channel, transmitting fragmentary, blurred and analogical memories.
Liberta
The movie recalls children who suffered mental and physical harm both during the last century, particularly in religious orphanages, and during the time of early modernperiod witch-hunts. It shows that the mindsets and behavioural patterns of both time periods are more alike than one might think.
An old, ailing general is losing his memory. His anarchist son wants to connect. They share a passion for the Wild East, where grandfather was a famous explorer among Mongol tribes. He died under mysterious circumstances in 1948 in Afghanistan. Rumors say he was a British agent and gunrunner. Michael, the grandson, takes his father Søren out of the nursing home. He wants him to taste life, and he wants them to spend time together. The odd couple travel across China. They encounter temples, chiefs, and ancestors who reveal that the grandfather was a true Lawrence of the East. A man who fought to unite the Mongol tribes and defend them against the Soviet Reds.
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.
From HBO's "America Undercover." On June 30, 1969, Lt. Jack Hulme was killed in Vietnam, having never met his newborn son. Thirty years later, filmmaker John Hulme finally seeks out what happened to his father, and who he really was. From family members and childhood friends to the soldiers who fought beside him, John tracks down everyone, chasing his fathers ghost across the country. What he discovers is a life that mirrored a generations struggles...husbands vs. wives, soldiers vs. protestors, America vs. Vietnam. But he also finds wounds that are painfully fresh, especially his mothers. Together, using the accounts of first-hand witnesses, they travel back to Vietnam, to the place where Jack spent the last few moments of his life so they can finally come to terms with his death.
RE:MEMBER is a documentary, split into three chapters, that provides insights into the topics of memory, media, and history, specifically through the lens of two millennial participants. Through their testimonies and introspections, we start to see the rift between the media they were nostalgic for and the reality we currently live in. They also consider how our current attitudes towards media have shaped our previous environments and how we can change society to better our future generations.
A short animated documentary featuring archival recordings of the filmmaker's Volga-German Great-Great-Grandmother, Mary Frank Lind, in which she recalls key memories of childhood—her father's windmill, warm rains, wolf sightings, bone trading, and her passion for carpentry, which broke gender norms but was supported by her father.
Engaging themes of love and betrayal, hope, belonging and place, Glad You’re Here documents my nineteen--year journey through building a family life, seeing it suffer the damage of mental illness, grief and separation, and then rebuilding with empathy. A story about an extreme moment of crisis has turned into a documentary that deals not just with the subjective but with the important issue of spousal abuse.
AVATARA is not a cartoon. It's a documentary about an Internet subculture who spend their lives immersed in an online 3-D voice-chat program called "Digitalspace Traveler." Through a series of 14 interviews, we uncover the history, art, identities, struggles and emotions of this unique internet community who, since as far back as 1996 have mostly devoted their lives to this software.
The documentary "Caixa D'água: Qui-lombo is this?" It reports, through testimonies from former residents and photographic collections, the importance in the cultural and historical scope of the Getúlio Vargas neighborhood located in Aracaju, capital of Sergipe. Emphasis is placed on black culture and the presence of black slaves and their descendants, with the rescue of issues related to their origin, orality, geographical location and awareness of their racial identity, showing that, although this community exists in an urban area, it still maintains many aspects of the quilombo life of the former black slaves in Brazil.
Mémoire entre deux rives
Xulia was getting treatment at a rehab center back in 1985, when something happened that changed her life. Years after that, she published 'Imperfect Future', a memoir turned into a book. This short film is a dive in what's left of all that.
Day after day, an elderly woman recalls the Spanish Basque country of her youth — while forgetting she is consigned to a retirement home in Chile.
Within the French and American armies, virtual reality prepares soldiers for their future battles just as it treats post-traumatic stress disorder after their baptism of fire. Antoine Chapon meets Cyril, former military video game designer and a veteran, who is dealing with the return to civilian life and loss of identity.
The night is falling and Montreal is under the snow. People line up at the lost and found office of the city’s transit company. They all have lost something, which, upon reflection, becomes the symbol of a deeper loss. Prayer for a Lost Mitten is a creative documentary by turns melancholic and festive, yet ever compassionate. A film that helps us get through the winter.
Yeon Park orders a time machine on eBay for her father’s birthday, seeing it as an opportunity to discover a few truths about her family’s past. Yeon responds to her father’s private prints through another distribution of the sensible. Fun and intimate, I Bought a Time Machine uses technology like a mediation necessary for communication.
At the end of the 80's, the city of Itacuruba, in the backlands of Pernambuco, was transferred to another locality due to the construction of a hydroelectric plant. In the new region, the city began to register many suicides, reaching a rate ten times greater than the national average. Through memories of the lost city, villagers reveal that the root of a people is like the root of a tree: essential to life.
OUR ARK is an essay film on our efforts to create a virtual replica of the real world.