Laxmi Agarwal, a human rights activist and a survivor of acid violence, gazes back at us, as we contemplate together, the meaning of memory and loss. What does it mean to survivors of acid violence? What does it mean to people in their environment? How do the two world-views interact? What do concepts of 'fear', 'power', 'innocence' and 'beauty' mean to us? The Newborns attempts to provide a lens to the survivors of acid violence, to look forward and gaze back. They take us through the ennui of their domestic and public spaces in a nameless dystopian city, its factories, houses and motels, and its promises, never honored.
This film is composed of 5 horizons, each one offered by the filmmaker to the voices of some passers by met in Apulia, in June 2013: their words draw closed and open spaces, paths of illnesses and healing.
Rachel Corrie, a young American woman and her friends attempt to stop a bulldozer from clearing out some homes and other buildings. Corrie was run over and killed. Witnesses claim it was deliberate.
This documentary explores the social, political and religious aspects of same-sex marriage and examines its effect on American society.
See how the Benedictine monks of Newark Abbey, in the heart of one of America's most dangerous cities, are able to achieve amazing success with the most vulnerable population: inner city African American and Latino teenage males. While Newark, NJ, with a high poverty rate of 32%, has an abysmal high school graduation rate, St. Benedict's Prep has a near 100% COLLEGE ACCEPTANCE rate. The film details how their "recipe for success" follows the 6th century Rule of Saint Benedict and how this rule can serve as a model for whole cities nationwide.
Portrait of the first laughing club in India, its founding by a doctor who believes that laughter is the best medicine, his outreach to schools, interviews with club members, scenes of outdoor sessions, and shots of billboards and street scenes in contemporary Mumbai. Club members gather, stretch, and start to laugh. Founder Dr. Madan Kararia talks of the club's history and the growth of laughing clubs across the country. Among those interviewed, there's a stockbroker, three bawdy women, a musician, a widow laughing to cope with grief, and two old men - friends since school days who meet daily to laugh. No form, no fuss: happiness equals health.
A daring deconstruction of consumerist behavior featuring a robot and Miss Clio Darty, with a voiceover by Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville, this philosophical "report," like so many of Godard's commissions, was rejected by its funders.
TRUTH HAS FALLEN is a one-hour live action/animated documentary that examines the work of James McCloskey. Mr.McCloskey founded Centurion Ministries, an organization whose mission is to free prisoners who have been wrongfully convicted of murder. Employing a combination of abstract, surreal animation and live action images, TRUTH HAS FALLEN asks how innocent people could be convicted of murder - what could be done to prevent such injustices in the future - and what happens to these innocent people when they are released from prison after years of incarceration?
Garden Lovers is a documentary love story about Finnish couples who have a passion for gardening. The film with comic undertones looks at their stories behind the hedges. The garden provides a framework for tales of relationship conflicts and joys; it depicts the many ways in which life can flourish; it gives strength and unites, but it also becomes a meeting place for farewells. There is an invisible bond that grows between the couples in the film; they comment and comfort each other with their own stories.
Song is a story of the last Finnish rune singer and his pupil, and the comforting power of singing.
Female boxer Diana Prazak always want to fight the best in her league, therefore she accepts the invitation by the number one in the world Frida Wallberg to fight her for the WBC world title in Stockholm. Lucia Rijker, former 6x world champion, coaches Diana to prepare her physically and mentally for the toughest fight of her life and her biggest and most paralyzing fear: losing. In Stockholm they are confronted with the picture-perfect Frida and her glamorous and extended entourage. The brutal fight however, takes a dramatic turn. Diana is left to consider if she truly got what she wished for.
Director Jean-Luc Godard reflects in this movie about his place in film history, the interaction of film industry and film as art, as well as the act of creating art.
In June 2013, Laura Poitras and reporter Glenn Greenwald flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with Edward Snowden. She brought her camera with her.
A transfixing performance film in which artist Basma Alsharif shoots footage in Athens, Malta and the "post-civilization" of the Gaza Strip while under self-hypnosis.
Unprecedented access to Muhammad Ali's personal archive of "audio journals" as well as interviews and testimonials from his inner circle of family and friends are used to tell the legend's life story.
A short documentary about the life of director and artist René Laloux, featuring an interview with Laloux from 2001.
Sundance-and-Emmy-Award-winning filmmaker Judy Irving (with her first film since the widely acclaimed and loved “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill”) follows a wayward California brown pelican from her “arrest” on the Golden Gate Bridge into care at a wildlife rehabilitation facility, and from there explores pelicans’ nesting grounds, Pacific coast migration, and survival challenges of these ancient birds, sometimes referred to as the flying dinosaurs. The film is about wildness, and asks the following questions: how close can we get to a wild animal without taming or harming it? Why do we need wildness in our lives, and how can we protect it? PELICAN DREAMS, stars “Gigi” (for Golden Gate) and Morro (a backyard pelican with an injured wing).
In the constant stream of hoping, failing and making new plans, Denok and Gareng stay united in their passionate struggle to make it up the hill one day. In the modest house of Gareng’s mum, these young, ex-street urchins Muslim couple starts a small pig business, looking for the lucky streak to come over the family. But new challenges constantly arise, putting their cheerfulness and patience on trial. In an entirely observational approach, ‘Denok & Gareng’ explores a strong loving relationship inside a strikingly vivid family that sticks together, fights back and laughs, about what others would call a Sisyphus fate.
An account of the life and work of Swiss painter, sculptor, architect and designer H. R. Giger (1940-2014), tormented father of creatures as fearsome as they are fascinating, inhabitants of nightmarish biomechanical worlds.
Cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus relive the creation, rise and fall of their independent film company, Cannon Films. This documentary recounts their many successes and discusses their eventual downfall.