Filmed inside Pharmacy No. 3 in Shanghai, Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan-Ivens document the daily work of a state pharmacy that functions as both a dispensary and a neighborhood medical center. The film focuses on routine interactions between staff and patients, revealing an integrated model of urban healthcare in 1970s China.
Life is by no means easy for eight-year-old Dominik from the Berlin district of Hellersdorf. Living with his younger brother and sister and his single mother, he finds himself constantly torn between his sense of responsibility ty to the family and his own desires as he struggles to make his own life. This documentary portrait of Dominik accompanies him during the ups and downs of his daily life.
On Coal River takes viewers on a gripping emotional journey into the Coal River Valley of West Virginia — a community surrounded by lush mountains and a looming toxic threat. The film follows a former coal miner and his neighbors in a David-and-Goliath struggle for the future of their valley, their children, and life as they know it.
Renee Tajima-Peña takes to the road to investigate questions about Asian-American identity.
Henry Rollins narrates Lilly Scourtis Ayers' no-holds-barred profile of volatile Bay Area punk legend Marian Anderson, whose hypnotic beauty, devil-may-care rebellion and shocking sexual exploits onstage launched her to infamy before tragically dying of a heroin overdose at the tender age of 33.
Documentary short following French-Vietnamese artist Marcelino Truong on his journey back to Vietnam for the research on his 'roman graphique' 'Une si jolie petite guerre' (A Lovely Little War). Truong looks back to when his family lived in Saigon from 1961 to 1963 when his father served as a translator to then president of the Republic of Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem. The film follows Truong as he ruminates over memories, photos and films, and also conducts a host of interviews with Vietnamese relatives and officials to present a personal and long awaited Vietnamese perspective to the war.
The Devil Never Sleeps is a “whodunit” documentary about family secrets. Filmmaker Lourdes Portillo received a phone call informing her of the mysterious death of her wealthy Mexican uncle Oscar. Officially ruled a suicide, Portillo’s relatives claimed murder, offering several possible suspects including a business partner, a ranch hand, and Oscar’s young widow who stood to inherit everything. Traveling to Mexico, Portillo attempts to learn the truth about her powerful uncle. Using interviews, old snapshots and home movies, she finds a complicated web of family secrets, intrigue, rumor and betrayal that makes her enigmatic uncle’s murder seem ever more likely, yet ever more obscure. As the Mexican saying goes, “When evil is lurking, the devil never sleeps.”
Inspired by their beloved Dolomite area in Northeast Italy, a battle theater in World Wars I and II, Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi continue to explore issues of war and peace in their most recent production. The film uses shots of ordinary toys found in the area, many missing limbs and other pieces, to represent, in both direct and oblique ways, the historical period between Fascism, Nazism, and the postwar era.
A 65-year-old cleaning woman for a professional dancers' exercise studio performs her job while telling us in voiceover about her life, hopes, goals, and feelings. A challenge to mainstream media's ongoing stereotypes of women of color who earn their living as domestic workers, this seemingly simple documentary achieves a quiet revolution: the expressive portrait of a fully realized individual.
Fantasy drama Rachel's Dream was set sometime in the future when the world is besieged by technology, young Rachel discovers that through a large bank of video screens in her sister's apartment, her wishes can come true when she brings to life the image on an anti-pollution poster. This new friend helps her to make up her mind about her own future.
Trans man Stafford candidly tells the story of a memorable encounter he had at a sex club.
Ruby and Garnet are identical twins, ten years old and inseparable. Since their mother's death they live with father and grandmother in the big city. When one day attractive Rose steps into father's life, Ruby and Garnet's whole life is turned upside down. They must leave their beloved granny and move to the countryside with father and that much hated "new one" because father wants to fulfill his most ardent dream to open a bookstore.
Margy Kinmonth meets millionaire customers and world-famous designers as she explores the anachronistic but little-explained pocket of the fashion industry known as haute couture.
Scénarios sur la drogue
Young computer enthusiast Liam runs a website streaming video of his every action captured on a webcam. He lives a reclusive life, temporarily staying in a friend’s apartment in Paris until waitress Alison and her British husband, James, move in.
Forty years before WikiLeaks and the NSA scandal, there was Media, Pennsylvania. In 1971, eight activists plotted an intricate break-in to the local FBI offices to leak stolen documents and expose the illegal surveillance of ordinary Americans in an era of anti-war activism. In this riveting heist story, the perpetrators reveal themselves for the first time, reflecting on their actions and raising broader questions surrounding security leaks in activism today.
Ich Chef du nix
This haunting film comprises of footage shot during WWI from opposite sides of the conflict: Czarist Russia and the Austro-Hungarian empire. The filmmakers tinted the material with sensual colors from sepia to red, blue, and purple and slowed the footage to analyze the material. The total absence of commentary renders the material eloquent and disturbing. - MoMA
In 1926 the remains of two ships built by the Emperor Caligula were found at the bottom of Lake Nemi, near Rome. Mussolini had the lake drained and established a museum as a celebration of the imperial origins of Fascism, but the museum and ships were destroyed by fleeing Nazis in 1944. The film commemorates these events. - MoMA
Legendary rumba musician Alberto Zayas serves as a guide for this vibrant journey through Cuban musical history and culture. The short features interviews, footage of impromptu street performances, and studio recordings.