Bacon-Freud, face à face
Around six to 15 percent of all people (study by John Hearst 2011) hear voices at some point in their lives. Many of them even live with their invisible companions for their entire lives. Well over half of voice hearers are mentally healthy and lead a completely unremarkable life. Despite this, voice hearers continue to be stigmatized and are subject to prejudice. As a result, few speak openly about their experiences. In recent decades in particular, however, voice hearing has been regarded as a symptom of impaired brain function. The documentary sheds light on the phenomenon. Sufferers describe the voices in their heads, as well as the thoughts and feelings they trigger in them, and scientists explain the causes that lead people to hear voices.
Sociologist David W. Wahl explores the identity work involved in Kay Parker shifting from being a legend of the adult film industry to her current occupation as a metaphysical counselor.
The Hugo's Brain is a French documentary-drama about autism. The documentary crosses authentic autistic stories with a fiction story about the life of an autistic (Hugo), from childhood to adulthood, portraying his difficulties and his handicap.
This film is a portrait of unique cultural space for Spirits, Gods and People. While permanent theatres are commonly built in most cosmopolitan modern cities, Hong Kong preserves a unique theatrical architecture, a Chinese tradition that has lasted more than a century - Bamboo Theatre.
THEY HEARD VOICES is a documentary film exploring the Hearing Voices Movement, chronic psychosis, and the schizophrenia label. The film is a series of wide-ranging interviews with voice hearers, medical historians, anthropologists and psychiatrists from Britain and America, presenting different people’s views. Is schizophrenia hard science or an arbitrary, catch-all term with no real meaning? What does it mean for those experiencing psychosis?
For several years, Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich traveled around in Russia and Belarus to investigate the relationship to love of the Russian people. One, as Svetlana means, is an acute shortage in today's society.
Helle and Maj-Briht lived together for 37 years and been married for two years. When Helle becomes weak and ends up in a retirement home, they have to live separately.
Following a year in Cadance and Amanda's gender transition, this intimate documentary charts not only their personal transformation but the building of a life and community together in regional New South Wales.
Haunted by uncanny similarities between Nazi stage techniques and the showmanship employed by modern entertainers, a filmmaker investigates the dangers of audience manipulation and leader worship.
For three years, filmmaker Staffan Julén has traveled with Svetlana Alexievich in Belarus and Russia to document her working method when her reportage books are created. At first, filmmaker Staffan Julén wanted to make a traditional writer portrait on Nobel Prize laureate Svetlana Alexievich which she was not interested in. Her suggestion was instead that he would tag along with her in her ongoing projects and follow her when she talks to people about love.
Thomas Haemmerli is about to celebrate his fortieth birthday when he learns of his mother's death. A further shock follows when he and his brother Erik discover her apartment, which is filthy and full to bursting with junk. It takes the brothers an entire month to clean out the place. Among the chaos, they find films going back to the 1930s, photos and other memorabilia.
Draussen bleiben
In this home movie collection of gay men, memory serves as an act of hope, power, and above all, resilience.
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.
Jérôme was sexually abused as a child by a priest. In a deeply personal film, he tries to search for clues in his memories and come to terms with the complicity of his former social environment.
John Bishop and Naomi Bishop present a portrait a peculiar life style of the Himalayan indigenous Sherpa people in their documentary , the Himalayan Herders. The 76 minutes long film is about the diverse culture and life style of herders community near Mt. Everest region of Nepal.The film was made in 1997 as a part of Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology Series.
A representation of queer and feminist imagery that was mainly shot in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, remote and developing areas in southwest China, and metropolitan cities like Beijing from 2000 to 2004 to document the social changes in contemporary China. The director sympathetically and erotically represents a variety of women, including women as laborers, women as prayers, women in the ground, women in marriage, and women who lie on the funeral pyre with their dead husbands. Her camera juxtaposes the mountains and rivers in old times, the commercialized handicrafts as exposition, the capital exploitation of the elders’ living space, and the erotic freedom of the young people in a changing city.
‘Voices from the Shadows’ shows the brave and sometimes heartrending stories of five ME patients and their carers, along with input from Dr Nigel Speight, Prof Leonard Jason and Prof Malcolm Hooper. These were filmed and edited between 2009 and 2011, by the brother and mother of an ME patient in the UK. It shows the devastating consequences that occur when patients are disbelieved and the illness is misunderstood. Severe and lasting relapse occurs when patients are given inappropriate psychological or behavioural management: management that ignores the severe amplification of symptoms that can be caused by increased physical or mental activity or exposure to stimuli, and by further infections. A belief in behavioural and psychological causes, particularly when ME becomes very severe and chronic, following mismanagement, is still taught to medical students and healthcare professionals in the UK. As a consequence, situations similar to those shown in the film continue to occur.
Seven strangers are interviewed to talk about the relationship they have with their mother.