Eskimos und die Zivilisation

“Sardar Gurcharan Singh was the father of studio pottery in India. "Daddyji" as most called him lovingly was very close to my father. I often tagged along to visit his home studio where pottery wheels were lined up under the big neem trees in his old brick house. My father wanted me to make a film on Daddyji, who was then 95. He was afraid that Daddyji's wonderful story would be left untold. He not only introduced studio pottery in India but due to his longevity, mentored many potters. So despite not knowing anything about films, I made the documentary, Imprint in Clay with a classmate of mine, which was mostly funded by my father.”

A story from childhood and an indelible image continue to haunt Jamie many years later.

How Inuit peoples perform arts and crafts, on the island of Baffin Island on what is now the territory of Nanavut.

As her 80th birthday is approaching, Vera Klement, an oil painter in Chicago, adamantly starts yet another new figure painting: a portrait of an artist under oppression, an homage to Russian composer, Dmitri Shostakovitch.

Of Ravens and Children

Two old men enter an abandoned synagogue, look at the decay around them, and pray.

Two rabbis show the ruins of an abandoned synagogue to a group of primary school-age Jewish children, and stand by as the children dip bread in honey, drink wine, pray, and sing.

This thirty minute documentary features interviews with Giovinazzo's key contemporaries discussing the continued impact and influence of Combat Shock twenty-five years later.

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

In this feature-length documentary, 8 Inuit teens with cameras offer a vibrant and contemporary view of life in Canada's North. They also use their newly acquired film skills to confront a broad range of issues, from the widening communication gap between youth and their elders to the loss of their peers to suicide. In Inuktitut with English subtitles.

Prior to 1973, Satan seemed all but dead and gone, the causality of a modernist mindset. But with Linda Blair's disturbing performance in The Exorcist, Satan returned with a vengeance and since then films about demonic possession have fascinated viewers worldwide. However, was the visage of Satan that returned Biblical or distorted? And how have these images influenced society's view of the demonic and spiritual warfare? In this thought provoking documentary, these questions are examined with objectivity and insight from psychologists, modern-day exorcists and leading voices in Christianity.

Haley Hoult, a student of Est Harrison High, creates a sarcastic video essay about his school.

Renouer avec le vivant

The story of Dr. George Washington Carver (1864-1943), black educator and horticulturist. He is perhaps most well known for developing over 140 products from all parts of the peanut plant, including the shells and husks. He also developed products based on sweet potatoes and soybeans, and developed a cotton hybrid that was named after him.

Presence narrates the journey of Thati, a woman determined to overcome her anxiety attacks through surfing. She finds refuge in the waves, where the surfboard becomes her ally and personal therapy.

Elem Klimov's documentary ode to his wife, director Larisa Shepitko, who was killed in an auto wreck.

Buster Brown creater R.F. Outcault sketches his creation. Part of the Buster Brown series for Edison film studio.

In 1967, de Andrade was invited by the Italian company Olivetti to produce a documentary on the new Brazilian capital city of Brasília. Constructed during the latter half of the 1950s and founded in 1960, the city was part of an effort to populate Brazil’s vast interior region and was to be the embodiment of democratic urban planning, free from the class divisions and inequalities that characterize so many metropolises. Unsurprisingly, Brasília, Contradições de uma Cidade Nova (Brasília, Contradictions of a New City, 1968) revealed Brasília to be utopic only for the wealthy, replicating the same social problems present in every Brazilian city. (Senses of Cinema)

An account of the last two centuries of the Anthropocene, the Age of Man. How human beings have progressed so much in such a short time through war and the selfish interests of a few, belligerent politicians and captains of industry, damaging the welfare of the majority of mankind, impoverishing the weakest, greedily devouring the limited resources of the Earth.

The director’s grandparents Wilhelmine, an Austrian Catholic, and Bernard, a Jewish Czechoslovakian communist, have always been part of her life, although she never met them in person. Her uncle Hermann lives in what was once their house, with their furniture, Marx and Lenin busts, Hanukkah lamp, countless photos, letters and oil paintings. Through the film Judith Schein asks whether it is possible for a house and its interiors to narrate History.