Alvarado

The efforts of a community to build a bridge which would allow their children to go school during the rainy season.

Keith Hetherington and Dorothy Gardiner travel to a different and unannounced location of interest every week, the program here presents a "live," behind-the-scenes look at the shooting of the 1950 George Pal film "Destination Moon".

In the wake of one of the worst social experiments in the history of mankind, 'I'm not Black, I'm Coloured' is one of the first documentary films to look at the legacy of Apartheid from the viewpoint of the Cape Coloured. A people who in 1994, embraced the concept of Desmond Tutu's all encompassing 'rainbow nation', but soon thereafter realized that freedom, privilege, economic growth and equality would not include them. A people who for more than 350 years has been disregarded, ignored, belittled, and stripped of anything they can call their own enduring a complex psychological oppression and identity crisis unparalleled in South African history.

Filmmaker Stephanie Wang-Breal sets out to cross the generational divide, confronting long-simmering tensions with her Chinese immigrant mother by literally becoming her. Dressing in her mom’s iconic St John Knit power suits and re-creating her 1980s local TV cooking show, Stephanie becomes Beta-Florence, a radical reinterpretation of Asian-American identity.

A silent city symphony, projected from gorgeous black and white 16mm film. Materia vibrante lets the resonating frequencies of the urban environment create the inaudible hum that keeps the engines of society running, absent of the inhabitants running around like little ants toiling away.

Pushing at the limits of non-fiction cinema, A Man Imagined is a bracingly intimate and hallucinatory portrait of a man with schizophrenia surviving amidst urban detritus and decay. Made in close collaboration with 67-year-old Lloyd, this immersive documentary fable follows the jagged path of a decades-long street survivor, across harsh winters and blistering summers, as he sells discarded items to motorists, sleeps in junkyards and lapses into near-psychedelic reveries.

The filmmaker's mother recalls her own mother and childhood in the 1960s bouncing between Mexico and California. Her mother's small red vanity case becomes a symbol of her independence as a woman and also of her inaccessibility as a maternal figure. A deeply relatable story about growing up with an unconventional single mother.

For one night, Kika collects audio recordings of orgasms. The acoustic phenomena generated by this hypnotic trance reveal the form that had remained hidden in the shadows.

After being diagnosed with progressive Parkinson's disease, the legendary Croatian experimental filmmaker Ivan Faktor (b. 1953) decides to visualise his physical state with a mobile phone camera. Through interventions into received documentary modes, he creates a surprisingly spirited inner world of an artist imprisoned in space. This is filmmaking as the act of self-preservation.

Steeped in the isolation of suburban Tasmania, Imogen and Audrey reflect on their lives, families and dreams between puffs on bongs, vapes and cigs. Dark clouds approach in the conversation and landscape as local wildlife looks on indifferently. Beyond the drugs and arcades, what possible routes of escape remain?

Minas Gerais in Southeastern Brazil, is a place whose identity, history and even topography has been greatly influenced by the mining industry. Taking a very personal approach, the filmmaker explores this legacy within the region she calls home. Weaving in and out of narrative, archival footage and documentation, The Silence of Iron challenges the way we look and think about landscape.

There was Pest fashion in the socialist system, a strange, mysterious grandmother, Klára Rotschild, who could hold a parlor in Paris in the 60s and 70s. There is a mystery today about the reason, and the price for this privilege. He could travel to Paris twice a year, watch the current fashion shows, and memorize the French fashion at home. Klara Rotschild - though not a fashion designer or seamstress, but a tailor - was referred to as the genius of the profession.

A series of photos and screenshots tell the story of how Samira Elagoz and Z Walsch, two transmasculine artists, fall madly in love with each other. We witness their first meeting, the start of a long-distance relationship, the meeting of the families, Z’s top surgery – all milestones are recorded in a uniquely intimate and moving way. A portrait of queer/trans love that we don’t get to see often enough.

Matthew Polly analyzes the film and its impact

A vast, snow-covered forest, untouched by human presence. Two men cross it, bags on their backs, cross a frozen river and finally arrive at the peatland, a vast white expanse. For years, Yves the painter and Olivier the photographer, have traveled the world, meeting wildlife from one pole to the other, privileged and concerned witnesses to the fragile beauty of the planet. But the two men share a common dream: to see a wolf pack live, grow, and spread out. One day, their search leads them to a hideout in no-man's-land between Iceland and Russia, a place conducive to a different temporality. The wait begins. Over the seasons, they will stand there in these eight square meters of wood, silent amid an unchanging scenery, until they gradually become part of the “picture” and immerse themselves in the life of the wolves. A motionless adventure...

L'Olympia, du rêve à la scène

After losing part of her memory in an accident, Leila, a young French woman of Iraqi origin, reconstructs her story by reconnecting with her family and exploring her roots. Through music and cinema, she brings her exiled father's poems to lite, dis-covers the reality of the Middle East, and embarks on a personal quest to understand her identity and find her voice.

Umoja - Wo nur Frauen das Sagen haben

Sunspot (2023) shows two lives and two observatories, one in Los Angeles, one in Tokyo. Using archival imagery, the film tells the tale of two sunspot observers both making drawings of the same sun on the day the Hiroshima bomb killed 100,000 people on August 6th, 1945. The film reflects on the forms and uses of light, from the light reflecting in a mirror to look at the sun and into space, the white hollow light of the bomb, and the light shone through the old film footage to create the image we see now. The huge wildfire that threatened Los Angeles’ Mount Wilson Observatory becomes a mirror of the huge clouds and destruction from the atomic bomb.