First Stories: Two Spirited

A typical group of young people get together at the weekend. Drinking is part of it because, according to them, alcohol is a social drug. But Rudolf knows better, because he is an alcoholic. He has been trying unsuccessfully to overcome his addiction for years. He observes young people as they deal with alcohol.

Most drugs exert their effects by changing the balance between excitatory and inhibitory signals at certain synapses. This is shown specifically using the examples of amphetamine, cocaine, LSD and heroin, while alcohol and sleeping pills serve as examples of a different mechanism of action.

Jean, a schoolboy who started smoking at the age of 8, talks about his addiction. Jean's smoking career is an example of how addiction develops. In a futile attempt to give up smoking again at the age of 18, Jean comes to the frustrating realization that the addiction has him in its grip.

A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.

This short cautionary training film examines dangers associated with earthmoving equipment operation, showing many simulated accidents on construction sites.

Following the lives of Queer creatives behind Norwich’s queer collaborative ‘Stripped Sets’. We discover the reasoning behind the need for safe spaces, and the stories that come with them. Through live events, photoshoots and history, we see the process in creating such an important event.

Combining high definition and Super 8 footage, Lampedusa is composed of interwoven narratives based on a series of real events. In 1831, a volcanic island suddenly erupted from the sea a few kilometers off the southern coast of Sicily. An international dispute ensued, as a number of European powers laid claim to this newfound “land”. The island receded below sea level six months later, leaving only a rocky ledge under the sea…

Shannon Amen unearths the passionate and pained expressions of a young woman overwhelmed by guilt and anxiety as she struggles to reconcile her sexual identity with her religious faith. A loving elegy to a friend lost to suicide.

Tommy Hilfiger Dreaming Perfume campaign - Coney Island, the playland of New York City, documents the preservation of the lifestyle, joys and history of this iconic Brooklyn neighborhood.

Journey to the sunny coastline of South Florida, where Chacón-Cruz — one of opera’s leading tenors — invites you inside his home, his artistry and his history to show how he’s embraced his identity as fuel for his work.

Rehearsals is about experiences of listening in collective work. How do we listen to experiences we have not shared ourselves? What does it sound like when we talk? What actually is listening and who are "we"?

94-year old Esther, a pensioner with bad sight, is in search of her artist daugther’s public decoration. Endless phone conversations takes her through municipal bureaucracy and lost culture secretaries. Will she ever get an answer to the eternal question: Where does the art really go?

A promotional video for the film “Death and Rebirth.” Released on January 25, 1997, it contains an overview of the series’ plot, cast interviews, a music video for “Soul’s Refrain,” and several trailers for the film.

Ivan and Jožica, a married couple, move to a care home after 70 years of sharing their lives. Despite the hardships of old age, they continue to live together in the new environment. Memories are fading, love remains.

The 1920s saw a revolution in technology, the advent of the recording industry, that created the first class of African-American women to sing their way to fame and fortune. Blues divas such as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Alberta Hunter created and promoted a working-class vision of blues life that provided an alternative to the Victorian gentility of middle-class manners. In their lives and music, blues women presented themselves as strong, independent women who lived hard lives and were unapologetic about their unconventional choices in clothes, recreational activities, and bed partners. Blues singers disseminated a Black feminism that celebrated emotional resilience and sexual pleasure, no matter the source.

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

In 2011, photographer Tanja Hollander decided to visit each one of her Facebook "friends" (all 626 of them) in their homes and make formal portraits of each of them. Armed with her cameras and iPhone, Tanja traveled throughout the U.S. and around the world for 5 years, meticulously documenting her experiences in real time and creating a historical narrative, both visual and written, along the way. Her project is an exploration of friendships, the effects of social networks, the intimate places we call home and the communities in which we live.

A young group of actors are preparing an updated version of Shakespeare's ROMEO & JULIET. Two boys perform the central roles - both of them struggling with their own questions of love alongside their roles on stage. And as rehearsals begin, reality soon starts to interfere with the play.

A documentary on the massacre of Planas in the Colombian east plains in 1970. An Indigenous community formed a cooperative to defend their rights from settlers and colonists, but the government organized a military operation to protect the latter and foreign companies.

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.