Varda focuses her eye on gleaners: those who scour already-reaped fields for the odd potato or turnip. Her investigation leads from forgotten corners of the French countryside to off-hours at the green markets of Paris, following those who insist on finding a use for that which society has cast off, whether out of necessity or activism.
A tomato is planted, harvested and sold at a supermarket, but it rots and ends up in the trash. But it doesn’t end there: Isle of Flowers follows it up until its real end, among animals, trash, women and children. And then the difference between tomatoes, pigs and human beings becomes clear.
An uplifting feature documentary highlighting the transformative power of art and the beauty of the human spirit. Top-selling contemporary artist Vik Muniz takes us on an emotional journey from Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, to the heights of international art stardom. Vik collaborates with the brilliant catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, true Shakespearean characters who live and work in the garbage quoting Machiavelli and showing us how to recycle ourselves.
Right outside of Moscow – home to the highest number of billionaires pr. capita – you’ll find the largest junkyard in the world: The Svalka. It’s a hard place run by the Russian mafia. And it's where Yula lives with her mother, her friends and many other people. Life is tough in the Svalka, but it’s also a place where beauty and humanity can arise from the most unlikely conditions. It is from this place that Yula dreams of escaping and changing her life, even if it seems impossible. Oscar-nominated director Hanna Polak followed Yula for 14 years, bringing us along on Yula's journey to achieve this dream.
Omondi lives in the biggest slum in East Africa. Everyday he sees airplanes fly over him. He dreams of becoming an airline pilot and flying far away.
American citizens who are normally marginalized, forgotten and left to fend against toxic dumps and other violations, come to understand that the only way to survive and save their communities is to challenge the system head-on.
Documentary about a group of people who live on a waste dump.
Doc McCoy is put in prison because his partners chickened out and flew off without him after exchanging a prisoner with a lot of money. Doc knows Jack Benyon, a rich "business"-man, is up to something big, so he tells his wife (Carol McCoy) to tell him that he's for sale if Benyon can get him out of prison. Benyon pulls some strings and Doc McCoy is released again. Unfortunately he has to cooperate with the same person that got him to prison.
When As’ad, a 12-year-old rubbish picker, adopts an American sex doll from the Baghdad dumps, he crosses into a perilous red zone, finding himself caught in the crossfire between abusive forces of commercialism and fundamentalism in a world where defenders of humanism have lost their power. He embraces the courage it takes to not just survive, but live.
Amidst the chaos of planning his son's birthday, Sandesh's phone, crucial for an investor call, gets accidentally thrown away. In his quest to retrieve it, he discovers unexpected emotional depths.
Belgrade in 2041 is a deserted city that looks like a dump yard. A few old men try to bring up a group of young girls in the old, traditional way of their Yugoslav ancestors.
Herminia, a woman heavy with children, with her four children in tow witnesses her husband being forcibly taken, tortured, and murdered by henchmen of an unscrupulous, land-grabbing politician due to disputes in land ownership. After being hunted down by these henchmen, they flee their hometown and in the process, Herminia's eldest son and only daughter get separated from them. Herminia and her three boys end up living in the city's slums. 15 years later, each of the boys turns to a life of crime one gets incarcerated for killing his wife, one becomes a robber and kidnapper and the other one becomes a drug dealer.
Told over the space of a day and through the eyes of 11 year old Utah, The Dump is a comedy/drama about a boy and the gradual bond he develops with his estranged dad Orlando, the sole employee at a tiny rubbish dump in rural New Zealand.
A young boy and his young sister are playing on a rubbish dump, acting out their parents' divorce. For this they use their father's things which their mother brought to the dumping ground out of anger. The girl only wants to use their fathers things, but the boy finds something that he finds much more interesting.
In the future, an outbreak of canine flu leads the mayor of a Japanese city to banish all dogs to an island used as a garbage dump. The outcasts must soon embark on an epic journey when a 12-year-old boy arrives on the island to find his beloved pet.
The “Bowlingtreff” is a bowling alley situated right in the centre of Leipzig opened in July 1987. At that time the quality of life in Leipzig and the whole GDR got worse. Houses collapsed because of poor conditions, public life and amusement was on a very low level. The “Bowlingtreff” was not merely an urban entertainment centre but a revolution in those days. Built with the help of hundreds of volunteers without permission of the state authorities in Berlin the building expresses a free and international architecture known as postmodernism. It is an architecture that was never seen before in Leipzig. Marble and parquet on the floor, a glass roof and beautiful pink pillars. The atmosphere was western as time witnesses remember it.
"What could be more unsettling than a man close to death whose profound arrogance drives him relentlessly to hang onto both his power and his writing, to the bitter end?" In the twilight of his second seven-year term, François Mitterrand was alone. Ravaged by illness and abandoned by a large majority of the Socialist Party, who would not forgive him for the disastrous outcome of the March 1993 elections, the Head of State was preparing to tackle a second round of cohabitation with the right wing. However a series of unexpected tragedies and revelations would arise, casting a shadow over the end of his reign…
Hubert Butler smuggled Jewish people into Ireland before WW2, then exposed the scale of the genocide of Serbs in war-time Croatia. He was silenced in Ireland, but went on to become an overnight publishing success at the age of 85.
In a series of long interviews, 12 prime ministers talk about their experience in the upper echelons of power. The function of prime minister, torn between the president and the parliament, appointed without necessarily being elected but responsible for everything, is at the center of debate. With the exception of Jacques Chirac (1974-1976 and 1986-1988), deliberately left out because of his image as French President, those who governed France for the past 35 years agreed to discuss the exercise of power, as seen through archive footage, but also how they experienced it personally. Filmed in the same studio and sitting in the same chair, 12 French prime ministers talk freely about their time in office, from their appointment until their resignation.
A celebration of the incredible career of Australian television legend Bert Newton. With reflections from Tracy Grimshaw, Hamish Blake, Shaun Micallef and Eddie McGuire.