Thirty Million Letters

This "March of Time" entry examines the many problems, both human and economic, that faced the Allies in their respective zones of Germany -- USA, England and Russia -- following the end of World War II, and the Allied occupation of what was left of the country following the Nazi reign of Adolf Hitler. The Cold War issues had not yet fully surfaced, so this entry, with fleeting glances into each Zone of the time, traced what economic recovery had been made by the end of 1946, and how the average German citizen of 1946 was living...or getting by.

The world is made of boxes. We live in them, we move within them, we see the world through them and we wind up in them in the end. Huacal City introduces us to the empty containers market at the Supply Center in Mexico City, where every day thousands of wooden boxes are bought, sold and repaired.

A visually striking and meditative study of a team of athletes, including British Olympic finalists Jeanette Kwakye and Sarah Claxton, filmed over the two months leading to the start of the 2007 outdoor season. Sprinters is an intimate and arresting portrayal of the frequently brutal world of top level athletics, revealing the mental and physical barriers confronted by the runners as they pursue their dreams, and a world in which agony, ecstasy, winning and losing are separated by a hundredth of a second.

Documentary Short

A landscape is only a landscape until we know what lies beneath. Pozo Ibarra, in the Central Mountains of León, is a mining complex full of significant architectural attributes, and also the imposing and ruinous remnant of a painful past that passed the ideas of freedom, literally, through the stone, turned into a great mass grave. Now, when the sun goes down, the souls that inhabit it rise up, refusing to forget.

Based on home movies shot on Super 8mm film, A Family Film places the mother at its center as the narrator while tracing the memories of a family living in Istanbul in the 70s.

Denys Colomb de Daunant (1922 - 2006) is a writer, poet, photographer and filmmaker known for being the author and co-writer of the film Crin-Blanc (1952) directed by Albert Lamorisse. Highly symbolic character of the Camargue, aristocrat and dandy, he was also a manager and hotelier. He would lead the immemorial life of an animal herder if he did not have another passion: images. The photographic apparatus and the camera are like sensitive antennas that he spreads over his world and which seek the truth beyond appearances. Since Crin Blanc his photographs have appeared in illustrated books on five continents. Among his many films, Corrida Interdite (in competition at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival) and Le Rêve des Chevaux Sauvages (Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival) are global short film successes. The animals, the images... a single passion: that of a free life in one of the rare countries where you can still live freely: the Camargue.

"A well-known character, in a dance that created considerable excitement when first introduced in America."

A gay man reminisces about his deceased lover, a victim of AIDS.

The manifestation and fireworks on the 1st of May, one of the ritual celebrations of Soviet times, as a gathering of tired participants of a mass scene falling into pieces without the director's orders and without any aims.

The true story of a young teenage girl whose mother is incarcerated for murder. Living in a Catholic Children's home run by an order of nuns, she provides poignant commentary about her mother, her own situation and her outlook for the future.

Kidlat Tahimik, a director and performer, sought to recreate relations between the body and filmed image seen through "Asian eyes." This groundbreaking project took the form of a documentary which Mr. Tahimik directed and in which he performed himself in order to show his own thinking about the different views of the body held by the "East" and the "West."

Andy directs Edie for a screen test.

The simple actions of a young boy on the beach provide visual metaphors for the normally unseen world. The camera adds a profound dimension to what the boy has seen, giving us a deeper understanding of visual awareness.

In 1946 ethnographic researcher Rouch had attempted to film a "Bangaoui," a hippopotamus hunt along the river Niger, but the results were unsatisfactory.Five years later, he returns and makes the extra effort to get it right this time.

In 1992, skydiver Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld boarded a plane for a training jump. Six weeks later, he awoke from a coma to discover that a terrible accident had shattered his dream of becoming a World Champion. This is his story.

A short film made for "Venezia 70 - Future Reloaded."

Sergei Paradjanov, the great Soviet filmmaker of Armenian origin who was born and grew up in Tbilisi, Georgia, studied film in Moscow and worked for many years in Ukraine, talks on camera to Fotos Lamprinos about his life, his films, and events in the USSR under Gorbachev’s Perestroika, a few short months before he died and while the state of his health was already deteriorating. The film includes rare footage of the massacre of Georgian civilians by the Soviet Army in April 1989 and unpublished material from the Ukrainian prison in which Paradjanov served his sentence.

Andy directs Lou Reed drinking a Coke.

Alanis Obomsawin turns her lens to Le Patro Le Prévost, a recreational centre in the Villeray quarter of Montreal. On the eve of its 80th anniversary in 1989, Le Patro is a vital focal point in the predominantly working-class neighbourhood. Beloved by the many generations who use the facilities and partake in activities daily, Le Patro encourages a strong sense of togetherness through principles of cooperation, respect and sharing. Obomsawin presents a tender portrait of a neighbourhood of diverse residents and the community centre many of them consider a second home.