Keep Your Eyes Open

The Equalizer

The first Women’s Air Derby was flown in 1929 with brave women making history by breaking into a competition that was thought to be for men only. They encountered sabotage, death, and all the difficulties of flying at the dawn of aviation. Today the Powder Puff Derby continues as the Air Race Classic. The modern-day racers carry out the legacy of the original racers with their adventurous spirit.

In late eighties, in Ceausescu's Romania, a black market VHS bootlegger and a courageous female translator brought the magic of Western films to the Romanian people and sowed the seeds of a revolution.

Icons of '60s counterculture, Harvard psychologists Timothy Leary and Ram Dass became estranged until an illness inspired their fascinating reunion.

"Operation Spring" is a documentary thriller about a police investigation and court proceedings against Africans suspected of belonging to a Nigerian drug ring. New laws were implemented and new methods of investigation were put to the test for the first time. The film poses the question of whether the defendants ever stood a chance of receiving a fair trial.

Field Notes is an experimental documentary about the ghosts embedded in the culture of Trinidad and Tobago. The film is structured as a visual and aural field guide to the ghosts spirits and jumbies througout the island. From personal tales about the soucouyant and lagahoo, to the ghosts of Trinidads past. Shot and finished on 16mm.

The film reflects on the nature of vacation, as it is a transformed version of reality, the fantastical counterpart to winter.

The glimpse into the life of Mexican President Plutarco Elias Calles. Past and present collide as filmmaker Natalia Almada brings to life audio recordings she inherited about her great-grandfather, General Plutarco Elías Calles, a revolutionary general who became president of Mexico in 1924. Time is blurred in this visually arresting portrait of a family and country living under the shadows of the past.

The Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004 was the most devastating natural disaster in modern times, killing 228,000 people across 13 countries in just a few hours. AFTER THE WAVE tells the untold story of this epic forensic operation in Thailand to identify and return home the bodies of over 5,000 victims, both locals and holidaymakers from around the world. Led by a crack Australian team, the best forensic specialists from around the world were in a race against time to give back every victim their identity. Creating forensic history, the international team’s mantra from the outset was ‘we will take them home’, a seemingly impossible ambition but one that almost succeeded. In this film forensic science intersects with powerful stories of survival and loss, attempting to make some sense out of a tragedy so bewilderingly complete that nearly a decade out it still seems far-fetched to most of us.

From the seascapes of the North African Mediterranean to the streetscapes of Paris, this personal 16mm essay film explores the idealism and hard realities of departure and arrival. Stories of the post-revolution Tunisian diaspora in France, who “burned the sea” to leave, only to discover a new form of confinement in their liberation, provide a powerful meditation on personal revolution and freedom, and the compromises that face those whose mobility is a double-edged sword.

Portrait of the pioneer of animation films Lotte Reiniger.

Documentary about the german police force.

An experimental piece of film-making by Margaret Tait, featuring three children at play in a burn and garden, splashing and having fun playing with water.

We follow the filmmaker's struggle to reconstruct a period of her life when she lost her memory.

Hossein and Shaima have loved each other since childhood. As teenagers they were separated by war. They meet again in Kabul in the late 90s. Poverty forces Hossein to fight in the war. A shell splinter leaves him paralyzed. Shaima is sold into marriage with a man 40 years her senior and falls pregnant. Since Shaima's husband still owes half the dowry to her father he brings her back into the constraining patriarchal fold of the family, where she lives with her 5-year-old daughter. This situation doesn't prevent the two from seeing each other, even though this means going against their families' hard rules. In constant fear of revenge on the part of the male members of both families, they struggle to hold on to their love.

This film chronicles how figure skater Katarina Witt fought for her future in socialist East Germany, how she faced the changes after the fall of the Berlin Wall and how she ended up both a beneficiary and victim of the East German regime.

Nan Goldin's slide show “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” converted, mixed and screened as a film by the artist, portraying the American underground culture, the no wave scene, post-Stonewall gay subculture, among others.

New Opportunities were a portuguese education program with a focus on the academic certification of adults who left school early. Applicants will improve their academic degree from the re-elaboration and re-interpretation of his "life experience." These processes motivated workers to reflect on their working conditions, their training, their roots, producing a plurality of views about the school, emigration, the rural world and the universe of employment. Having its protagonists stories as a starting point, the film approches into a reflection about work in the contemporay world. This film was produced over four years work by the film director in a New Opportunities Centre.

Man flees from poor and war torn country.

Israeli director Natalie Assouline chronicles the lives of women, mostly young mothers, in prison for involvement in failed suicide attacks/terrorists attacks in Israel. Filmed over two years, this portrait strives to unearth the motivations behind their crimes. With the women's heads and feelings firmly covered, the film reveals no answers, just the heart-breaking tension between humanity and ideology.