Inside Cyber City Oedo 808

There are great expectations upon south african BMX rider Anita and the pressure grows with popularity in the local media. As she’s entering her teenage years, her priorities start to shift and cause frictions with her team. She struggles to see herself as a future champion and act like one.

Ruth ties the laces of her white sneakers, combs her hair in front of the changing room mirror and tries on different bows. This Swedish teenager has just been selected to compete for Twisters, her cheerleading team, and today is her first day with her new teammates. Ruth is passionate about her sport and she socializes easily, so she quickly feels at home among the other athletic girls – munching on their apples as they chat about annoying muscle aches. In this youth documentary, we follow Ruth with her team and at home. Even when surrounded by her family Ruth finds time to focus on her beloved sport – in between squabbling with her brother Johan and joking around with her more levelheaded parents.

For 10 years, Nawruz has lived in BLISS, a former government housing project that has now become a shelter for local migrants, city workers, and university students. Originally from the southern Philippines, he has decided to stay in Manila not only for work opportunities but also for the comfort and freedom of urban living. But staying in Manila isn’t easy— and it isn’t cheap either. He accepts freelance design and animation work, sells beauty products, joins a community lending scheme, and thinks of renting a whole flat in BLISS and lease its rooms to others to earn and save money. One day, his mother calls and asks him to come home. She is worried about his financial troubles and offers to help.Reluctantly, he agrees and uses this opportunity to connect again with his family, especially with his mother whose values have always been old-fashioned.

Are bad girls casualties of patriarchy, a necessary evil, or visionary pioneers? By tracing the concept of the bad girl in Japan as a product of specific cultural assumptions and historical settings, Bad Girls of Japan maps new roads and old detours in revealing a disorderly politics of gender. The essays explore deviancy in richly diverse media. Mountain witches, murderers, performance artists, cartoonists, schoolgirls, and shoppers gone wild are all part of the terrain.

Between four walls of her apartment, a girl enjoys in intimate idleness and being her true self.

The River of the Kukamas

Japan’s obsession with cutesy culture has taken a dark turn, with schoolgirls now offering themselves for “walking dates” with adult men. Last year the US State Department, in its annual report on human trafficking, flagged so-called joshi-kosei osanpo dates (Japanese for “high school walking”) as fronts for commercial sex run by sophisticated criminal networks.

How does it feel like to become an occupier without your own intentions? With known but also never published archival materials from the whole Europe and Russia we tell a family story of the director Anna Kryvenko about how the big politics is destroying the lives of ordinary people. Just couple of years ago the director found a family secret of her grand-uncle who came to occupy Czechoslovakia in 1968 as a Soviet soldier. When searching for grand-uncle's story the author touches themes like fragmentation of personal and national memory, inherited guilt, interpretation of history, media manipulation, relationship towards nowadays Russia, but also relationship of Czechs and Slovaks towards foreigners - themes very actual in our times.

Juxtaposing two distinct modes of storytelling, one restrained and reverent, another energetic and dissimulated, seeking to recapitulate the plans of conspiracy and coup plotted by the former governor of Guanabara Carlos Lacerda in the backstage of the official history of Brazil using not only the archival images , but the sound of narration and incidental sound effects to characterize the change of focus and tension, as well as establishing the identities of the characters involved, namely Getúlio Vargas, Jânio Quadros, João Goulart, JK, foreign forces, Brazilian military, etc. In honoring the famous passage of the false newsreel in Glauber Rocha's "Terra in Transe" (1967), we will present the trajectory of Carlos Lacerda who, like the dictator Porfirio Diaz, from the fictional city of Eldorado, began his public life in communism but, within a few years, he became a notorious coup and conservative leader.

Ezra Pound, an acclaimed modern American poet living in Rapallo, was tried for treason because of his radio broadcasts extolling Mussolini. This is Pasolini's interview with him.

Propaganda anime produced by the notorius Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo.

Debut film.

An Israeli woman living in Amsterdam investigates why fans of the Ajax soccer team have appropriated the nickname "Superjews" – complete with Star of David hats, Israeli flags and songs like "Hava Nagila." We meet hooligans, an Ajax archivist, former Ajax president Uri Coronel and a Holocaust survivor. Who is the "real" Jew: the non-religious Israeli woman with an aversion to her own country's flag, or the "Jews" who flock to the stadium and dedicate their lives to the team? Superjews is about identity, the use of symbols, and what it means to be or feel Jewish. Filmmaker Nirit Peled takes on the role of narrator and guide in the land of Ajax, against the backdrop of her present-day life in Amsterdam and her past in Israel, a country she is very critical of. Though she is initially turned off by the "Superjew" phenomenon, her viewpoint becomes more nuanced as she learns more about it, and she manages to gain perspective on how she personally relates to the cult of Jews.

Y no llevaste luto por mí: El Cordobés

Experimental survey of down-and-outs in the city. - BFI

Spring 2012 the Swedish band La Fleur Fatale embarked on a journey to and through California. During two weeks they played with legendary psych musicians and met people who was part of making the 60's into what it later became both musically and spiritually, connecting the past with the present both musically and politically. What is the difference between then and now? Is the Anonymous movement now what 60's anti war movement was back then? The band themselves only knew about the shows they are supposed to play on the trip through California, they are lead on the journey by their manager that call in the next destination. In The Second Wave we find people and bands like La Fleur Fatale of course, Ebbot Lundberg (TSOOL), Strawberry Alarm Clock, James Lowe(Electric Prunes), Duncan Faure(Bay City Rollers, Rabbit), Patrick Campbell-Lyons (Original Nirvana) and more. The people behind this documentary have been working pro bono, by love to the band and the project itself.

Comets have fascinated, even terrified us for thousands of years. For scientists though, comets are a great opportunity. This year, 2013, a particularly massive chunk of ice and rock is coming our way, an object that will fascinate billions and should create the space show of the century. Right now Comet ISON, somewhere between one and 10 kilometers in diameter, is just beyond the orbit of Jupiter. As it races past us toward the sun it should develop a tail that will light up the skies brighter than a full moon. Then the comet will slingshot around the back of the sun and could emerge brighter than ever, treating the entire northern hemisphere to an unforgettable sight. In this program, scientists all over the world follow a once-in-a-lifetime event and shoot breathtaking images, spewing its essence into the void. But there is jeopardy too; the comet could evaporate completely or the sun's massive gravity could tear it apart.

The film presents the life and work of the writer Sukumar Ray, Satyajit Ray's father. Ray made this film as a tribute to celebrate the centenary of his birth.

A promotional short for John Boorman's "Point Blank" shot on and around Alcatraz. Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson and former inmate Joe Giles share their thoughts on the former prison.

A touching, funny and intense insight into the workings of a modern day renaissance project. Featuring rare interviews with Chris Corner, producer Jim Abiss, the live band members, and Sneaker Pimps co-founder Liam Howe, plus special footage of live performances and backstage madness.