In the late sixties, Spanish cinema began to produce a huge amount of horror genre films: international markets were opened, the production was continuous, a small star-system was created, as well as a solid group of specialized directors. Although foreign trends were imitated, Spanish horror offered a particular approach to sex, blood and violence. It was an extremely unusual artistic movement in Franco's Spain.
Guillermo Gómez Álvarez explores the identity politics of Puerto Rico via archival footage from various sources that clash with nine original songs from local independent musicians and a thematic analysis from a psychoanalyst and a historian. From the juxtaposition the absurd becomes coherent and the coherent becomes absurd as Puerto Rican identity is defined and rejected almost simultaneously.
Montezuma is a 2009 BBC Television documentary film in which Dan Snow examines the reign of the Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II.
Although the mountain volcano Mauna Kea last erupted around 4,000 years ago, it is still hot today, the center of a burning controversy over whether its summit should be used for astronomical observatories or preserved as a cultural landscape sacred to the Hawaiian people. For five years the documentary production team Nā Maka o ka 'Āina ("the eyes of the land") captured on video the seasonal moods of Mauna Kea's unique 14,000-foot summit, the richly varied ecosystems that extend from sea level to alpine zone, the legends and stories that reveal the mountain's geologic and cultural history, and the political turbulence surrounding the efforts to protect the most significant temple in the islands: the mountain itself.
Working from archives of private film footage from a trip to India by the upper class of the late 1920s, a period of strong anti-colonial outbreak, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi deconstruct the images and analyze the attitude and behavior of Westerners in the East.
There is an interlinking history of violent European colonialism and the cultural legacy of ethnographic collections in institutions. This documentary traces the progression of colonial history from the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 to the systematic elimination of cultural traditions, religions and lifeways which would occur sporadically through genocides and warfare until the early 20th century throughout the African continent—surveying the inquiries and movements for historical justice, the relationships between European institutions and colonial violence and following enduring struggles against these organisations to regain what was taken.
A pseudo-documentary, “Samarang” tells the story of lowly Ahmang (Captain A.V. Cockle) and his socially superior love, Sai-Yu (Theresa Seth). Both live in the village of Samarang in the Indian Ocean. Because Sai-Yu is the daughter of a chief and Ahmang is but a poor fisherman, he needs to increase his wealth before asking for her hand. Thus he accepts the perilous offer of the wily Chang-Fu, who seeks pearl divers. Ahmang must brave the treacherous waters of the Forbidden Lagoon of Sakai, home to bloodthirsty cannibals, killer sharks, and a monstrous grasping octopus. Sai-Yu and Ahmang’s younger brother Ko-Hai come along for kicks, too. Ahmang finds his pearl, but he and Sai-Yu are stranded on the island, where they befriend a local orangutan. When they return to the boat, a shark kills Ko-Hai, and Ahmang must get revenge.
«My grandma had a great strength and love for life which made me believe that some of us were able to become immortals and escape death. When she passed at the age of 92, her death was a surprise to me, which I was not prepared for. The cinema has the immense power of creating the illusion of life and its protection. This film is my attempt to rescue my grandma from death. It is not a documentary about my grandma but a film with my grandma. I wanted to film a ghost and then return it to the realm of the living, like Orfeu tried with Eurídice. It is a route to resurrection. It is my way of giving her immortality which I deem to be her right.»
When the junior ice hockey team from the small town of Náchod, in the Czech Republic, sets off in a bus to Morocco to play the away game in an exchange programme, the players and their coach expect an easy victory and a cultural shock: “bring ear plugs”, the coach suggests them with a touch of undisguised condescendence, so as not to hear the call to prayer early in the morning. Both on and off the ice, Rozálie Kohoutová and Tomáš Bojar’s camera focuses on a few teenagers and their exchanges, simultaneously funny and cruel, in a clumsy English.
The question of "who hunts virgins" and more will be stripped down and explored in the sexiest trailers hosted by Playboy's Nikki Leigh.
Documentary that shows the changing attitude towards immigrant labor in The Netherlands. The documentary follows three immigrants that arrived in Holland 30 years ago to work in a bakery.
A desktop documentary that focuses on the Golden Record that NASA sent into space in the late 1970s. The piece reflects on issues such as the power of scientific discourse to produce revisions of the world, the evolution of the concept of the archive and the resignification of borders in the rhetoric of space colonialism.
Twenty-third sovereign of the Alawite dynasty established in Morocco since the seventeenth century, Mohammed VI took over from his father Hassan II in 1999, and from the moment of his coronation, he positioned himself as a "king of the poor", close to the people. Naturally shy, he prefers to act rather than speak, defining a modern style of governance that has earned him great popularity from the start. Married to a young computer engineer, he asserted a policy of liberalization of morals and even made a critical review of the period of repression led by his father during the years of lead. However, he faces opposition from conservatives, which leads to the election of the Islamist PJD (Party of Justice and Development) as head of government, following the Arab Spring of 2011.
Since its adoption in June 1955 by the Congress movement, the Freedom Charter has been the key political document that acted as a beacon and source of inspiration in the liberation struggle against Apartheid. It was reputedly the main source that informed democratic South Africa’s liberal constitution and a constant reference point for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and rival political parties that it spawned since 1994, all claiming the Freedom Charter’s legacy. Freedom Isn’t Free assesses the history and role of the charter, especially in relation to key political and socio-economic aspects of developments in South Africa up to the present period. It includes rare archival footage with interviews of a cross-section of outspoken influential South Africans.
Fadma, 75, tells her life story including being recruited as a sex worker for the French army aged 20, and her views on love, parenthood, and destiny.
In 1896, Ethiopia, an African nation, largely armed with spears and knives, defeats a well-equipped and organized Italian military bent on colonization.
At 14 Rabha El Haimer was an illiterate child bride, beaten, raped and then rejected. Ten years later, she is a single mother, fighting to legalise her sham marriage and secure a future for her illegitimate daughter. With unprecedented access to the Moroccan justice system, “Bastards” follows Rabha’s fight from the Casablanca slums to the high courts.
In the Bernese Alps, the Agassizhorn peak memorialises Louis Agassiz – a controversial 19th-century scientist, who not only named the mountain after himself, but who claimed he had discovered the Ice Age and went on to become one of the century's most virulent, most influential racists.
A humorous observation in Barcelona’s immigrant neighbourhood El Raval. Four barber shops, four places of remembrance, strange time and space capsules inhabited by people who left their home to find a better one, while the Spaniards are about to leave their own country themselves.
Palestro, Algérie : Histoires d'une embuscade