Three farming families in Hanyuan, China, strive to give their children a good life in the midst of an ecological crisis, as widespread use of pesticides leads to a dramatic decline in bees and other pollinating insects in the valley.
MAXIMÓN - Devil or Saint is a documentary about the controversial Maya deity, also known as San Simon or the drinking and smoking saint of Guatemala. He is a mixture of ancient Maya beliefs and Christianity. The movie concentrates on the people who surround Maximón with their strong personalities, opinions and faith. The documentary gives us a rare view into the rituals and fiestas honoring Maximón. The cult of Maximón is flourishing because he performs miracles. He is also feared and despised because he is used to cast curses that can result in death. Ultimately, Maximón transcends the duality of good and evil, reflecting the Maya cosmovision in which everything in the universe co-exists.
Rio Branco
Through key testimonies, this documentary looks at a gang rape that took place during the 2016 San Fermín festival and sparked protests worldwide.
Cao Fei recorded her experiences within the online social platform Second Life. The result is a wistful, surreal vision of an alternative reality sprung from the pop culture fantasies and hyper-consumerism of contemporary urban China, while also trying to transcend its real-life limitations. It can be seen as an answer to the challenge posed by River Elegy: how to envision a new Chinese destiny founded on principles of individuality, creativity, discovery, and freedom. The film also reflects the contemporary condition of the virtual supplanting our experience of the real.
A family embarks on an annual tormenting journey along with 130 million other peasant workers to reunite with their distant family, and to revive their love and dignity as China soars as the world's next super power.
During a reconnaissance trip, Olivier Balma, a guide and instructor at CMDI, accompanies Erwan Le Lann into the Getu Valley, in the heart of Guizhou Province. They discover a practically untouched site with a unique giant arch filled with limestone tufas. The project takes shape with the agreement of the government and the Chinese Mountaineering Association. It takes a group of climbers two trips to put up 250 new routes of all levels. During the Petzl RocTrip, hundreds of Chinese and visiting climbers get together to climb these routes. The highlight of the event is when the Spaniard Dani Andrada sends his project, Corazon de Ensueno. In front of a big crowd, he frees the extremely difficult eight pitches, all tied in with his partner, Chris Sharma. Since then, the Getu Valley has become a prime climbing destination, thanks to the magnificent routes and to the warm and authentic hospitality of the valley's inhabitants.
Rachel Whiteread’s cast of a Victorian terraced house in London’s East End was hailed as one of the greatest public sculptures by an English artist in the twentieth century. Completed in autumn of 1993 and demolished in January 1994, House attracted tens of thousands of visitors and generated impassioned debate, in the local streets, the national press and in the House of Commons.
This is the true account of one of the most surprising and remarkable love stories in the history of New York. It begins in 1993, when a young man from Belgium looking to change his life has an unexpected encounter in Central Park. He meets a hawk. Not just any hawk, but a wild Redtail, a fierce predator that has not lived in the City for almost a hundred years. Compelled to follow this extraordinary creature, he buys a video camera and sets out to track the hawk.
A poetic, experimental portrait of four Hong Kong women in London working to digitise records of the handover agreement between the United Kingdom and China. Impressionistic and precise, personal and expansive, Cheung's elegant, eloquent work decodes history and how politics are enacted.
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.
Banksy is a household name, but behind this name hides a multitude of stories, artworks, stunts, political statements and identities, leading to one of the art world's biggest unanswered questions- who is Banksy?
A brief history of the emergence and artistic innovations of tango in 19th-century Argentina and Europe. The film offers a mosaic of tango melodies, art works, dance performances, historical footage, photographs of Buenos Aires at the turn of the 20th century, and texts by Celedonio Flores and Enrique Santos Discépolo.
Belmondo, l'Italie en héritage
More than two decades after the shooting at Columbine, an entire generation has grown up under the threat of gun violence. This film examines the epidemic of school shootings and their lasting impact through the eyes of survivors.
Paris : l'incroyable chantier de Haussmann
While The Rolling Stones rehearse "Sympathy for the Devil" in the studio, an alternating narrative reflects on 1968 society, politics and culture through five different vignettes.
In 1977, a book of photographs captured an awakening - women shedding the cultural restrictions of their childhoods and embracing their full humanity. This documentary revisits those photos, those women and those times and takes aim at our culture today that alarmingly shows the need for continued change.
L'île de la Cité, le cœur de Paris
Thousands of tourists come to Barcelona from far and wide to admire the work of the great architect, Antoni Gaudí. What they don't know is that many of the photographs they take home with them are of works by Josep Mª Jujol, a forgotten architect and the other great genius of Catalan Modernisme.