Living Art

This short celebrates the 20th anniversary of MGM. Segments are shown from several early hits, then from a number of 1944 releases.

Promotion reel/souvenir of a 1939-40 meeting of the Paramount Studios sales people.

During World War II, the photographer Francisco Boix and other Spanish Republican prisoners of the Mauthausen concentration camp, where 120,000 people died, managed not only to survive their indescribable experience, but also, after the war, to reveal to the world what really happened in that hell, saving from destruction thousands of official photographs taken by the SS.

For one-night-only blood was spilled in the mud.

A tale about water fireflies, colorful cows, small wooden houses, wondrous river and some moody folk not aware of all these things.

In the cobalt mining areas of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), babies are being born with horrific birth defects. Scientists and doctors are finding increasing evidence of environmental pollution from industrial mining which, they believe, may be the cause of a range of malformations from cleft palate to some so serious the baby is stillborn. More than 60% of the world’s reserves of cobalt are in the DRC and this mineral is essential for the production of electric car batteries, which may be the key to reducing carbon emissions and to slowing climate change. In The Cost of Cobalt we meet the doctors treating the children affected and the scientists who are measuring the pollution. Cobalt may be part of the global solution to climate change, but is it right that Congo’s next generation pay the price with their health? Many are hoping that the more the world understands their plight, the more pressure will be put on the industry here to clean up its act.

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Quest for the Ring

On the surface, this collection of shorts by up-and-coming African American filmmakers arrived at a perfect time. The cutting-edge products of the New Black Cinema of the early '90s had disappeared, giving way to embarrassingly stereotypical, scatological fare such as Booty Call and Next Friday. This feature-packed compilation (which includes production notes, interviews with all of the filmmakers, and audio commentary by four) attempts to prove that African American cinema is intent on moving past the lowbrow humor, as six of the seven shorts steer clear of any comedy.

As more and more of us use and replace electronic devices, manufacturers have failed to offer solutions for how to deal with the resulting waste. Much of it is exported to a toxic dump in Ghana, where scavengers do their best to salvage what they can.

Zagadka Heweliusza

Throughout the Islamic world, each year hundreds of women are shot, stabbed, strangled or burned to death by male relatives because they are thought to have “dishonoured” their families. They may have lost their virginity, refused an arranged marriage or left an abusive husband. Even if a woman is raped or merely the victim of gossip, she must pay the price. Crimes of Honour documents the terrible reality of femicide – the belief that a girl’s body is the property of the family, and any suggestion of sexual impropriety must be cleansed with her blood. We meet women in hiding from their families, a brother who describes his reasons for killing the sister he loved, and a handful of women who have committed themselves to the protection of young women in danger of losing their lives.

In Nigeria, a young Canadian doctor serves in a local mission hospital and learns much from the experience. Stationed abroad under the Canadian University Service Overseas Plan, Dr. Alex McMahon and his schoolteacher wife find every day a fresh challenge. An interesting study of intercultural help.

In this animated short, a terrible curse deprives Balthasar's kingdom of its stories. Taking the unicorn's horn back into The Belly of the Earth is the solution. Poppety will lead an expedition, by chance uncovering a hitherto closely guarded family secret.

The story of a unique Georgian musician - Gia Iashvili, who makes music for the sake of creating and remains little-known in his own country.

A short film by Peter Greenaway. It depicts the painting The Wedding Feast at Cana by Paolo Veronese, through mixed media and shows different perspectives.

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