Zen & the Art of Dying

Living among the percebeiros of the Coast of Death (Galicia), this documentary shows a unique relationship between man and his surroundings, man and the sea. At the end of Europe, years after the Prestige oil spill disaster, these fishermen face an uncertain future.

As the muse of Hal Hartley’s indie classics and as writer/director of the critically acclaimed Waitress, Adrienne Shelly was a shining star in the indie film firmament. A devoted young mother, her life was right on track until her husband found her dead. Filmmaker Andy Ostroy has been fighting to discover the truth about his wife’s death ever since.

Christopher Kerr is a hospice doctor. All of his patients die. Yet he has cared for thousands of patients who, in the face of death, speak of love and grace. Beyond the physical realities of dying are unseen processes that are remarkably life-affirming. These include dreams that are unlike any regular dream. Described as "more real than real," these end-of-life experiences resurrect past relationships, meaningful events and themes of love and forgiveness; they restore life's meaning and mark the transition from distress to comfort and acceptance.

The Sufi and the Scientist is the collective story of Sufi healer Sayyid Arif Hussain, the medieval Sufi Sheikh Haji Ali, and Dr. Thornton Streeter, a scientist working in the realm of human consciousness.

The final episode in our Mini-Docs series comes from musician and writer Jake Anderson, who explores the niche music genres which find an increasing audience in the North East. On a mission to discover outside-the-mainstream sounds and the driving forces behind their creation, Jake chats with musicians Me Lost Me, SQUARMS and Mariam Rezaei, along with some of the major players keeping these sonically-engaging sound makers doing what they’re doing, including Simeon Soden from Kaneda Records and Lee Etherington of TUSK. This mini-documentary features reflections on some of the most unique acts in the North East, what genre boundaries actually mean and artists’ hopes for the future of the North East’s alternative scene. This is an Art Mouse film for NARC. TV, written and directed by Jake Anderson.

Following the death of her brother, filmmaker Robie Flores returns to her hometown Eagle Pass on the Texas/Mexico border, wanting to turn back time. She collides with unruly experiences of adolescence – quinceañeras, Rio Grande river excursions, teen makeovers and beyond – that invite her to soak up the details of the home her brother adored and she ignored. What emerges is a playful dance between a personal and collective coming-of-age portrait of kids on the border and Robie herself as she rediscovers the possibilities of joy in the aftermath of grief.

In 2007, Gillian Wearing placed an advert – in newspapers, online, in job centers, and elsewhere. It read: “Would you like to be in a film? You can play yourself or a fictional character. Call Gillian.” Of the hundreds of people who replied, seven – chosen through an extended process of auditions, interviews, and workshops – ended up appearing in Self Made. Of those seven, five in particular use the acting technique known as Method to delve into their memories, impulses, anxieties, fears, fantasies, and inner resources to create a series of individual performance vignettes, their personal ‘end scenes’, that reveal with particular intensity and clarity who they really are deep down – or who, in another version of their lives, they might easily have been.

Examining one of the most baffling unexplained deaths of recent years. In August 2010, Gareth Williams, a GCHQ employee on a 3-year secondment to MI6, was found dead inside a padlocked duffle bag in the bath of his London flat.

"Time is Art" is ultimately the story of an artist's search for inspiration in a money-driven society that shuns creativity, and of the human search for meaning in a seemingly meaningless world.

New forms of manipulation and the inundation of stimuli from new media pose a great risk to children’s mental health. Finally, society has started to respond. A secular culture of consciousness is arising: meditation and new forms of resilience and mindfulness training have formed part of the curriculum in many of Europe’s schools. Can systematic inner development genuinely enable young people to take responsibility – for their own lives, for society and for the world? Can openness, compassion and an ethical attitude in children be increased by mental training?

Veterans of the Vietnam War tell about their experiences. The disasters but also the glorious moments of war. The central figure in the documentary is the scenario writer of Full Metal Jacket, Michael Herr. The veterans describe how it felt to kill for the first time and how those feelings still haunt them.

When Jennifer Laude, a Filipina trans woman, is brutally murdered by a U.S. Marine, three women intimately invested in the case--an activist attorney, a transgender journalist and Jennifer's mother)--galvanize a political uprising, pursuing justice and taking on hardened histories of US imperialism.

An elegy about ‘José Ð Almeida’s life and work. Along an intimate metamorphosis, this dreamlike and visually expressive world created by the visionary and insane dreamer is recreated and performed between a symbiosis of moving image, photography and painting- in a scenic, dramatic, symbolic and mystical tone.

A teen with autism unlocks a joyous world of self-expression as she shares her voice for the first time using a letter board.

Sandra Bland was a bright, energetic activist whose life was cut short when a traffic stop resulted in a mysterious jail cell death just three days later.

Documentary about British artist Andrew Logan as he attempts to put on the 2009 edition of his Alternative Miss World. The film also presents a history of the contest (which has run eccentrically since 1972) which was set up firstly as an excuse to have a good party, but has grown into a celebration of alternative lifestyles and sexualities. The documentary mixes archive footage, animated inserts, with talking head interviews and a fly-on-the-wall look at the organisation of the 2009 event

A group of artists settle in a swamp on the banks of the Indre River. Meanwhile, a voice describes a utopian world.

In New Jersey, the Good Grief community focuses on a holistic way of dealing with grief, where children can give in to rage in ‘the volcano room,' and say goodbye to a dying teddy bear patient in ‘the hospital room.' Over the course of a year, we follow the weekly meetings and get close to Kimmy, Nicky, Peter, Nora, Nolan, and Mikayla and their close companion: grief. It is sometimes heartbreaking, but also humorous, to experience the questions about life and death through their open and curious minds. Grief is high and heavy as a mountain, but it helps you understand what has happened, and that death is irreversible.

Like a visual elegy, My Memory Is Full of Ghosts explores a reality caught between past, present and future in Homs, Syria. Behind the self-portrait of an exsanguinated population in search of normality emerge memories of the city, haunted by destruction, disfigurement and loss. A deeply moving film, a painful echo of the absurdity of war and the strength of human beings.

After an out-of-body experience, a physicist turns to science for an explanation. What emerges is a new theory of nonlocal consciousness, rooted in Bohm’s quantum mechanics, explaining how the mind could access information psychically and survive death. A paradigm-shifting film not seen since the phenomenal success of “The Secret” and “What the Bleep Do We Know.” Featuring a female PoC cast of experts in physics, neuroscience, Chinese medicine and psychotherapy. In an age of AI, this film reveals how human intelligence is exceptionally different.