Solemates

The sixth annual TNS Halloween Special

A short portrait of a mother-daughter relationship.

Der Narr seiner Liebe

Puppet adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale.

How did the willful daughter of a Himalayan forest conservator become Monsanto’s worst nightmare? The Seeds of Vandana Shiva tells the remarkable life story of Gandhian eco-activist Dr. Vandana Shiva, how she stood up to the corporate Goliaths of industrial agriculture, rose to prominence in the regenerative food movement, and inspired an international crusade for change.

Director Mirjam Leuze’s The Whale and The Raven illuminates the many issues that have drawn whale researchers, the Gitga’at First Nation, and the Government of British Columbia into a complex conflict. As the people in the Great Bear Rainforest struggle to protect their territory against the pressure and promise of the gas industry, caught in between are the countless beings that call this place home.

A ten year old girl is received by her aunt because of her mother's confinement to a mental hospital. But the aunt lives with a man, Jean-Pierre, who seems to be a little too nice with the girl.

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.

Years after the Salvadoran military destroyed the village of Cinquera in that country’s civil war, survivors have returned to rebuild their community. Soulful, beautifully rendered, this amazing debut is an evocative testament to place, memory and the power of life to rebound from tragedy.

Can a ruthless mass killer become a messenger of peace? This spellbinding documentary traces the rise and fall of General Butt Naked—feared warlord of Liberia’s 14-year civil war—and his self-proclaimed quest to heal his country and redeem his own soul as a newborn evangelist.

In a remote Malaysian fishing village, two boyhood friends reunite and take a night fishing trip to an uninhabited island. Through their journey and a series of flashbacks, the mysteries of their lives are slowly illuminated in a film hypnotic, tranquil, chimerical and steeped in the deep rhythms of the sea.

Five static shots of workers leaving a factory. Filmed in the spirit of the Lumiere Brothers.

The monotonous everyday life of an elderly couple is recorded almost silently in a time frame of three days. A woman and a man who have lived their whole lives together no longer have anything in common, apart from habit and the arguments that separate them.

Andrea, a childless single, humiliates herself on a date with ex‐crush Gregor, blacks out, and wakes in his bed. Determined to change, she meets ideal lawyer Chris. As she and friends imagine a future, Andrea discovers she’s pregnant - certain Chris is the father despite doubt about that night.

A young woman falls in love with a famous novelist and travels with him to his home in Southern Italy. There, her obsession with the memory of his dead wife begins to consume her.

From 1972 until 1974, Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan, along with a Chinese film crew, documented the last days of the Cultural Revolution, marking the end of an era. The vast amount of footage they shot was edited into 14 films of varying lengths. Focusing on ordinary people spread over a wide geographic area—many of whom were living and working in collectives—the filmmakers recorded a unique moment in history, and also captured some of the more enduring aspects of Chinese culture.

Rottenberg’s newest film, Cheese (2007), conflates farm-girl imagery with the fairy tale “Rapunzel” into a story loosely based on the Sutherland Sisters, renowned for their extremely long hair. Floating through a pastoral yet mazelike setting of raw wooden debris cobbled together into a benign shantytown, six longhaired women in flowing white nightgowns “milk” their locks and the goats they live with to generate cheese. Shots of animals crowded in pens and the sisters’ bunk bed– cluttered room visually compare the women to their ruminant allies. As nurturing caretakers, these women represent maternal aspects of Mother Nature. Here Rottenberg investigates feminine magic, the ability to “grow things out of the body” as she says, as the ultimate, wondrous physical mystery.

Harrowing at one moment and heartwarming the next, HOLD ME TIGHT, LET ME GO is set at England's Mulberry Bush School, founded by Barbara Dockar-Drysdale who developed unique methods for working with children suffering through severe emotional trauma.

Two 15-years-old teenagers meet in their village during the summer holidays. The boy takes the girl on a walk in the woods. She soon takes the lead.

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