2001-2010

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Documentary about the art of film editing. Clips are shown from many groundbreaking films with innovative editing styles.Read More »

Synopsis:
Antonio Bolivar (Richard Dreyfuss) lives a reclusive life in a hut on the outskirts of El Idilio, a far-from-ideal European outpost deep in the Amazon jungle. His main pleasure in life is reading love stories. The jungle holds memories of an earlier time that he would rather forget. Antonio is drawn back into the jungle when the mayor (Timothy Spall) decides to hunt down a grief-stricken jaguar that has tasted human blood and seems determined to kill the remaining population.Read More »

Twenty-five years after the end of the Trojan War, Odysseus still has not returned home. So his son, Telemachus, sets off on a journey in search of his lost father. So begins Homer’s revered epic poem, The Odyssey, the primary narrative reference point for THE NINE MUSES, John Akomfrah’s remarkable meditation about chance, fate and redemption.Read More »

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What is the nature of childhood resilience? Sisters Jin and Bin, ages 6 and 3, live with their mother. Jin likes school and does well. One day, their mother leaves the girls with their father’s sister, a woman they do not know. The mother seeks a reconciliation with their father. She leaves them a plastic piggy bank, promising to return when the bank is full. The girls scrub and clean for their aunt, a tippler who’s often cranky and complaining. She gives them a few coins for their work. They earn more money catching, grilling, and selling grasshoppers. They miss their mother. The bank fills. They watch for her from a mound of dirt. Will she return? Will stoic faces give way to a smile?Read More »

Tuareg nomads have lived in the Sahara Desert for centuries, connecting North Africa and West Africa with their Camel Caravans. They are fiercely independent and have become famous for their rebellions, fighting to protect their freedom and culture. Omara Moctar, known as ‘Bambino’ is a young musician who has become a cult hero in Niger and represents a new generation of Tuareg. He is becoming known as one of the great guitar players of West Africa. After several years of exile, he has returned to his home town, Agadez, a remote center of Tuareg culture at the edge of the Sahara. With the Sultan’s blessing, he recently had a concert outside the Grande Mosque to celebrate their culture and their transition to the modern world.Read More »

Quote:In the Serbian drama “White White World: The Miner’s Opera” (“Beli Beli Svet”), the characters sing, but never dance. Formulated as a modern day Greek tragedy set in the decrepit southeastern mining town Bor, the movie follows a close group of alienated locals through misguided love affairs and other brash misdeeds. But the songs feature no choreography or other stylish methods of breaking the harsh, downtrodden tableaux. It’s a surprisingly effective strategy. With his sophomore effort, director Oleg Novkovic uses musical expression to frame inner monologues that would never work in spoken form. As a result, a story exclusively populated by damaged people engaged in morally ambiguous, often depraved behavior manages to evoke sympathy for all of them.Read More »

In 2000, the final year of the twentieth century, Nikolaus Geyrhalter and his crew set out with a video camera to film twelve, self-contained ethnographic episodes, each encapsulating a month-long document of the lives of people who perform their quotidian rituals in a figurative Elsewhere, as follow:Read More »

Synopsis:
Through raw images of cruel and unusual news items, gathered from journalists and amateur video directors, director Huang Weikai and his film Disorder take us into the chaos of a Chinese society scarred by an overwhelming urbanization. The film is made like a mosaic of singular stories restoring absurd and hopeless situations, in an urban environment where the weakest seem to be out of place.Read More »

Synopsis
The languid account of a disaster happening in slow motion. The film charts the bleak daily life of a village in Calabria, which once had a population of some fifteen thousand but is now down to a mere handful. An impassive old man and a retarded girl seem to be simply waiting for time to eat away their lives. They are only occasionally and fleetingly roused from their deep apathy by strange objects and sordid encounters. Read More »