Produced by the Palestinian Cinema Institute and the General Union of Palestinian Women
On August 12, 1976, during the civil war in Lebanon, the Tal al-Zaatar refugee camp was attacked by Phalangists.
2,000 people are massacred. A house welcomes orphans. The camera accompanies them in their everyday life, in their suffering, in the precariousness of the refugee camps in neighboring countries and in Palestine under Israeli occupation.Read More »
Award-winning director Jana Bokova presents a typically idiosyncratic portrait of Europe’s most fashionable city. An equally eccentric and fascinating collection of characters offer a personal view of Barcelona, where a new cosmopolitan awareness sits alongside the proud Catalan sense of place and history. Tony Miro is one of Barcelona’s top fashion designers, Tito makes gigantic sculptures out of human hair, and Carmen de Roca Sastre is a wonderfully imposing 80-year-old Catalan who lives in Gaudi’s magnificent La Pedrera. They are joined by performance artist, Albert Vidal; futuristic designer, Louis Fortes; and transvestites Emmy and Liberty. As they tell us about their lives, they reveal the more bizarre side of the city that has become Spain’s gateway to Europe.Read More »
By rethinking and redefining the term ‘movement’ through psychological, physical or political understandings, Squish. is a meditation on the self through lurid and liquid forms, filtered through both old and foreseeable technology informed by Thai animation history and contemporary culture, and a constant process of constructing and deforming new selves to simulate ‘movements’.—Locarno Film FestivalRead More »
Twenty five years after the death of Rock Hudson, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, biographers and movie historians discuss his career, his personal life and his death, all especially in relation to his closeted homosexuality. Born Roy Fitzgerald, Hudson treated who was known as “Rock Hudson” as being a studio creation that was somewhat outside himself. However, he sometimes was still “Rock Hudson: movie star” to those who knew him. Publicly, he had to maintain the façade of that creation, the public who saw in him a handsome, rugged, masculine yet likable and safe leading man and movie star. That façade included a short two-year marriage of convenience to Phyllis Gates. His movie career on the most part also supported that façade, especially when there was a foil of a more effeminate or nebbish male character playing against him. Read More »
In the Japanese town of Ushimado, the shortage of labor is a serious problem due to its population’s rapid decline. Traditionally, oyster shucking has been a job for local men and women, but for a few years now, some of the factories have had to use foreigners in order to keep functioning. Hirano oyster factory has never employed any outsiders but finally decides to bring in two workers from China. Will all the employees get along?Read More »
A documentary about the animated film The Thief and the Cobbler (1993). Its production began in the 1960s and ended in the 1990s, but it wasn’t finished by the director, Richard Williams.
Using mostly recent interviews with some of the younger colleagues of Williams, videos of William’s studio, bits of animation and historic footage of Williams himself director Schreck makes a compelling heartfelt tribute to one of the greatest ‘what if’s ” in animation history.Read More »
During a five year period an Italian filmmaker documents the world of down-on-their-luck individuals who live in a Californian desert trying to get by one day at a time. None of them has more than a vehicle, a dog and some clothes.Read More »
Synopsis
Ivanna, a 26-year-young Nenets mother of five children, is living in the Arctic region in the northwest Siberia. She lives a traditional nomadic life, driving her herd of reindeer at the tundra like her family did for centuries. But due to the environmental side effects of the climate change most of her reindeers are dying and she know that she will soon be ruined and forced to make a dramatic decision. Her husband, Gena, has already left the family. He moved to the city, hoping to find a job as an oilworker in the Russian oil fields but didn’t succeed and spend his time drinking and fighting. Ivanna is willing to give her marriage a last chance. She will give up her traditional life, leave the tundra, move to the city and get a job at Gazprom. But time has changed, Gena became violent and alcoholic and Ivanna realizes that the civilized city life is not what she expected. But there are no way back, Ivanna will have to take life in her own hands and secure a future for her and her five children. The film follows Ivanna and her family closely for four years through her dramatic lifechanges, from the harsh life at the tundra to the modern life in the Siberian city of Norilsk.Read More »
Synopsis
Hoiami Nguyen never imagined that he will end up so far from his home village of Bong Son in central Vietnam. Political circumstances and the roulette of life have washed him to the shores of Israel. The penniless Vietnamese refugee became a father of 5 Hebrew speaking Israeli daughters. His daughter – Vaan, describes her parents’ ordeal using a razor sharp language in her blog. She feels trapped in circles of identity which will never meet. Caught between her wild and stormy Israeli spirit and the expectations to be modest and obedient Vietnamese at home, there is unbridgeable abyss. When her father returns to his family in Vietnam, Van finds herself absorbed into his tragic story – a cruel tale of loss and survival. Hoimai’s dream of return sends Vaan to look for a brighter future in the new-old country. She joins him in trying to reclaim the lands of the family, in the remote village at the heart of the Vietnamese jungle..Read More »