Documentary

The documentary rebuilds the life of the brazilian architect João Batista Vilanova Artigas. His relatives, friends, students and six of his major works tell the history of this iconic latinamerican modernist.Read More »

In a Balinese village, families go to great trouble and expense for their extravagant cremation ceremony. They provide special foods to mourners and prepare a bounty of offerings for the deceased, from gifts of money to symbolic baskets. The atmosphere is almost festive as a shadow puppet show is performed for the entertainment of the deceased, inheritances are distributed, and musical processions of mourners walk the streets. Dead family members seem almost present as their bones are uncovered, washed, and arranged for cremation with accompanying prayer rites. During the cremation, the village is filled with smoke from enormous burning pyres shaped like bulls, as the souls of the dead are cleansed of impurity and then sent out to sea so that they may continue their journey to heaven. Shot in 16mm, the film documents and explains the intricacies of these funeral rites and Balinese-Hindu beliefs about death.Read More »

Synopsis:
THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975 mobilizes a treasure trove of 16mm material shot by Swedish filmmakers, after languishing in a basement of a TV station for 30 years, into an irresistible mosaic of images, music, and narration chronicling the evolution one of our nation’s most indelible turning points, the Black Power movement. Featuring candid interviews with the movement’s most explosive revolutionary minds, including Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Stokely Carmichael, and Kathleen Cleaver, the film explores the community, people and radical ideas of the movement. Music by Questlove and Om’Mas Keith, and commentary from and modern voices including Erykah Badu, Harry Belafonte, Talib Kweli, and Melvin Van Peebles give the historical footage a fresh sound and make THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-75 an exhilarating, unprecedented account of an American revolution.Read More »

This is a two-part video portrait of the outstanding Russian writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, author of famous novels about the Russian revolution and the acclaimed study of the Soviet concentration camps, “The Gulag Archipelago”. Solzhenitsyn is of more interest to the filmmaker for his attitudes, thoughts and present life, than for his legendary past. Rather than interviewing some important person, Sokurov creates a monumental image before our eyes.Read More »

Vietnamese-born Trinh T. Minh-ha’s profoundly personal documentary explores the role of Vietnamese women historically and in contemporary society. Using dance, printed texts, folk poetry and the words and experiences of Vietnamese women in Vietnam—from both North and South—and the United States, Trinh’s film challenges official culture with the voices of women. A theoretically and formally complex work, Surname Viet Given Name Nam explores the difficulty of translation, and themes of dislocation and exile, critiquing both traditional society and life since the war.Read More »

Xu Xin’s film “Dao Lu” (China 2012) offers an exclusive “in camera” encounter with Zheng Yan, an 83 year-old veteran of the Chinese Red Army, who calmly relates how he has navigated his country’s turbulent history over three-quarters of a century.Born to a wealthy family in a foreign concession, Yan joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1941 because he sincerely believed in the socialist project, and in its immediate capacity to free China from the Japanese yoke and eradicate deep-rooted corruption.Read More »

Quote:
A sensitive portrait of Sabine Bonnaire, the autistic sister of the french actress Sandrine Bonnaire.Read More »

The censured novel Conversazione in Sicilia, by Elio Vittorini, published in four episodes in 1918/1939, is the basis for this account of a man returning to Sicily for a visit to his mother. This is a journey of initiation, “a voyage in fourth dimension through his infancy”, he says. Not only to re-live words, people, places, sounds, sensation, and odor of his seven years, but mainly to understand himself. He re-encounters his mother whom he has not seen for 15 years, ever since she left for the North of Italy. Through her, he attempts to glean answers to questions and facts that still trouble his memories, such as the image of his dead father. In this return, he also comes face to face with reality, corruption, and treachery, that differ from his memories as a child with a mother, lost between abstract fury and an awareness of his incapacity to comprehend the human condition.Read More »

In We No Longer Prefer Mountains, Halabi reflects upon the particular political and social condition of the Druze community living in occupied Palestine, taking individual and personal stories as a point of departure. It begins with an ascent of Mount Carmel upon which the Druze towns of Dalyet el Carmel and Isfiya are located, drawing the viewer into a world of geographic isolation and a locale shaped by coercion and control. Living mostly in mountainous areas in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine/Israel, as well as in diaspora globally, the Druze maintain close-knit social and religious ties as a minority within and across national borders.Read More »