Documentary

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Jonas Mekas, the godfather of American “underground” cinema, shot literally miles of impromptu film on a tiny, touch-and-go Bolex camera before assembling his first “diary film” and screening it before an audience of friends and fellow indie artists in 1969. At that point the home-movie ethos was somewhat less than groundbreaking, but a glance at what Mekas’s contemporaries were working on or releasing at the time—Kenneth Anger was ensconced in off-and-on production for Lucifer Rising, Stan Brakhage was toiling on the 8mm Songs cycle, and Paul Morrissey had just morphed the Warhol aesthetic into the zeitgeist-preaching Flesh—suggests just how perpendicular his project stood in relation to the remainder of the bicoastal art-house scene. Read More »

Synopsis wrote:
In her first feature, after decades as a pioneer of lesbian cinema, Barbara Hammer weaves striking images of four contemporary gay and lesbian couples with footage of an unearthed, forbidden, and invisible history, searching eroded emulsions and images for lost vestiges of queer culture. Questions of historic representation are examined through addressing the margins, between-the-line readings, and images outside of prescribed textual boundaries. Archival footage from Lot In Sodom (1933), often regarded as the first queer film made in the United States, as well as footage from German narrative and documentary films of the thirties, are interwoven with contemporary footage in this multi-faceted, haunting documentary.Read More »

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“REVERSE ANGLE was my first diary film. It is about “new wave music” (among others Jim Jarmusch’s Del Byzanteens), about straying in New York, about the editing process of HAMMETT in the presence of Francis Ford Coppola, about a novel by Emanuel Bove and about Edward Hopper. And somehow, the whole thing was a reflection about filmmaking in Europe and America.” — Wim WendersRead More »

Synopsis:
Autumn 1990, a young Austrian goes to a party held by some of his friends and provokes a hideous bloodbath. As a reflection of daily reality and its crass representation of the horror of this extreme crime, Michael Haneke has composed an experimental collage of material gathered from one day of ORF (Austrian TV) broadcasting, using each part in proportion to the time allocated to it in the programme schedule.

Source: Archival Beta Tape (Austrian Broadcast Corporation)Read More »

In 2015, the Taliban put a price on the head of Hassan, a filmmaker, who was forced to flee Afghanistan with his wife and two young daughters. Using their camera phones, the fugitives show first-hand the many dangers refugees face when seeking asylum in a safe place.Read More »

A woman, released from prison, drifts between nightmare and reality.Read More »

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What does the violent heart of revolution feel like? A visceral documentary from Maidan square in the violent Ukrainian winter of 2013-14.Read More »

Marwa Arsanios’ Who is Afraid of Ideology? series (2017 – 2020) weaves together ecological activism, the struggles of women, and Indigenous land rights, from Northern Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan to the so-called ‘coffee belt’ of Colombia. Self-defence, autonomy, collectivity, eco-feminism, Indigenous struggle, and seed-protection define the common ground for these women in their resistance to the capitalist logic of extraction and exploitation of the land. The last film in this trilogy, Part III – Micro Resistances, takes place in Tolima, Colombia, and focuses on the ongoing systemic war waged by transnational corporations against one of the smallest and most essential elements of life: the seed. Against forced displacements, violence and murder, Indigenous women are preserving their native seeds, and an ancestral knowledge of cultivation and care.Read More »

Ava, an Iranian woman suffering from depression, blames recent political events in Iran for her troubled mental state and goes to a psychologist. The psychologist advises her to take on physical work, and later, to work on a play. However, the play, inspired by the reality and problems of her society, is banned. It is election time. The city is alive with possibilities. A new wave of hope has sent people massing into the streets to participate, to vote against the current president. Everywhere there is singing, dancing, action— a vibrant, passionate vision of a very different future for her country. But Ava still doesn’t believe change will come. She leaves her home and talks to people in the streets, trying desperately to rekindle her own hope.

The film is part documentary, part fiction.Read More »