Documentary

Synopsis:
Thirteen dinners of a Chinese migrant worker’s family over the course of fourteen months. The film portrays a series of random occurrences. Joys, frustrations and the struggle for survival. The meals unfold in real-time through thirteen static, long takes. Each take captures with vivid detail the reality of the relationships between the different family members. As the seasons unfold, so does time and the echoes for better working conditions penetrate the frame. Issues such as the one-child policy and the possibilities for better wages weigh heavily on the minds of the three-generation family. Read More »

This classic 1968 documentary highlights the activities of the headquarters of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California as its members fight for the freedom of its imprisoned co-founder Huey P. Newton.Read More »

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Orson Welles’ free-form documentary about fakery focusses on the notorious art forger Elmyr de Hory and Elmyr’s biographer, Clifford Irving, who also wrote the celebrated fraudulent Howard Hughes autobiography, then touches on the reclusive Hughes and Welles’ own career (which started with a faked resume and a phony Martian invasion). On the way, Welles plays a few tricks of his own on the audience.Read More »

Orson Welles goes to Brazil to shoot his documentary It’s All True.
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A fictional account of Orson Welles’ real passage to Brazil where he was supposed to film a cultural film called “It’s All True”, to present a positive image of Brazilian people and the country’s grandiosity’s to the U.S. government, a project that was part of FDR’s Good Neighbor policy. But Welles got enchanted with everything around him and got distracted from the project, that never got fully made. This movie speculates what really happened to Welles that prevented him from fulfilling his work.Read More »

True story of the saga that was hoped to be the long-awaited justice brought to bear upon Augosto Pinochet, Chilean dictator from 1973 to 1990. In September 1998, Pinochet flew to London on a pleasure trip but experienced back pain and underwent an operation in the London Clinic. Upon waking, he was arrested by Scotland Yard. Could it be that this was to become the first Latin American dictator to answer for crimes while serving as Head of State? After 500 days of house arrest, he nevertheless eventually returned unscathed to Chile, despite the compelling case built against him before & during this period by a young Spanish prosecutor, Carlos Castresana.Read More »

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“The Song of the Rivers, or Das Lied der Ströme, is a 1954 documentary production by the East Germany’s Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA). Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens was the leading director. The sprawling film celebrates international workers movements along six major rivers: the Volga, Mississippi, Ganges, Nile, Amazon and the Yangtze. Shot in many countries by different film crews, and later edited by Ivens, Song of the Rivers begins with a lyrical montage of landscapes and laborers and proceeds to glorify labor and modern industrial machinery. The musical score is by Dmitri Shostakovich, with lyrics written by Berthold Brecht, and songs performed by German communism’s star Ernst Busch and famous American actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson who also narrates. Song of the Rivers is an ode to international solidarity.”Read More »

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“No es” (It isn’t) is a cumulative poem by Mariano Blatt, which is constantly written over the course of a lifetime. The text of the poem, a list of “what seems to be but isn’t”, to which verses are added over days, months, and years, can cover anything: images, people, memories, landscapes, phrases, ideas. With this list ringing in its head, Eduardo Williams’s film Parsi finds itself in a perpetual movement through spaces and around people. We are taken on a breathless ride through bustling neighborhoods, from person to person, thrown, dipped under water, rushed from image to image, creating in the process yet another poem which is caressed by, crashes into, and spins next to “No es”.Read More »

“Weapons of the Spirit,” Pierre Sauvage’s documentary about the extraordinary French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon during the Nazi rule in World War II, is like a murder mystery in reverse. It’s an examination of crimes that didn’t take place, of atrocities averted, and in such a way that history itself seems to have been subverted by their absence.Read More »

Claire Simon portrays an important time for any individual, from 16 to 18 years of age.

Set in the Paris suburbs in high school (for those lucky enough to go), teenagers chat after and even during class, sitting in the hallway or outside on a bench, looking at the city below them.

Claire Simon sets up a cinematic dialog with the teens, speaking about their personal history, their family, but also passions and loneliness.Read More »