Documentary

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 »

Quote:
“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 »

Quote:
“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 »

IMDB:
The Pickup Game is an inside look at the emergence of the ‘pickup’ industry – an business where self-styled seduction coaches travel the world, charging a small fortune to teach men skills they claim will guarantee success with women. For the instructors who are successful, it is a highly lucrative occupation, with many companies earning millions of dollars a year. It is also an industry rife with controversy and scandal. Several teachers have been deported from countries for their contentious methodologies and pickup businesses are often the subject of fierce public criticism. Read More »

“Mimi isn’t a star, she’s just someone. I wanted to make a film about her life. That is, about the life of… someone. I wanted to follow as closely as possible the singularity of a real life in order to encounter its own particular romance, fantasy. Things that I’d discover when filming. In Nice, her hometown, or in the mountains, drifting between familiar and unfamiliar places where I filmed her, I waited for this story as yet unknown to me to come back to Mimi and for her to recount the scenes that make up her personal novel.”
Claire SimonRead More »

The portrait of three teenage boys being held in a youth corrections centre in Teheran, It’s Always Late for Freedom depicts the distress of a generation sacrificed on the altar of Iran’s profound social problems. Hardcore drugs, poverty, violence… these young men, hardly more than boys, seem more like victims than perpetrators. Entirely immersed in the everyday life of the prison, filmmaker Mehrdad Oskouei (The Other Side of Burka) won the young men’s trust, and they hold nothing back of their hurts, frustrations, hopes and confusion. The camera records their childish schemes, conversations with family, and the routine of prison life with intimate close-ups of faces and bodies that reveal their secret pain. A gripping story of childhood laid bare.Read More »

Birds’ Island? A small veterinary centre specialized in ornithology. Social services have assigned Antonin this job with the aim of re-inserting him into the work-force after illness and isolation, leaving him both unskilled and lacking motivation. He’ll be taking over for Paul, who will soon be leaving for retirement after years of raising mice to be fed to the centre’s predatory birds. Sandrine and Emily are both veterinarians; they take care of birds, in particular one traumatized owl who has to learn how to live again.Read More »