One IMDb user wrote:
Showing nice photo’s or film of brilliant scenery’s and landscape is one thing. Turning it into the identity of an entire nation is another. In my opinion David Comer pulled it off! The combination of (maori) music, film, wildlife, treelife and seasons turns this into an eye-watering experience for everyone who goes into watching it. Especially when one does not know what to expect.Read More »
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Khaled, a Syrian transgender migrant who was born male, dreams of undergoing gender transition surgery. While trying to make a living from various menial jobs, she falls in love with a Palestinian freedom fighter and joins his resistance. Gently, compassionately, Cinema Fouad draws a portrait of Khaled and introduces the viewer to one of Beirut’s rarely seen netherworlds.Read More »
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In 1971, the small African nation of Uganda was taken over by self-styled dictator General Idi Amin Dada, beginning an eight-year reign of terror that would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. In this chilling yet darkly comic documentary, director Barbet Schroeder turns his cameras on the infamous tyrant, revealing the dynamic, charming, and appallingly dangerous man whose fanatical neuroses held an entire nation in their grip. Made with the full support and participation of the infamous dictator, General Idi Amin Dada provides a candid and disturbing portrait of one of the 20th century’s most notorious figures.Read More »
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This documentary focuses on drag queens living in New York City and their “house” culture, which provides a sense of community and support for the flamboyant and often socially shunned performers. Groups from each house compete in elaborate balls that take cues from the world of fashion. Also touching on issues of racism and poverty, the film features interviews with a number of renowned drag queens, including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija and Dorian Corey.Read More »
As the protests at Sanrizuka transformed, Ogawa began looking for other subjects. He eventually moved to Yamagata, but considered other subjects like this one: the brutal Kotobukicho district of Yokohama. Only 250 meters on a side, it was home to 6,000 people living in 90 run-down flophouses. This was where day laborers live and die on the streets. Following the method they developed in Sanrizuka, Ogawa’s crew lived with the workers, tenderly filming the trials of their daily lives. It is a touching and heartrending film.Read More »
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Considered by Whitehead to be his most important film, The Fall is an extraordinary piece of filmmaking, an extremely personal statement on violence, revolution and the turbulence within late sixties America. Filmed entirely in and around New York between October 1967 and June 1968, it features Robert Kennedy, The Bread and Puppet Theater, Paul Auster (fresh-faced as a Columbia student), Tom Hayden, Mark Rudd, Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Arthur Miller, Robert Lowell, Robert Rauschenberg and The Deconstructivists. Richard Roud, co-director of the New York Film Festival wrote of the film, “…an attempt to come to grips with today, both in terms of its content as well as of its form.”Read More »
In this silent predecessor to the modern documentary, film-maker Robert J. Flaherty spends one year following the lives of Nanook and his family, Inuit living in the Arctic Circle. (IMDb)Read More »
“Shot in 1974 with a Sony Porta-Pak, the crazily careering Stranded in Canton documents a cast of hard-drinking Southerners with the intimacy, ease and instability of a seasoned participants. Whiffs of Southern Gothic are not new to Mr. Eggleston’s work, but here they rise to the surface–fierce, tragic and proud.”
–The New York Times
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Documentary filmmaker Tatsuya Mori continues the story of the notorious Aum Shinrikyo cult in this provocative follow-up to his critically acclaimed A. With Aum leader Shoko Asahara on trial for his role in the 1995 poison gas attack in the Tokyo subways, his followers struggle to maintain their beliefs and doctrines. Despite a name change and a shake up in leadership, the cult suffers from verbal and physical assaults by media, police, and ordinary Japanese citizens. Broader in scope than A, this sequel continues to chronicle the inner workings of this elusive cult while revealing the dark side of contemporary Japan.Read More »