Documentary

How do our perceptions of disease and health reflect on us as a society? Travelling throughout history and across cultures, Ira A. Goryainova’s fascinating essay offers a philosophical reflection on humankind’s view of illnesses. From the Ancient Greek theory of “black bile” to the victim-blaming language of medicine as demonstrated by Susan Sontag, Bile explores the notion of the human body as political metaphor. The Moscow-born director draws from intimate material, intertwining the story of her mother’s cancer and death in post-Soviet Russia with a vast range of medical archives. Her expert collage establishes intriguing connections between physical disorders and the social cancer of the 20th century: fascism.Read More »

First document about a tibetan meditation that preserves the body from days to weeks after traditionally considered death.Read More »

imdb:
Gonzalo is a farmer living with his family in a small village in Castile, in the north of Spain. The ancient and sage tradition of producing their food, from the slaughter of a pig to his own wine, has worked very well for him at this time of crisis in Spain. Sowing and harvest, like fiestas and customs, define the annual cycle, plagued with difficulties and problems but also filled with joy and gratification.Read More »

imdb wrote:
In the first nine years of his pontificate, Pope Francis made 37 trips visiting 53 countries, focusing on his most important issues: poverty, migration, the environment, solidarity and war. Intrigued by the fact that two of Francis’s trips – the first to the refugees landing in Lampedusa; the second in 2021 to the Middle East – so closely mirrored the itineraries of his films Fuocoammare (Fire At Sea, 2016) and Notturno (2020), Rosi follows the Pope’s Stations of the Cross. He sees what he sees, hears what he says and creates a dialogue between archival footage of Francis’ travels, images taken by Rosi himself, recent history and the state of the world today.Read More »

Quote:
Hsieh is an artist whose medium of expression is not words or sounds or paint, but his own life. His work consists of five “One Year Performances,” done between the years of 1978 and 1986, and “Earth,” a thirteen-year performance that stretched from the end of 1986 to the end of 1999. Each of these Performances involves a particular vow, a particular constraint, and a particular mode of being. Each of them is meticulously documented in a manner appropriate to its content. And, although Hsieh never explicitly states his rationales for his pieces, each of them implicitly raises profound, difficult questions about life and art and being, and about what it means to live in the world we live in.Read More »

In America, the Devil, omnipresent, goes across ages and centuries nourishing fears and superstitions. The blistering devil of the catholic religion as now been replaced by is double, as bitter as the high-technology, globalization and mass consummation.

In this documentary film, Gilles Carle takes a in dept look at the stories and legends about the devil in the past and actual populations of the North America from a variety of angles and try to understand the importance of the devil in our collective imagination.Read More »

Quote:
Ultimately stunning in its revelations, Lutz Dammbeck’s THE NET explores the incredibly complex backstory of Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber. This exquisitely crafted inquiry into the rationale of this mythic figure situates him within a late 20th Century web of technology – a system that he grew to oppose. A marvelously subversive approach to the history of the Internet, this insightful documentary combines speculative travelogue and investigative journalism to trace contrasting countercultural responses to the cybernetic revolution.Read More »

Footage from My Own Private Idaho (1991) is re-contextualized in James Franco’s tribute to River Phoenix.Read More »

Quote:
Averroès and Rosa Parks: two units of the Esquirol Hospital, which – like the Adamant – are part of the Paris Central Psychiatric Group. From individual interviews to «carer-patient» meetings, the filmmaker focuses on showing a form of psychiatry that continually strives to make room for and rehabilitate the patients’ words. Little by little, each one eases open the door to their world. Within an increasingly worn-out health system, how can the forsaken be given a place among others.Read More »