• Alan Lowery & John Pilger – Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq (2000)

    1991-2000Alan LoweryDocumentaryJohn PilgerUnited Kingdom

    From johnpilger.com:
    “Almost 10 years of extraordinary isolation imposed by the UN and enforced by America and Britain have killed more people than the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan.”

    Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq is a powerful indictment of the largely unreported effects of United Nations sanctions following the 1991 Gulf War – most strikingly, the 500,000 children among more than one million Iraqis who died in almost 10 years of sanctions, figures verified by UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund) and other UN agencies.Read More »

  • Yumi Yoshiyuki – Mibôjin apâto: Kyonyû no uzuku yoru (2007)

    2001-2010EroticaJapanJapanese Female DirectorsYumi Yoshiyuki

    Misaki’s husband Ken’ichi dies in a car accident soon after their marriage. He had managed the Sunrise Villa apartments, which his parents have managed after his death. A psychic claims to have received word from Ken’ichi’s spirit that he wants the apartments to be kept running responsibly.Read More »

  • Naomi Kawase – Tarachime (2006)

    2001-2010DocumentaryJapanJapanese Female DirectorsNaomi KawaseShort Film

    Quote:
    n April 24, 2004, Kawase Naomi had a son, Mitsuki. Following Japanese tradition, she gave birth on a tatami mat, assisted by a midwife and surrounded by all her family. As soon as the umbilical cord was cut, she tools up her camera and films every day her child and her ninety-year-old grandmother. With this highly emotionally affecting «docu-diary» the filmmaker continues to reflect on the world around her, her origins and the future. Although she initially wanted to describe only the life she carried within her for nine months, Kawase Naomi eventually extended the scope of her film to include Mitsuki’s interaction with those around him. By deliberately breaking with any notion of linear temporarily, she creates, with gentleness but also with harshness and violence, a pendulum like movement between moments, past and present feelings. Read More »

  • Rea Tajiri – Strawberry Fields (1997)

    Drama1991-2000Rea TajiriUSA

    Amid the political turbulence and heady counterculture of early 1970s, Vietnam-era America, Irene (Suzy Nakamura), a rebellious sixteen-year-old Japanese American girl, leaves home and takes off on a road trip, heading west with her boyfriend and a pair of political activists. Her journey takes her on an unexpected detour of self-discovery, however, when she decides to visit the internment camp where her parents were incarcerated decades earlier. Drawing on her own family’s history, director Rea Tajiri fashions a profoundly cathartic look at the ways in which the traumas of America’s past echo into the present.Read More »

  • Gilles Carle – La vie heureuse de Léopold Z AKA The Merry World of Leopold Z (1965)

    1961-1970CanadaComedyGilles Carle

    Quote:
    One 24 December, Léopold Tremblay, 32 years old, a snow removal worker, is busy with the snowstorm falling on Montreal. But he must also think of buying gifts for his wife and son, picking up his cousin returning from the South at the train station, and moving furniture for his friend Théo. At 11 p.m., the snow lets up and Léopold can finally go to midnight mass at St. Joseph’s Oratory, where his son sings in the choir.Read More »

  • Andrzej Munk – Kierunek – Nowa Huta! AKA Destination Nowa Huta (1951)

    1951-1960Andrzej MunkDocumentaryPolandShort Film

    A film about the construction, begun in 1948 where a village near Krakow used to be, of the city of Nowa Huta and the metallurgical plant there. A propaganda picture about the flagship construction project of People’s Poland.Read More »

  • Paulus Manker – Der Kopf des Mohren AKA The Moor’s Head (1995)

    1991-2000ArthouseAustriaDramaPaulus Manker

    Quote:
    A family man slowly becomes dangerously obsessive and paranoid in this grim Austrian drama that contains a graphically violent ending. As the story begins, George, an engineer who works at a science facility, has a normal happy life with his wife and kids. They are in the process of building a new house when George learns that a nearby chemical plant has been leaking dangerous gas into the air. This causes George to begin suffering from terrifying hallucinations. His paranoia increases every time he hears another report of violence, crime, war, or any other social problems on the news. After learning that his company may be overtaken by a larger corporation, George decides to send his family on an Italian vacation while he stays home and turns their apartment into a strange refuge from the terrible world he knows is coming.Read More »

  • Jodie Mack – The Grand Bizarre (2018)

    USA2011-2020ExperimentalJodie Mack

    A postcard from an imploded society. Bringing mundane objects to life to interpret place through materials, the film transcribes an experience of pattern, labor and alien(nation)(s). A pattern parade in pop music pairs figure and landscape to trip through the topologies of codification. Following components, systems, and samples in a collage of textiles, tourism, language, and music, the film investigates recurring motifs and how their metamorphoses function within a global economy.Read More »

  • Aleksey German Jr. – Delo AKA House Arrest (2021)

    2021-2030Aleksey German Jr.DramaRussia

    Quote:
    David, a university professor, takes to social media to criticize his city’s administration. But instead of the mayor’s dodgy dealings being investigated, David is himself accused of embezzlement and placed under house arrest. Despite the overbearing surveillance, double-crossing acquaintances, and growing media interest, David remains defiant and will not apologise. With the court case drawing ever nearer, does David have any hope of winning this battle against Goliath?Read More »

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