2000s

In The White Darkness anthropologist and cult film-maker Richard Stanley documents the practice and the oppression of voudou in present-day Haiti. In the tradition of his descendent Henry Morton Stanley, explorer and journalist who found Livingstone, but with the advantage of the hand-held camera, he presents an unflinching look at the often shocking practices of voudou. Richard Stanley sees his journey to Haiti – the first colonised country to declare independence – as a ‘closing of the loop’ of imperialist practices within his own family history. In the course of this journey, modern Haiti reveals itself as critically divided between opposing religious beliefs and forces. What becomes apparent is the centrality of voudou to Haitian culture, history, and politics and its ongoing importance in fighting against everyday American military oppression.Read More »

It was a common habit in Soviet schools to draw the intimate organs on all portraits in textbooks.Read More »

Synopsis:
In the countryside of Thailand, a gang of outlaws makes the region unsafe. Among them is the handsome gun hero Dum, who became unwillingly involved in the bandit life. Handsome Dum made a promise to his upper-crust lover Rumpoey: despite the class difference, they will get married. When the moment of reunion arrives, Dum gets involved in a fire fight and cannot possibly reach Rumpoey in time. She is desperate: her father has married her off to a policeman. The taciturn Dum, called the ‘Black Tiger’ by his co-conspirators, has however not forgotten Rumpoey. Read More »

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This movie reflects on the situation around the border between Poland and Germany. The fate of many single characters creates a picture of life in this region: Some Ukrainians want to cross the border illegal to get into Germany, a company wants to build a new factory, a Polish taxi driver desperately needs money to buy his daughter a communion dress, and so on.Read More »

Crowned best film in Venice’s Horizons section, Lav Diaz’s latest madly uncommercial 7½-hour magnum opus, “Melancholia,” sets a trio of survivors wandering the country in a dirge to those lost to disaster. To reconcile themselves to the deaths of their leftist comrades and loved ones, two women and a man undertake a succession of role-changes as a radical form of grief therapy. But the alienation implied by their incarnations of a prostitute, pimp and nun, assumed at the pic’s opening, reads as anything but therapeutic.Read More »

this is a docu about Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, a french comic actor & politician, and the “witch hunt” that has been surrounding him ever since he portrayed an israeli settler as a terrorist on live french TV a few years ago.

in addition to a Dieudonné biography & a study of the line between being anti-sionist & being anti-semitic, this docu mostly raises the question of freedom of speech in the contemporary french democracy.Read More »

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This documentary follows several species of migratory birds over a four year filming period. These birds travel several hundreds if not thousands of miles toward the equator in the autumn, and make the return journey to their higher latitude summer homes in the spring, always taking the same route, using the natural compasses of the universe, the stars, to find their way. Some species, like the arctic tern, even fly from pole to pole. These long and often torturous treks are a matter of survival, to live in a hospitable climate and find sources of food. With the exception of migratory penguins, travel over oceans is especially difficult as the birds have little refuge unless there is something floating on the water, such as a ship, on which to land. Read More »

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A chef discovers that the old saw “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” works for women as well in this romantic comedy from Germany. Gregor (Josef Ostendorf) is a gourmet chef who runs a small but highly regarded restaurant in Berlin. Gregor believes that food can awaken the erotic impulses and he revels in the sensual pleasures of his cooking; however, he hasn’t had much luck in finding someone to share the joy of cooking with him. One night, Gregor meets Eden (Charlotte Roche), a woman who works as a waitress at a nearby resort hotel, and he’s immediately smitten. However, Gregor soon discovers that Eden is married to Xaver (Devid Striesow), an older man who teaches dancercise to the elderly, and they have a young daughter with Down’s syndrome.Read More »

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In this moral fable from Poland, Konstanty (Bohdan Stupka) is a wealthy and amoral man who has made his fortune running a chain of supermarkets and has both the bank account and the lack of conscience to do anything he wants. One of Konstanty’s many employees is Stefan (Marek Kudelko), a kind and generous young man who runs a cash register at one of his markets. Stefan loses his job when a manager discovers he’s been undercharging groceries for senior citizens who can’t afford them; adding insult to injury, a few hours later Stefan loses both his girlfriend (Marta Zmuda-Trzebiatowska) and his flat. Falling into a deep depression, Stefan tries to kill himself, and is taken to the emergency room around the same time Konstanty is admitted to the hospital following a sudden heart attack.Read More »