2000s

Synopsis
Hoiami Nguyen never imagined that he will end up so far from his home village of Bong Son in central Vietnam. Political circumstances and the roulette of life have washed him to the shores of Israel. The penniless Vietnamese refugee became a father of 5 Hebrew speaking Israeli daughters. His daughter – Vaan, describes her parents’ ordeal using a razor sharp language in her blog. She feels trapped in circles of identity which will never meet. Caught between her wild and stormy Israeli spirit and the expectations to be modest and obedient Vietnamese at home, there is unbridgeable abyss. When her father returns to his family in Vietnam, Van finds herself absorbed into his tragic story – a cruel tale of loss and survival. Hoimai’s dream of return sends Vaan to look for a brighter future in the new-old country. She joins him in trying to reclaim the lands of the family, in the remote village at the heart of the Vietnamese jungle..Read More »

A barber working in Istanbul longs to be ‘both here and far, far away’. And one day, without warning, he takes himself off and disappears abruptly into the great far away. The barber settles in a far-flung village, and as chance would have it the one-time local barber, Jingle Nuri, vanished from the place years ago. The village is in the hands of the mukhtar, the elected local chief. So the new barber rents his shop and opens the doors for business. The village is not, however, the innocent village. The mukhtar finds himself dealing with one mysterious disappearance after another. Güvercin, the prettiest girl in the village, is now missing without trace. The mukhtar and his only armed man, the village guard, set about questioning everyone in the village. Read More »

Director Robert Gardner and legendary filmmaker Stan Brakhage share an in-depth viewing of Gardner’s ethnographic masterwork, Forest of Bliss. The film is shown in its entirety, with Gardner occasionally pausing to elucidate, and Brakhage brilliantly observing tonality, poetic imagery, life, death, the unconscious, and, well, just being damned insightful.Read More »

In this labor-of-love documentary, director-writer-producer Mark Moskowitz tackles a project he had been wanting to pursue since he was 18 years old. In 1972 he read a New York Times book review of THE STONES OF SUMMER by Dow Mossman, a title which would later became an object of obsession for Moskowitz. Though he shelved the book for 25 years, Moskowitz finally did read it and was amazed at its ingenuity. He was shocked that its onetime author never penned another book. Determined to solve this mystery, Moskowitz made THE STONE READER, documenting his research project in finding the forgotten author and getting to the bottom of the publishing mystery of how so many great works of literature, and great authors, just disappear.Read More »

Henry May and Henry Long are old friends from college who have not seen each other in quite a while. They meet one day in the street by happy accident – or so it seems. They re-kindle their friendship and we discover that each needs the other, but for different reasons. Together they take a journey away from family and pressures in New York. In the harbor town of New Bedford, the truth comes out and changes each man irrevocably.Read More »

A romance between a soldier and a country boy, wrapped around a Thai folk-tale involving a shaman with shape-shifting abilities.Read More »

A 2008 French language short film directed by Annie Balkarash. The film screened at Bilbao International Festival of Documentary and Short Films in 2022.Read More »

Quote:
We all know what sex looks like. Many movies have tried to capture the magic, but most can only bring home the tricks. This movie allows you to participate where others leave you the unsatisfied peeping tom. It dares to share the slowness. In a unique twist, this film is edited in nearly real-time. As real-life couple Wim and Floor spend an afternoon in the sunwashed rooms of an old house in Belgium, the camera simply follows. In the slowness, we get the build, the sweetness, and the sexiness. Forget about fingersnapping fast editing. Slow is where it’s at. This film was conceived as a feminist collaboration between erotic film director Jennifer Lyon Bell and artist/DJ/author/lingerie-designer Murielle Scherre, aka La Fille D’O. They created it for the feminist Stout(st)e Dromen Festival in Antwerp, Belgium.Read More »

A story of jealous love and betrayal that end up decimating a small group of outcaste lepers who have been banished from participation in Yakut community life.Read More »