Until recently, there was a village called Alekseyevka in the Khachmaz region of Azerbaijan. Alekseyevka was an international homeland for everyone who lived there. After the collapse of the USSR, local residents began to move to other regions of the world for various personal reasons. The film's heroines Larisa and Nina meet in Alekseyevka (now Chaykenary) and try to feel the warmth of the past again.
Cinematic poem that intertwines elements of metafilm, found footage, documentary, and fiction. The title references William Wordsworth’s poem “The Prelude”, where ‘spots of time’ are described as events of profound significance for personal growth. These illuminating moments, recalled in tranquility and as though relived, become renewing sources of creative energy and imagination. For the creators of this feature, such a moment came with the discovery of old films and photo negatives on the shores of the Sea of Azov. Over the span of 20 years, they return time and again to the place where their discovery was made, revealing a strange world that spans a mile of shoreline and 90 minutes of screen time.
The film explores the history of the giant quarry "Mir", the fates of people living on its edge, and its possible future. People seemed to have become participants in a great experiment, creating their own unique world in isolation from the rest of the world, proving that man can adapt to the most incredible living conditions.
A pastoral tale set on the slopes of the Black Sea, it bears witness to the cyclical nature and tells the story of Cengiz, who lives year-round in the heart of nature. The film begins with the birth of a goat, and ends with the same goat giving birth to her own offspring.
A companion piece to her stunning NYC RGB (TIFF ’23), with Rojo Žalia Blau, Austrian artist Viktoria Schmid employs the principles of three-strip Technicolor to recast natural landscapes in Spain, Lithuania, and Austria in a dazzling play of colour and shadow.
Three visitors gather in a multi-story house, unfamiliar and absent of its owner. Each carries a different path, dream, and wound, gradually revealed through songs and quiet conversations. Over the course of a single day, laughter and silence intertwine, and their connection deepens. After they part ways, the house remains—now holding a different kind of resonance than before.
At the Masters of Musical Whistling competition, where virtuoso whistlers compete for global supremacy and bragging rights, we follow an array of quirky personalities and dazzling talents in a film sure to be a crowd-pleaser.
An ambient short film of seaside cinematography accompanied by Stars of the Lid's 'Broken Harbors pt.2' and 'Broken Harbors pt.3'
It is shot in black and white, but switches to color near the end.
93-year-old documentarian Chris Hesse—personal cinematographer to forgotten African icon Kwame Nkrumah—races against blindness and time to rescue and repatriate a secret trove of over 1,300 films that captured the birth of African independence in the fifties and sixties. Yet unseen by the public, these films may not only rewrite Ghanaian and African history—but world history itself.
Powerful music leaps from the air and can change the actual world. At the Newport Folk Festivals in the early 1960s, the molecules were electric with rebellion and democracy, with anger and hope. Musicians drove that change — Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Pete Seeger but also banjo players from coal country, remote Georgia gospel artists, rural Canadian fishermen, and the opportunities created for the urban kids to mingle with those they’d not ordinarily encounter.
Featuring commentary from surviving participants, as well as other filmmakers and critics, this documentary chronicles the career of director John Boorman and the tumultuous production of his film Exorcist II: The Heretic, exploring its critical and commercial failure, how it changed the industry, and the importance of risk-taking in art.
Tsai Ming-liang's new film, Back Home, depicts Anong Houngheuangsy and the daily life of his home village in Laos. We witness buildings in varying states of habitation and disrepair, farm animals, rice fields, religious sites, domestic scenes, a sun-dappled food market, and a dog adorably trying (and failing) to escape a carnival ride.
Against the voracious concrete and a ruthless developer, a poet stands tall, the last bulwark against oblivion, like a Gaul defying Caesar. He gathers voices from the past, revives memories, and weaves an ode to Ville Jacques-Cartier's working-class heritage, a haven where hopes and struggles once echoed.
A documentary about the chinampas of Xochimilco, Mexico, where tradition and modernity clash and coexist. Through three contrasting voices, it explores the struggle to preserve tradition in the face of change, as well as the search for new ways to adapt.
When Susan Rennie retired from academia, she returned to her first love – photography. With humor and wit, Rennie’s photographic interventions offer a feminist critique of the conventional canon of art history, and an unabashed embrace of her elder, queer identity. The results are juicy, eye-opening, and often hilarious.
As the solar eclipse of 2024 races towards Houlton, Maine - a township of approximately 6,000 people - they must find a way to host 40,000 stargazing strangers the only way they know how: with open arms and open hearts.