From the banks of the Bahamas to the seas of Argentina, we go underwater to meet dolphins. Two scientists who study dolphin communication and behaviour lead us on encounters in the wild. Featuring the music of Sting. Nominated for an Academy Award®, Best Documentary, Short Subject, 2000.
A powerful and emotional documentary about Korean women forced into sexual servitude by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II, Silence Broken dramatically combines the testimony of former comfort women who demand justice for the "crimes against humanity" committed against them, along with contravening interviews of Japanese soldiers, recruiters and contemporary scholars who deny the existence of comfort women or claim that these victims "did this for money." In the film, these women demand an official apology, admission of moral as well as legal guilt, and compenstion from the Japanese government. They want human dignity and justice restored to them. The individual testimonies in Silence Broken, combined with unusual archival footage and dramatized images, shatter the half-century of silence and create a collective story filled with soulful sorrow and amazing resilience of the human spirit.
Nightingale, Not the Only Voice follows the lives of three artists, including the film’s director, on their shared journey through real and psychological oppression to self-discovery. Tang Danhong examines her past—particularly her relationship with her parents—and looks at the painful, formative moments that inform her current psychological state, her life, and her art.
Documentary about a Jewish senior citizens' acting group on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The film covers both the progress and impediments of a play the group is mounting about senior citizens looking for love and the life/love stories (past, present, and predictions) of the players.
This documentary provides a detailed look at the works of the German artist, now best known for his collages and junk sculpture. Schwitters began painting as an expressionist, but in 1919 he turned to collage, incorporating into his works trash such as train tickets and newspapers, which he exploited for their colour, texture, and surprise value. Includes many of Schwitters' most famous creations filmed during an exhibition of his works at the George Pompidou Museum.
Werner Herzog returns to the South American jungle with Juliane Koepcke, the German woman who was the sole survivor of a plane crash there in 1971. They find the remains of the plane and recreate her journey out of the jungle.
A look at the infamous "Scottsboro Boys" case that occurred in Alabama in 1931, in which nine young black men were arrested, tried and quickly convicted in the rape of two white women, despite overwhelming evidence that showed their accusers had falsely accused them and the fact that one of the women later admitted that no rape had in fact occurred (although both had had sexual relations with their boyfriends on the day prior to the "rape"). The case was one of the first that shined a spotlight on what many called the "legal lynchings" that occurred in the South whenever blacks were accused of crimes, especially against whites and most especially against white women.
During the Nazi regime, there was widespread persecution of homosexual men, which started in 1871 with the Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code. Thousands were murdered in concentration camps. This powerful and disturbing documentary, narrated by Rupert Everett, presents for the first time the largely untold testimonies of some of those who survived.
The unflinching chronicle of one family’s triumphant journey out of povery and despair. Touchingly narrated by Nickcole Collins, a teenage girl wise beyond her years, the film follows the Collins family over five years as they slowly pull themselves out of a haze of poverty, drug addiction, and violence that plagues their public housing project in Chicago.
SISSY takes you behind the scenes to give a rare insight into a subculture that has created its own space within the gay culture, and it explores the bond that sets the black 'sisterhood' apart from white gays. SISSY is an expression of gay black identity: 'We are glamorous, we are here and we are queer.'
The stories in The Habits of New Norcia are told by former Western Australian Aboriginal child 'inmates' of the New Norcia Benedictine Mission who were separated from their families in the 1940s, 50s and 60s and confined in this "orphanage without orphans". In recent decades the New Norcia Monastery has been packaged as one of the State's leading cultural tourist attractions. "A unique blend of Spanish architecture, European art treasures and pioneer history," "Monks, Music & Mystery," "New Norcia, Australia's only monastic town," the brochures announce. Aboriginal testimony in the film challenges this revised and sanitised history. The documentary provides damming evidence of the continuing violence of the Mission against its victims by deliberate omission of their experience in the New Norcia museum, guided tours, art gallery and promotions — an omission that represents a cruel and wounding cover-up.
Sounds of Love and Sorrow lets the eerie sounds of the Paiwan flutes including the nose flute, which legend says imitates the call of the deadly hundred-pace snake, mix in with the recollections of tribal elders and traditional tales to present a rich background of Paiwan life in Taiwan. Tribal elders recall the days of the youth and their romances. They tell of the creation of the Paiwan people, and lament the end of tribal life, crushed by the irresistible and contradictory forces of government policies and alien cultural influences. Talking of love, both the charm and cruelty of a traditional society are revealed. For many of the Paiwan, love may be a high point of a young life – but it is also the gateway to sorrow. But in the end, it is the high spirits, the playful romances and the family spirit of the Paiwan which shine through.
A group of longtime Chicago residents born in the Mississippi Delta returns to Greenville, Mississippi, for a reunion with family and friends. Participants talk about their lives and reasons for migrating north as part of "The Great Migration." Archival footage of Mississippi and Chicago is included.
The film documents the last performance of the ritual for the fertility goddess Amb Kor, in the Western Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. Shot over a period of approximately 15 years, the anthropologists and filmmakers have been participant-observers during a time of pivotal change for the clans of the Kavelka tribal group.
Yield to Total Elation explores the life and work of the enigmatic and visionary artist Achilles G. Rizzoli. A mundane architectural draftsman by day, the architectural transcriber of the divine by night, Rizzoli created elaborate Beaux-Arts influenced monuments which would never be built. Accompanied by his witty and poignant commentary, the drawings served as translations for the voices and the hallucinations that haunted him. By deftly weaving Rizzoli's words, archival footage, photos and evocative present day scenes of San Francisco's historic architecture, the film tells the story of Rizzoli's life and his work -- an exaltation of architecture as pleasure, as memorial, as redemption.
‘Camera Obscura’ is an experimental documentary which draws sounds and images from the Dartington Estate in Devon and constructs an idiosyncratic portrait. Verbal and textual definitions attempt to pin down what it is and play against elusive images. Archive material and re-invented historical events evoke the ethos of the past and combine with stories and contemporary details to illuminate the spirit of the place.
Hollywood movies are rapidly becoming vehicles for the ulterior marketing and advertising motives of studios and their owners, rather than entertainment in their own right. Behind the Screens explores this trend toward "hypercommercialism" through phenomena such as product placement, tie-ins, merchandising and cross-promotions. It combines multiple examples taken directly from the movies with incisive interviews provided by film scholars, cultural critics, political economists, and an Oscar-nominated screenwriter. Behind the Screens presents an accessible argument designed for school and college-age audiences-- precisely the demographic most prized by both Hollywood studios and advertisers alike. It features examples drawn from movies such as Wayne's World, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Summer of Sam, and Toy Story.