This real-life documentary explores the passionate & energetic presence of renowned Italian violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg (she moved to the Unites States at the age of eight to study at The Curtis Institute of Music and later studied with Dorothy DeLay at The Julliard School.) The film focuses on her professional life, starting in 1981, when she burst onto the classical music scene as the youngest (at 17) recipient ever of the Walter W. Naumburg International Violin Competition.
A portrait of the Mbyá-Guarani people living in Misiones, a subtropical province in Northeast Argentina. The people demonstrate everyday life existing on a geographical as well as a cultural border.
RODEO ROAD explores the unique cowboy culture of Australia's remote north west in the pursuit of the rodeo dream - eight seconds of bull riding glory. Each year cowboys from across the Kimberley load up their saddles, chaps and wranglers and go rough-riding. Some are born and bred in the saddle, while others are young ringers from over east who come to muster through the dry season. Come rodeo time they are chasing the dream, gripped by the rodeo fever of the wild north west.
In Tunisia, the history of stambali goes back to the arrival of the first enslaved Africans from Mali, Timbuktu specifically. Practicing their music and worship in the house of their masters, the enslaved and their musical traditions survive to this day. Stambali is a religious ritual in Tunisia, a journey with the rhythm of the "gombri" and "chkackek," traces an individual and collective hypnosis, an annual tribute that the disciples of Sidi Saad pay to their master during an initiatory journey and rite of purification that lasts three days. In "Stambali," the camera, video and film follow the rhythm of the possession, dances, and goes into a trance, in the cemetery, in an open space of grass, trees, dust and sand, in the eroticism that is released by this physical and spiritual representation.
For over a thousand years, the Akha people have inhabited the hills of Asia — mainly Southern China, Burma and Northern Thailand. The Akha Way or Akhazaunh, is the code by which they live. This documentary describes their origins and their culture. It contains extraordinary footage of a shaman healing ceremony; a funeral, with the ritual sacrifice of a water buffalo; the reading of a pig's liver after a new house is built, and more. Today the Akha Way is fast disappearing. Forced migration, Christianity, money and drugs are eroding the cultural heritage of the Akha tribe.
The Hadhramaut region in the south east of Yemen is well known for its mud brick architecture. Throughout the centuries, the population has developed very sophisticated building techniques and created a unique architectural environment. Spectacular structures such as ten-story mud brick tower houses rise up from the valley's floor. In interviews throughout the documentary, the masons describe their working techniques and the challenges they face with the introduction of new, imported building materials. The Architecture of Mud documents the vernacular architecture, the building craft and the society they belong to.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, abstraction - that most quintessentially modernist innovation - maintains a peculiarly contradictory position. Used, on one hand, by post-modernist artists as just one more quotable style amongst many, it is on the other hand still considered an elitist or hermetic language by audiences intimidated by its lack of recognizable subject matter. Yet ultimately, abstraction continues to be a viable creative path for contemporary artists of all generations, many of whom embrace it as the most inclusive and fundamentally resonant of artistic languages. Filmed at the artists' studios, the Dia Center for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Museum during their exhibition, "Abstraction in the Twentieth Century."
Public vans provide the traditional and sole means of city transportation in Dakar, Senegal. In a frenzy of activity, from the outskirts to downtown, people from all walks of life as well as fruits, vegetables, chickens, etc. are transported daily in these public vans.
Twenty years ago, a hard-drinking, fiery British immigrant called Gordon Bennett, came to the remote Australian territory of Christmas Island to become General Secretary of the Union of Christmas Island Workers. By the time he died in 1991, he was known as 'Tai Ko Seng' which, roughly translated, means "big brother who delivers". Every year since his death, people gather on 30 July at the Island's Chinese cemetery, to pay tribute to Bennett as they would to their honoured ancestors. Big Brother of Christmas Island tells the moving story of how the legend of the "Tai Ko Seng" was born.
A video essay set in the Mexican-U.S. border town of Ciudad Juarez, where U.S. multinational corporations assemble electronic and digital equipment just across from El Paso, Texas. This imaginative, experimental work investigates the growing feminization of the global economy and its impact on Mexican women living and working in the area. Looking at the border as both a discursive and material space, the video explores the sexualization of the border region through labor division, prostitution, the expression of female desires in the entertainment industry, and sexual violence in the public sphere.
Like many Japanese Americans released from WWII internment camps, the young Omori sisters did their best to erase the memories and scars of life under confinement. Fifty years later acclaimed filmmaker Emiko Omori asks her older sister and other detainees to reflect on the personal and political consequences of internment. From the exuberant recollections of a typical teenager, to the simmering rage of citizens forced to sign loyalty oaths, Omori renders a poetic and illuminating picture of a deeply troubling chapter in American history.
A making of documentary for Happy Together. Includes interviews, on-set footage, cut scenes and footage of crew members revisiting the locations where Happy Together was filmed.
"Zapatista" is the definitive look at the uprising in Chiapas. It is the story of a Mayan peasant rebellion armed with sticks and their word against a first world military. It is the story of a global movement that has fought 175,000 federal troops to a stand still and transformed Mexican and international political culture forever.
A look at TV since the 1960's shows that Gays and Lesbians have come a long way but still have a long ways to go to a balanced and realistic depiction on television.
Most Australians know about the Mabo and Wik decisions, but few know much about the decision makers — The High Court of Australia. Having gained historic access, THE HIGHEST COURT shows first hand the characters and drama of the High Court of Australia, the pinnacle of legal and constitutional processes in Australia. The role of the Court is explored as the film follows the handing down of two historic constitutional judgements, Kruger and Ha, and the appointment of two new Justices — Hayne and Callinan. For the first time cases have been filmed as they actually happen in the Court culminating with the recent Hindmarsh Island Bridge challenge.
Swedish filmmaker Mikael Kristersson directs this austere yet beautiful experimental documentary about two European falcons. Shot over the course of two years, Kristersson manages to fashion a narrative without the use of voice-overs or music, showing the falcons as they forage for food and tend to their eggs. Much of this film, though, is spent viewing the world from the falcons' vantage point -- high up on a 13th century church steeple, watching the groundskeeper tending to the village cemetery and the choir boys growing tired of a long religious procession. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi
The Righteous Babes shows how the self-affirmative music of young women is renewing the 90's feminism. In the film, audience can experience feminism not in the library but in the rock concert hall. The film shows interviews and performances. In addition, controversial feminists along with American and British women journalists share their views on pop culture.