Helga Reidemeisters poetic documentary gives various residents of East and West Berlin a chance to have their say. They discuss their different ways of life and the nature of their divided city. All interviews are refreshingly sincere when they consider the future of the city, and none of them are even remotely pro-American.
A documentary about Basque inmigrants who went to USA looking for work and a better future. Basically, Amerikanuak talks about feeling homesick, about struggling in a different country to make a decent living and about being part of a comunity.
RAISING RENEE is the story of a family's remarkable response to being broken apart and rearranged after nearly 50 years. The film explores deep themes of family, race, class and disability through the interplay of painting, cinema and everyday life. Produced and directed by Oscar nominees Jeanne Jordan and Steven Ascher, RAISING RENEE is the third part of a trilogy about resilient families that includes their acclaimed feature documentaries So Much So Fast and Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Troublesome Creek. RAISING RENEE is about a unique group of women, the tenacity of family bonds and the power of art to transform experience into something beyond words.
A documentary about the life and career of Maurice Pialat produced by his widow, the accomplished film producer Sylvie Pialat. The film interweaves clips from his films with interview footage of Pialat, who speaks of growing up as an only child, his interest in painting, his early influences in cinema from Yasujiro Ozu to John Ford, his disaffection with the French New Wave, and the theme of abandonment in his films. Pialat’s remarks offer insights into his aesthetic strategies and hint at his reputation as a challenging, irascible director, known for having pushed his actors to deliver raw and powerful performances.
Set in the aftermath of the devastating financial crash of the Thai baht and the Asian monetary crisis, Ghosts and Numbers is a fantastic meditation on Thai encounters with the spirit world and the world of numbers, as these intersect in unexpected ways.
French architect Jean Nouvel has long been known in Europe for his bold, shimmering glass museums, concert halls, and high-rise towers. Now the much-acclaimed new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which opened in 2006, is displaying Nouvel's remarkable talents to an American public. With a cantilevered lobby that extends 175 feet over the Mississippi River, the dark midnight-blue, aluminum-paneled structure has captivated the culturally conscious city and helped spur the rejuvenation of a once-industrial waterfront. In the tour, Nouvel takes us through three distinctive theaters he designed for the Guthrie, and out onto the cantilevered deck to view the legendary river that inspired the boldly elevated design.
Armed with a camcorder, farmer-filmmaker-activist Severine von Tscharner Fleming spent two years crisscrossing America, meeting and mobilizing a network of revolutionary young farmers resettling the land. 'The Greenhorns' is an ode to their grit and entrepreneurial spirit, an exploration of sustainable agriculture, and an enticement to reclaim our national soil. The ninety minute feature is the culmination of well over 200 hours of original footage from all regions of the United States, as well as original animation by young urban farmer and artist Brooke Budner, and rare agricultural archival footage from the Prelinger Archives. Ultimately, The Greenhorns shows us how farmers can move out of the margins recent history has consigned them to, and back to the heart of the American food landscape.
Witnessing the highest rate of HIV infection in the world and the lowest life expectancy on the planet, three grandmothers in Swaziland cope in this critical moment in time.
Patricia Uberoi, an Australian woman, married an Indian professor in the 60s and moved to his home in New Delhi. They raised three children there, but the riots and the anti-Sikh feelings led to her encouraging her children to move to Australia. A documentary about a multicultural family becomes a commentary on the events surrounding the anti-Sikh riots of 1984.
Based on an English academic’s memoir on stalking and being stalked, a digital film essay on cinema and absence, on Hitchcock and Antonioni, on cinema and cities. It is a story of waiting, self-delusion, panic, fear of violence, and of modern technologies which define the urban stalker as they do the new terrorist.
The film presents the latest archaeological scholarship from the Holy Land to explore the beginnings of modern religion and the origins of the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Old Testament. This archaeological detective story tackles some of the biggest questions in biblical studies: Where did the ancient Israelites come from? Who wrote the Bible, when, and why? How did the worship of one God—the foundation of modern Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—emerge?
The producers surveyed the evidence and take positions that are mainstream among archaeologists and historians, although they continue to raise objections among both Christians who believe in the bible as either literal or historical truth and minimalists who assert that the Bible has no historical validation.
Generation Baby Buster is a documentary feature that explores why so many women are just saying no to procreation. Armed with insight from those who write and think about the current state of affairs for mothers, the director confronts her own ambivalence towards children head on and offers up some baby food-for-thought to a new generation of women: the baby busters.
A wealthy wife and a failing businessman on a quest for answers, journey in different ways, to a path to higher consciousness. Their hunger for understanding and spiritual being leads them to a phenomena that has existed since the beginning of man. It is self evident that all men are created equal, yet some perform extraordinary achievements and others live a life of emptiness never reaching their full potential. There is a force that everyone is entitled to, that can bring the fulfillment their lives desire. That evolutionary force is Kundalini. Beyond science, beyond religion; Kundalini is the SOURCE of the FORCE. This untapped powerful resource available for centuries within every human body is still unexplained, mysterious and kept secret till today.
The first comprehensive treatment of the subject of librarians. A vivid blend of factual documentary, feature film and storytelling, it reveals the history and realities of librarianship in the entertaining and appealing context of American movies. Interviews with actual librarians, intercut with film clips of cinematic librarians, examine such issues as literature, books, and reading, censorship, library funding, citizenship and democracy. For the first time, we see and understand the real lives and real work of American librarians who for decades have been a cultural for hiding in plain sight.
After the Kosovo war devastates a young couple's homeland and their dreams for a normal life, they set out unexpectedly from the Balkans, along a wild journey to rebuild their lives anew in America. Arriving in California amidst the peak of a housing boom that would soon burst, the film reveals their trials and tribulations over five years of turbulent economic, political and personal tides, revealing a provocative and unorthodox depiction of the American immigrant experience.