“Secrets, Politics and Torture” unspools the dueling versions of history laid out by the CIA, which maintains that its now officially-shuttered program was effective in combating terrorism, and the massive Senate torture report released in December of 2014, which found that the program was brutal, mismanaged and — most importantly — didn’t work
Throughout the South of the United States, tempers flare up as confederate monuments are targeted for removal. During a 6000 mile road trip through the former Confederacy, this documentary explores the legacy of Southern Heritage. A myriad of supporters and opponents is met along the way: White, Black, North and South. Each with their own view on what's worth remembering and preserving. Is there a way past these crossroads?
Kwang-Ja Lee, a counsellor at ‘Lifeline Korea’ has been listening to anonymous people’s stories for 45 years. Every day, she is all ears to stories that cannot be shared anywhere else. Image and sound react to it and creates new reflective space that seems to be the bottom of one’s heart.
After the pandemic separates them, an international couple writes long-distance letters to each other while they face uncertainty and wait to be reunited.
An in-depth look at the origins of Covid-19. Did it really start in a food market in Wuhan, China? Or was the global pandemic caused by a lab accident in the same city?
Why are two modern Buddhist countries fighting over an ancient Hindu temple because of a bad French map from the early twentieth century? By documenting this modern conflict over an ancient temple this film addresses a critical question for our times: How does culture matter in matters of war?
Spiritual cousins of the Mennonites and Amish, the Hutterites live simply with austerity. By a way of life that is supremely communal rather than individualistic, the Hutterites have rid themselves of poverty, homicide and anxiety about the future.
Kalliopi Kalogerou has spent her whole life in the Greek village of Ano Ravenia where she was born in 1900. Simple witness of the century, she lived through Turkish domination and successive occupations linked to different wars. Most of her family stays elsewhere, in Greece or abroad (USA, Canada, Germany, Bulgaria); her shattered family world is representative of the Greek diaspora. The film is exclusively devoted to her life story, told to a young Epirot friend, Eleni Pangratiou-Alexakis, and to her daughter, Evguenia, both of whom have settled in the States. The result is a rich, yet austere film where nothing distracts the viewer from the dialogue and the face of the storyteller. It also constitutes an ordinary yet important testimony on this long and painful page of Greek history (1900-1983).
A terrible flood destroys the home of the AH family in a small village in China's Southern Guangdong province. Life was already a constant struggle for them, but this disaster turns their existence into a nightmare. Over a period of 12-months the filmmaker follows the family during the challenging period of building a new shelter. During this time they will have to confront many obstacles, material and emotional as well as those associated with local and regional governments, which in the end profoundly changes them forever.
Zhou Zhi, the patriarch of the family, rules strictly following the handed-down 'hereditary tradition': listening to no one. In the face of new economic challenges, he decides and acts totally arbitrarily. Unable to adapt himself to "modern times", not the least because of his stubbornness, he runs into heavy debt putting the family in great financial difficulty. Turning to his daughters and sons-in-law for support, he receives a cold welcome. Around the almost larger-than-life patriarchal figure of Zhou Zhi, this film vividly portrays the difficulties of an ordinary Chinese family, with its members having to change their lifestyle in the face of economic difficulties and a shifting culture.
Follows the struggles of Stefonknee Wolscht, a trans woman trying to rebuild her life. Losing her home and her family, Stefonknee gives a first hand account of the many challenges trans people face. In her hometown, Stefonknee was known as a loving husband and father, a really good mechanic and a staunch Catholic but only she knew the truth; that she had been assigned to the wrong gender.
A documentary taking critical aim at Hollywood's abiding fascination with and fantasies about all things eastern. Juxtaposing film clips from the 20s through the 80s, HOLLYWOOD HAREMS explores the organization of gender, race, and sexuality in Hollywood's portrayal of the exotic east an indiscriminate fusion of things Arab, Persian, Chinese and Indian. In abridging cultural plurality and difference, these technicolor fantasies have worked both to shape and reinforce often derogative assumptions about peoples of the east while at the same time reinscribing the moral, spiritual, and cultural supremacy of the Anglo-European west.
A portrait of the artist at work. The film begins in 1972 with Johns repainting Air Ocean World based on Buckminster Fuller's dymaxion map. Johns work is traced over the next eighteen years. His Untitled, 1973, with its cross-hatching, flagstones, and anatomical parts become recurrent motifs, as Johns begins to imbed skulls and severed arms in them. The paintings become more personal as Johns gradually "drops the reserve" in his recent series, "The Seasons." The film culminates with Johns working on the final state of the etching based on "The Seasons."
Sweatshop Deadly Fashion (English Subtitled) Frida, Anniken and Ludwig live, breath and dream fashion. They spend hundreds of euros every month on clothes and make a living promoting the latest catwalk trends.They have never given much thought to the people who make their clothes.
THE COST OF LIVING is a documentary that explores the current socio-economic state of Britain and considers how the idea of a basic income could minimize poverty and the sociological toll of a growing precarious class. The film focuses on the feasibility of a basic income, John Rawls' theory of justice, automation and ultimately asks should there still be a cost attributed to survival?