Film directors with hand-held cameras went to the streets of Lisbon from April 25 to May 1, 1974, registering interviews and political events of the Portuguese "Carnations Revolution", as that period would be later known.
Nick Koenig, aka Hot Sugar, is in a hot mess. Considered a modern-day Mozart, the young electronic musician/producer records sounds from everyday life—from hanging up payphone receivers to Hurricane Sandy rain—and chops, loops and samples them into Grammy Award–nominated beats. He’s living the life every musician dreams of, complete with an internet-phenom girlfriend, rapper/singer “Kitty.” But when she dumps him, Hot Sugar is set adrift. Fleeing to Paris, he tries to regroup, searching for new sounds and a sense of self. Filmmaker Adam Lough mixes scenes of Hot Sugar at work on his vintage recording devices with surprising soul-searching reflections he offers to the camera. As tweets and posts about the broken couple blow up on the internet, Hot Sugar’s road trip presses onward, revealing even more exotic layers of the man and his music. Fun and flash, this lyrical journey offers audiences a fascinating peek into a modern artist’s creative process.
Bert Haanstra was commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to make a short film about his own country. It had to be a piece of the work that mainly would be shown abroad, so that the rest of the world could make acquaintance with the beautiful countryside, with the modern side of the Dutch society and with historic building and old customs. After everything he had already made about these subjects, Haanstra was able to find a new angle, this time by observing the matter from the air. The result is a pretty mosaic of The Netherlands like it looked in the early eighties.
While his parents were out working four jobs, Cambo spent his time learning how to survive in the rough backwoods of Alabama. When they went through a brutal divorce, he naturally fled to the woods to be alone. No traffic, no people, no responsibility—just pure survival. The plan was to wait out his adolescence there until he could legally live life without his parents. He ended up spending two years alone in the wild. This episode of Profiles by VICE, from director Harmony Korine, tells Cambo's story.
Documentary.In its catalogue, a Czech travel agency offers a "journey into the unknown", a tour of North Korea. That spring was the second time since 1990 that a group of Czech tourists set foot in the DPRK. The film follows twenty-seven Czechs who have decided to spend approximately 2,600 Euros on a sightseeing tour of a country which cultivates a cult of personality, maintains concentration camps for its citizens and doesn't hide its development of nuclear weapons. Foreign visitors are only allowed a view of a carefully prepared illusion, thoroughly supervised by "guides". What is more, the North Korean system is starkly reminiscent of our own past. Which emotions do our travellers experience: sympathy, nostalgia or, in contrast, happiness that "we already have this behind us"? How does a Czech person, after being accustomed to eighteen years of freedom and democracy, come to terms with the directives and restrictions of a totalitarian system?
Turkey in the 1960s and 1970s was one of the biggest producers of film in the world. In order to keep up with the demand, screenwriters and directors were copying scripts and remaking movies from all over the world. This documentary visits the fastest working directors, the most practical cameramen and the most hardheaded actors to have a closer look into the country's tumultuous history of movie making.
These materials document a double jubilee of emperor Nikola Petrović 'Njegoš' - 50 years at the Montenegrin throne and his golden wedding with empress Milena, which are accompanied by proclaiming Nikola to be the king, and Montenegro to be the kingdom. Nikola tried to bring noble guests and give this event as much publicity as possible.
A fascinating and unlikely reinvention story, The Royal Road simultaneously explores cinematic spiritual channeling, the conquest and colonization of Mexico and the American Southwest, fading historical Californian urban landscapes, and the passions found in butch identity to achieve an achingly beautiful and poetic defense of remembering. Probing roads from El Camino Real, to the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, to the road right outside the front door, Olson crafts a deeply intelligent and transcending observation of the human condition that reaches for redemption in the embrace of history, nostalgia, mindfulness, and sheer beauty. If you give yourself over to it, it will crack you wide open.
For generations, all that distinguished Eagle Pass, TX, from Piedras Negras, MX, was the Rio Grande. But when darkness descends upon these harmonious border towns, a cowboy and lawman face a new reality that threatens their way of life.
In Columbus, Ohio, a group of autistic teenagers and young adults role-play this transition by going through the deceptively complex social interactions of preparing for a spring formal. Focusing on several young women as they go through an iconic American rite of passage, we are given intimate access to people who are often unable to share their experiences with others. With humor and heartbreak, How to Dance in Ohio shows the daily courage of people facing their fears and opening themselves to the pain, worry, and joy of the social world.
Documentary about Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha, one of the most important names in the Cinema Novo, with interviews with some of his friends and colleagues.
A mariachi singer, Jaime García, is also known as El charro de Toluquilla. He has assumed the cocky and seductive attitude shown by characters of classical Mexican cinema as an alternative, but effective, treatment for AIDS. Now, in order to survive, he debates between keeping this fantasy alive as a way of life and having a more down-to-earth attitude to rear his young daughter, Analía, who was miraculously born without the virus.
In 1991, the Manic Street Preachers planned to sell 16 million copies of their debut and split up. Many years, many hits and one big mystery later, this colourful band and its fans appear in a unique documentary that tells their full story.
Bizarre, unusual and horrifying, Sex Rituals of the Occult will shock and delight you. Travel with us to this side of hell and learn the sensual secrets kept by the worshippers of Satan. Witness the modern masters of the dark arts as they undertake hideous violations of the flesh and soul.
The film details the early years of the legendary Siberian Punk/Rock group 'Гражданская Оборона' (Grazhdanskaya Oborona), and its frontman, Egor Letov.
In 1977, Sam Klemke began obsessively filming and documenting his life on film. Over the next 35 years we see Sam grow from an optimistic teen to a self-important 20 year old, into an obese, self-loathing 30-something and onwards into his philosophical 50s.
The life and work of the great Russian composer Dmitriy Shostakovich is presented in this documentary through rare images and audios from many archives, at one time censored by the Soviet government. A brief take on his life, from his transition as an early prodigy to a first rate artist, his celebrated compositions and the final years with a declining health.