Katedrála zázrakov
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In the summer of 2007, Gan Xiaoer led an independent film projection team, using projectors and self-made screens, to tour villages in Henan province to show his feature film "Raised from dust" for 8 times, and recorded the process. The 81-minute version of Church Cinema records only one stop, the Qiliying Church, where "Raised from dust" was shot.
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In rural China, the job of enforcing the Communist Party's one-child policy falls on government bureaucrats tasked with imposing fines, birth control, and forced sterilizations. Xu Huijing documents this process in his native village of Ma, following the tenacious efforts of the local birth control chief during an increased sterilization quota period, revealing the absurd and tragic local consequences of high-level government policy. (Chicago International Film Festival)
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In a cold mountain village in northeastern China,when a peasant gets sick they invite the local shaman to do trance healing. In the village there is Shaman XU, a renowned shaman in the area who is almost 70-year-old. He had been a teacher in his youth and an accountant for a factory production team. In his later age, serving as a spirit medium became his profession. He beats his donkey-hide drum and sings ancient melodies, inviting all kind of spirits to come.
The film describes the microcosmos of the small village Wacken and shows the clash of the cultures, before and during the biggest heavy metal festival in Europe.
Present day: a small village somewhere in rural Serbia. Reports on the upcoming parliamentary elections drone from the radio while a local traffic policeman tries to teach his old grandmother how to use a mobile phone. Glimpses of this old lady, who lives a lonely life on a remote farm, become the red thread running through the film with its snapshot-like portraits of everyday life in the tiny community. There’s the grocer’s shop the men visit to talk about money and politics. Or the postman who delivers on his moped the ballot papers for the forthcoming elections. The policeman who stops cars as he fancies. The school with a handful of children in the overlarge classroom. The pub in which something approaching merriment occasionally arises. And the recurrent visits to the old peasant woman: Her matter-of-fact inventory of aches and pains delivered to the local doctor, her worries about increasing thievery confided in the village priest.
Children parade through the streets of Hinton St George in Somerset on the last Thursday of October. Children have hollowed out pumpkins or mangelwurzels, a type of animal fodder turnip to make lanterns following a tradition in this part of West Somerset that coincides with Halloween. Punky or Punkie Night is thought to date from the turn of the 20th century or perhaps medieval times chanting rhymes and following a Punkie King and Queen.
An overview of brazilian spirituality and religions.
Two Uigur brothers and a friend are in love with parkour, a kind of extreme sport. Regardless of opposition from their worried mothers, the boys train themselves to be the best in an upcoming parkour event in Beijing while managing to iron out additional difficulties. They lose the game, but eventually they learn much more about their true selves.
The film explores the hidden face of poverty in one of the world's most affluent and capitalistic cities. Directed by CHEUNG King Wai (KJ: Music and Life), the film follows five Hong Kong families of different backgrounds that receive government subsidies. How do the poor get by in a glossy city that flaunts conspicuous consumption and hides poverty in cavernous public housing estates? All's Right With The World shares the different stories of these low-income families, their daily living conditions, and their ways of celebrating Chinese New Year.
"Målle Lindberg - clown or prophet?" - About the evangelist and singer Målle Lindberg, a.k.a. the Gypsy Preacher. The film depicts parts of his life with archive footage from the 1950's and 1960's.
Before the Flood is a study of the final weeks of a dying city, as thousand-year-old Fengjie on the Yangtze River is reduced to rubble and its inhabitants uprooted to make way for the new Three Gorges Dam that will flood the entire valley.
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A lyrical portrait of an excommunicated Amish woodworker struggling with spirituality, poverty, and life as an outcast from his strict, insular community.
After finishing building his Chapel, Lorenzo suffers a depression and is locked in it for three years. When he opens the doors he calls his children to show what he did: good and evil.
An exploration of the intersection between religion and homosexuality in the U.S. and how the religious right has used its interpretation of the Bible to stigmatize the gay community.
A documentary based on the book Umbanda no Brasil by the scholar Mata e Silva, who is interviewed by the director. The book studies the Brazilian religion known as spiritism, a syncretism of African beliefs and magical rites, Indian beliefs and images, and Catholic symbols.
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From a small family from the outskirts of São Paulo to the National Congress, a documentary about how political discourse is born, grows and is founded among evangelicals.
In the week when Hindus celebrate the holy festival of Diwali, this documentary tells the story of one of their faith's most sacred symbols - the swastika. For many, the swastika has become a symbol synonymous with the Nazis and fascism. But this film reveals the fascinating and complex history of an emblem that is, in fact, a religious symbol, with a sacred past. For the almost one billion Hindus around the world, the swastika lies at the heart of religious practices and beliefs, as an emblem of benevolence, luck and good fortune.