
06 Jun 2011

Bobby Fischer Against the World
The first documentary feature to explore the tragic and bizarre life of the late chess master Bobby Fischer.
Travelling between Germany, France, and Tunisia, Viola Shafik reconstructs and deconstructs the unknown life story of El Hedi Ben Salem through interviews with his companions and family members as well as archival material. With openness and slight naivety, the interviewees explain how “Ali” became an oriental object of projection for the Fassbinder group, while El Hedi Ben Salem, the human being, was overlooked in order to establish the foreigner as “other.” A no-frills examination of a piece of German and Munich film history.

Self (archive footage)
Self (Ben Salem's Son)
Self (Ben Salem's former wife)

Self

Self

Self

Self
Self (Ben Salem's son)
Self (Ben Salem's sister)
Self (Ben Salem's nephew)
Self (Ben Salem's niece)
Self (Ben Salem's niece)
Self (Ben Salem's daughter-in-law)

Self (archive footage)
Self
Self

06 Jun 2011

The first documentary feature to explore the tragic and bizarre life of the late chess master Bobby Fischer.
23 Aug 2014
Nearly 20 years since the end of the 1992-95 Bosnian war, there are people who still live in refugee Centers, usually located on the outskirts of cities and villages. In such centers what should have been temporary has become indefinite. Collecting medicinal herbs or scraps from nearby coal mines and raising children who were born as refugees in their own country are just some aspects of the monotonous daily life of the people in Ježevci.

22 Nov 2014

Right outside of Moscow – home to the highest number of billionaires pr. capita – you’ll find the largest junkyard in the world: The Svalka. It’s a hard place run by the Russian mafia. And it's where Yula lives with her mother, her friends and many other people. Life is tough in the Svalka, but it’s also a place where beauty and humanity can arise from the most unlikely conditions. It is from this place that Yula dreams of escaping and changing her life, even if it seems impossible. Oscar-nominated director Hanna Polak followed Yula for 14 years, bringing us along on Yula's journey to achieve this dream.

01 Jan 1984

Filmmaker Jenny Rohrer explores the growing difference in voting patterns between men and women.
30 Nov 2014
Originally from the southwest of the Netherlands, Sandra Roelofs met Mikheil Saakashvili while studying in Strasbourg. She fell for this politically-minded Georgian’s relentless charm and followed him first to the United States and then to his homeland. She was present when, partly under his leadership, the Georgian government was deposed during the Rose Revolution in 2003, and again at his inauguration as president, and 10 years later at his electoral defeat, partly brought about by the release of photographs of torture in Georgian prisons and the growing corruption of the government in power. The camera follows Roelofs over the course of her last year as Georgia’s First Lady. Backed by a wealth of archive material, she talks about her love for her husband and his country, about how power changed him, and about their family life and the pain caused by their physical separation.

14 Mar 2019

Refuge(e) traces the incredible journey of two refugees, Alpha and Zeferino. Each fled violent threats to their lives in their home countries and presented themselves at the US border asking for political asylum, only to be incarcerated in a for-profit prison for months on end without having committed any crime. Thousands more like them can't tell their stories.

01 Jan 2008

A very rich documentary about the new science of network. It is built around reproducing the “Six degrees of separation” experience.

06 May 2011

Gives insight into the creators mindset and how they culled from real life events to create some of the biggest sci-fi films of all time.

26 Feb 2014

Barletta, Italy, 2011: one hundred years after the 1911 Fire at the Triangle factory in New York, several textile workers die because of the collapse of the building in which they used to work as employees of an unauthorized knitwear factory. Mariella Fasanella is the only survivor among the women who worked there. Through her words we experience a century-long journey through the rise and fall of manual labour and industrialism in the Western world.
12 Jan 2012
Mollie and Alex are part of a growing group of teens and twenty-something embracing the world of public nudity. They are on a quest to normalize nudity, question the media's obsession with the body beautiful, and encourage other young people to liberate themselves by simply going naked - in the streets, in cafes or at art shows

18 Sep 1998

Less a documentary than a primer on all electronic music. Featuring interviews with nearly every major player past and present, as well as a few energetic live clips, Modulations delves into one of electronica's forgotten facets: the human element. Lee travels the globe from the American Midwest to Europe to Japan to try to express the appeal of music often dismissed as soulless. Modulations shows that behind even the most foreign or alien electronic composition lies a real human being, and Lee lets many of these Frankenstein-like creators express and expound upon their personal philosophies and tech-heavy theories. Lee understands that a cultural movement as massive and diverse as dance music can't be contained.
31 Aug 2010
From 2000 to 2008, China was the leading country for U.S. international adoptions. There are now approximately 70,000 Chinese adoptees being raised in the United States. Ninety-five percent of them are girls. Each year, these girls face new questions regarding their adopted lives and surroundings. This is a film about Chinese adopted girls, their American adoptive families and the paradoxical losses and gains inherent in international adoption. The characters and events in this story will challenge our traditional notions of family, culture and race.

20 Dec 2006

How does artist Matthew Barney use 45,000 pounds of petroleum jelly, a factory whaling vessel and traditional Japanese rituals to create his latest art project? Barney plowed the waters off the coast of Nagasaki to film his massive endeavor, Drawing Restraint 9. The documentary Matthew Barney: No Restraint journeys to Japan with Barney and his collaborator Bjork, as the visual artist creates a "narrative sculpture" telling a fantastical love story of two characters that transform from land mammals into whales.
24 Feb 2015
Once a star on Broadway, always a star – at least that is what a group of feisty, humorous, and inspirational actors think as they embark on a journey to perform Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' at their retirement home. With the help of two enthusiastic New York City theater directors who are not quite sure what awaits them, the troupe is formed among thespians whose skills and minds are not what they once were. As performance day nears, the tension mounts, with the actors battling to overcome crises, as well as themselves. But the show must go on and go on it does, with the troupe clinging to the hope of experiencing the magic and exuberance of performing on stage just one last time. - Sandy Wolf

09 Dec 2015

Marcia, granddaughter of Salvador Allende, the first democratic socialist president who was overthrown by the Army in September 1973, seeks to reconstruct the personal and familiar image of her grandfather, buried by his historical person, her exile and the family pain.
01 Jan 1942
The Secrets of Life series (1934-50) may not conform to modern expectations of nature filmmaking, inclined as it is towards giving cute fluffy creatures human names and characteristics. But it couldn't be accused of shielding kiddies from the harsher realities of the food chain, as this exercise in ruthless Darwinism demonstrates to unintentionally hilarious effect. A more than usually eccentric narrator introduces us to the newborn bunny quartet of Donald, James, Charles and Clifford, but as the film's title gives away, "the boys" aren't all long for this world as they face an assault course of hungry owls, predatory badgers, shotgun-happy gardeners and aerial bombardment (no harm in a little anti-Nazi detour, this is 1942 after all). (from http://player.bfi.org.uk/film/watch-once-we-were-four-1942/)

14 Sep 1945

Soviet documentary shot right after liberation of Auschwitz. It was used as evidence by the Soviet prosecution at the Nuremberg trials. In 2014, footage shot by cameraman Aleksandr Vorontsov, as well as his interview given in 1986 for German television, were included in Andre Singer’s documentary “Night Will Fall”.

08 Jun 2008

Imagine a world in which people seem hostile while inanimate objects appear friendly – even affectionate. Imagine dreading the touch of another human but longing for a passionate encounter with a large public structure. This is the strange world of the "objectum sexual"– a group of people, mainly women, whose intimate lives revolve around objects with which they say they share romantic and sexual love. Erika is married to the Eiffel Tower. She has a passion for inanimate objects, and her mission is to fight the stigma surrounding the disorder and create a global network of sufferers - like Amy, in love with a church organ, and Eija Riita, who married the Berlin Wall.

01 Jan 1997

Green Chimneys follows three young boys living at Green Chimneys, a residential treatment center for children with emotional, behavioral, social and learning challenges.

13 Mar 2015

Comic Russell Brand uses drugs, sex and fame in a quest for happiness, only to find it remains elusive. As he explores iconic figures such as Gandhi, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, and Jesus, he transforms himself into a political antagonist.