
20 Jan 2017

The Mars Generation
Aspiring teenage astronauts reveal that a journey to Mars is closer than you think.
In Bettina Büttner’s exquisitely lucid documentary Kinder (Kids), childhood dysfunction, loneliness, and pent-up emotion run wild at an all-boys group home in southern Germany. The children interned here include ten-year-olds Marvin and Tommy. Marvin, fiddling with a mini plastic Lego sword, explains matter-of-factly to the camera, “This is a knife. You use it to cut stomachs open.” Dennis, who is even younger, is seen in a hysteric fit, mimicking some pornographic scene. Boys will be boys, but innocence is disproportionately spare here. Choosing not to dwell on the harsh specifics, Büttner reveals the disconcerting manner in which traumatic episodes can manifest themselves in the mundane — a game of Lego, Hide and Seek, or Truth or Dare. Filmed in lapidary black-and-white, Büttner’s fascinating film sheds light on childhood from the boys’ characteristically disadvantaged perspective — one not yet fully cognizant — leaving much ethically to ponder over.
20 Jan 2017
Aspiring teenage astronauts reveal that a journey to Mars is closer than you think.
23 Oct 2009
No overview found
20 Jan 2017
Documentary feature about 11-time Jeopardy! champion and Internet iconoclast, Arthur Chu.
24 Nov 2024
Through this documentary, Emmanuelle Béart aims to uncover the truth about incest. The actress, accompanied by director Anastasia Mikova, breaks her silence and confronts her reality with that of others, shedding light on a taboo subject.
19 Sep 2023
What does the looming A.I. revolution mean for us as individuals and as a society?
01 Jan 2007
The fascinating complexity of high school debate gives way to a portrait of the equally complex racial and class bias of American education in Greg Whiteley's riveting documentary.
16 May 2023
No overview found
14 Mar 2002
This documentary follows 8 teens and pre-teens as they work their way toward the finals of the Scripps Howard national spelling bee championship in Washington D.C.
15 Oct 2016
Short film for Vice Media about the illusion of stability, freedom, and prosperity in the West, comparing it to life in the Soviet Union during the 1970s. Ends with a trailer for HyperNormalisation.
14 Nov 2019
In his new film, Erwin Wagenhofer is looking for the good and beautiful in this world.
03 Mar 1978
Germany in Autumn does not have a plot per se; it mixes documentary footage, along with standard movie scenes, to give the audience the mood of Germany during the late 1970s. The movie covers the two month time period during 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped, and later murdered, by the left-wing terrorists known as the RAF-Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction). The businessman had been kidnapped in an effort to secure the release of the orginal leaders of the RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. When the kidnapping effort and a plane hijacking effort failed, the three most prominent leaders of the RAF, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe, all committed suicide in prison. It has become an article of faith within the left-wing community that these three were actually murdered by the state.
13 May 2005
Eleven-year-old New York City public school kids journey into the world of ballroom dancing and reveal pieces of themselves and their world along the way. Told from their candid, sometimes humorous perspectives, these kids are transformed, from reluctant participants to determined competitors, from typical urban kids to "ladies and gentlemen," on their way to try to compete in the final citywide competition.
08 May 2009
A 2008 documentary and debut feature film of Bafta-Award nominated director Jamie Jay Johnson. It follows the lives of the participants of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2007, specifically the entrants from Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus and Georgia. The film sees them proceed from the national finals that saw them crowned the representatives of their country through to the international song festival itself held in Rotterdam, the Netherlands where they each compete against 16 other acts.
02 Jan 2016
Since the enactment of the Anti-Boryokudan Act and Yakuza exclusion ordinances, the number of Yakuza members reduced to less than 60,000. In the past 3 years, about 20,000 members have left from Yakuza organizations. However, just numbers can’t tell you the reality. What are they thinking, how are they living now? The camera zooms in on the Yakuza world. Are there basic human rights for them?
06 Sep 2007
At Evergreen Primary School in Wuhan, China, a Grade 3 class learns what democracy is when an election for class monitor is being held. Three children are chosen by the teacher as candidates and they have a few days to campaign and convince their classmates to vote for them. The little candidates are seen at school and at home, where their parents do their best to make sure their child will win the election.
11 Mar 1995
When a child gets hold of a loaded handgun, someone often dies. Last year, 24,000 Americans lost their lives to handguns...and 3,600 of them were children. This profoundly disturbing documentary tells the stories of five handguns that killed five children--and how their deaths might have been prevented.
29 Apr 2000
THE PERFUMED GARDEN is an exploration of the myths and realities of sensuality and sexuality in Arab society, a world of taboos and of erotic literature. Through interviews with men and women of all ages, classes, and sexual orientation, the film lifts a corner of the veil that usually shrouds discussion of this subject in the Arab world. Made by an Algerian-French woman director, the film begins by looking at the record of a more permissive history, and ends with the experiences of contemporary lovers from mixed backgrounds. It examines the personal issues raised by the desire for pleasure, amidst societal pressures for chastity and virginity. The film discusses pre-marital sex, courtship and marriage, familial pressures, private vs. public spaces, social taboos (and the desire to break them), and issues of language.
07 Jun 2014
What does it mean to be Black in America in the 21st century? The recently formed Black American film group TNEG™ has set out to elucidate this very question. Hearing from the likes of fine artist Kara Walker and musical artist Flying Lotus, the film is based on a deceptively simple approach -- asking a refined list of black 'specialists' as well as 'uncommon folks' questions about what they think, and more importantly as lead director Arthur Jafa states, 'What they KNOW' -- the film is an unprecedented 'stream of the black consciousness' and a strikingly original and rarefied look at black intellectual and emotional life. What's so unorthodox about this simple approach is that the interviews were recorded separately from the images in the film. What results is a breathtaking, kaleidoscopic look of American black life from the dawn of three original filmmakers.
07 Feb 2023
The war in the Ukraine has changed the way many European countries view Russian politics. Suddenly it became clear how dependent countries had become on Russian gas imports for decades and what Vladimir Putin was up to. However, no country needs more gas than Germany. It was only after Russia's invasion of the Ukraine that the German government realized that Russia had long used gas as a weapon to impose its will on states. The instrument created for this purpose is the natural gas production company GAZPROM. So how did Germany become so dependent on Russian gas? The documentary shows how, over several decades and several changes of government, a broad alliance of politicians and business representatives did everything possible to secure Germany's energy supply with cheap Russian gas, while the Kremlin's foreign policy became increasingly aggressive and the warnings of experts went unheeded.
13 Mar 1998
Documentary about the life and work of Mário Eloy, one of the greatest painters of the second generation of modernism in Portugal.