
30 Aug 2023

This Is How a Child Becomes a Poet
The last day of Patrizia Cavalli’s home. Before it’s all gone.
Rafael - the minister of sports of an unrecognized country, and Natasha - a Russian opera singer, try living together in Abkhazia - a war-torn future-less country. Observing their difficult relations, we see life in a place marked by war and nationalism. The film portrays trapped people dreaming of peace, normality and happiness.
30 Aug 2023
The last day of Patrizia Cavalli’s home. Before it’s all gone.
01 Jan 2016
Egyptian Jeanne d’Arc’ is a creative documentary that explores issues of female emancipation in ‘post post-revolutionary’ Egypt. Beginning with the return journey to Cairo of a filmmaker long absent from her own country, the film weaves a series of intimate portraits composed of interviews, poetic voice-over and dance; exploring themes of oppression, guilt and faith with Egyptian women, many of them artists. Reflecting on Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 film ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’ – in which the female figure is martyred by the patriarchal forces surrounding her – ‘Jeanne’ is a contemporary commentary that melds documentary and dance with poetic storytelling and myth to arrive at the core of the filmmaker’s enquiries into the circumstances of women in Egypt today.
24 Jan 2010
An uplifting feature documentary highlighting the transformative power of art and the beauty of the human spirit. Top-selling contemporary artist Vik Muniz takes us on an emotional journey from Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, to the heights of international art stardom. Vik collaborates with the brilliant catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, true Shakespearean characters who live and work in the garbage quoting Machiavelli and showing us how to recycle ourselves.
01 Jan 1999
Men, most of them naked, talk about their penises. They range from 17 to 70+, all from the U.S. The interviews are edited around themes: discovery, early sexual experiences, masturbation, size, oral sex, libido, performance, disease and maladies, maturity. A lexicographer discusses language, especially slang; a few archival educational-film clips divide the topics. Images and stories mix with facts and philosophical reflection. The usually private becomes public.
08 Nov 2010
A documentary that takes an alternative approach to dealing with the global warming crisis.
05 Nov 2015
'Olmo and the Seagull' is a poetic and existential dive into an actress's mind during the nine months of her pregnancy as she must confront her most fiery inner demons while trying to rewrite a new philosophy of life, identity and love. Underlying this hybrid film is mounting tension over what is real and what is enacted when one is performing one's own life.
07 Sep 2007
The actors of Avanzi reunite after 15 years in Su Pallosu, a small village in Sardinia. They have decided to put together a show to support the cause of the local fishermen who are having great difficulty because of fish depopulation.
01 Jan 1984
Commissioned by French television, this is a short documentary on the neo-classical statues found throughout Paris, predominantly on the walls of buildings, holding up windows, roofs etc.
09 Mar 1996
Using text from Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes and ancient Aztec and Mayan poetry, viewers are lead on a visual journey through this country's rich and varied past and present. Stunning images and a dramatic musical score by Daniel Valdez create a vivid, insightful portrait of the Mexican people and their culture
28 Aug 2007
A look at the first years of Pixar Animation Studios - from the success of "Toy Story" and Pixar's promotion of talented people, to the building of its East Bay campus, the company's relationship with Disney, and its remarkable initial string of eight hits. The contributions of John Lasseter, Ed Catmull and Steve Jobs are profiled. The decline of two-dimensional animation is chronicled as three-dimensional animation rises. Hard work and creativity seem to share the screen in equal proportions.
16 Mar 2017
A documentary about the life and activism of Jaha Dukureh, a Gambian anti-female genital mutilation campaigner who returns to her country of birth to confront the harmful tradition that she and 200 million women and girls have undergone globally.
24 Apr 2017
The modern criminal justice system is hindered by the fact that countless rape kits remain untested in police evidence storage facilities across the United States. Only eight states currently have laws requiring mandatory testing of rape kits.
06 Apr 2016
A documentary film that explores male feelings about sex and romantic relationships set against the banlieues of France.
02 Jan 2010
The space of the junkyard allows various ‘crash’ narratives to unfold, with the stories of actual crashes and the remnants and afterlife of these machines becoming metaphors for economic decline. This is an investigation of planes as they are parked during the economic downturn, stored and recycled, revealing unexpected connections between economy, violence and spectacle, finding perfect example in the form of the Boeing 4X-JYI, an aircraft first acquired by film director Howard Hughes for TWA, which was subsequently flown by the Israeli Airforce before finding its way to the Californian desert to be blown up for the Hollywood blockbuster Speed. Through intertwined narratives of people, planes and places Steyerl reveals cycles of capitalism incorporating and adapting to the changing status of the commodity, but also points at a horizon beyond this endless repetition.
03 Nov 2000
It is a documentary story about five legends of russian cinema: Nonna Mordyukova, Tatyana Okunevskaya, Tatyana Samoylova, Lidiya Smirnova and Vera Vasileva. These wonderful women tell about their lifes and careers in hour interview.
17 Jan 1994
Travel alongside the astronauts as they deploy and repair the Hubble Space Telescope, soar above Venus and Mars, and find proof of new planets and the possibility of other life forming around distant stars.
12 Feb 2013
Materia oscura tells the story of a war zone in peacetime. The film location is the Salto di Quirra test range (Sardinia, Italy) where, for over fifty years, governments around the world have tested 'new weapons' and where the Italian government has carried out controlled explosions of old weapon stocks, inexorably endangering the territory.
01 Nov 1991
An intimate exploration of the circumstances surrounding the incarceration of Native American activist Leonard Peltier, convicted of murder in 1977, with commentary from those involved, including Peltier himself.
18 Nov 2008
The film follows the story of Jamie, a struggling butch lesbian actress who gets cast as a man in a film. The main plot is a romantic comedy between Jamie's male alter-ego, "Male Jamie," and Jill, a heterosexual woman on set. The film's subplots include Jamie's bisexual roommate Lola and her cat actor Howard, Lola's abrasive butch German girlfriend Andi, and Jamie's gay Asian friend David.
18 Jan 2008
Examines the public scandal and private tragedy which led to legendary director Roman Polanski's sudden flight from the United States.