via print and film, love and music, state propaganda and people's archives, five-year plans and Emergency.
via print and film, love and music, state propaganda and people's archives, five-year plans and Emergency.
29 Oct 2019
A 10-year-old boy and his father support themselves by pulling a cart through Bombay's chaotic traffic. One day when they visit the doctor, they are told that they should change jobs. A visual and sound intensive documentary about a nightmarish traffic situation beyond all control.
03 Mar 2018
The inspiring story of a young Indian Muslim woman who trades her burka for dreams of playing on the Mumbai Senior Women's Cricket Team and how the harsh realities for women in her country creates an unexpected outcome for her own family, ultimately shattering and fueling aspirations.
02 Apr 2014
The Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong was once the densest place on earth, a virtually lawless labyrinth of crime, grime, commerce and hope. A Wall Street Journal documentary tracks its colorful legacy and brings the place alive 20 years later.
31 Jan 2007
Hapon is an 8-year-old survivor in the slums of modern Manila, scratching out an improvised existence at the margins of society. This rawly shot documentary follows Hapon and his mates as they swagger around their dilapidated universe. Featuring a punk-rock score by director Khavn's band the Brockas, the film captures a carefree spirit in the children that completely belies the squalid conditions in which they live.
02 Jun 1997
Public Housing is Wiseman’s unflinching portrayal of life at the Ida B. Wells housing project in Chicago, a raw exposition of the daily conflicts between residents and the bureaucratic machinery to which they are continually subjected. With intimate detail and an abiding dedication to his subject, Wiseman unearths the hidden facets of institutions to find humanity and sites of unexpected beauty.
23 Aug 2015
Documenting the demolition of Cabrini Green, Chicago's most infamous public housing development, through the stories of three public housing residents whose lives are turned upside down in the name of progress.
01 Apr 1975
In buildings where foreign workers lived in Germany, there were strict rules of conduct, defined by the house rules and supervised by the building superintendents. Many rights regarding the freedom of movement, communication and behavior were abused. Interviews with the tenants and with the "orderlies" which point out absurd situations and clashes caused by these restrictions.
14 Sep 2005
A new form of observational documentary that borders on science-fiction, John & Jane follows the stories of six Call Agents that answer American 1-800 numbers at a Mumbai call center.
18 Sep 2025
In 1980s Brooklyn, a resilient family, evicted from public housing, refuses to succumb to homelessness or welfare. Instead, they construct their own home-one scrap of discarded wood at a time.
12 Aug 1998
Megacities is a documentary about the slums of five different metropolitan cities.
22 Oct 2002
Documentary depicts what happened in Rio de Janeiro on June 12th 2000, when bus 174 was taken by an armed young man, threatening to shoot all the passengers. Transmitted live on all Brazilian TV networks, this shocking and tragic-ending event became one of violence's most shocking portraits, and one of the scariest examples of police incompetence and abuse in recent years.
01 Jun 2019
While gun violence was on the decline in most major US cities, why did it continue to increase in Chicago's segregated communities? What is known about the systems that created the problem, the laws that isolated it, and the policies that abandoned it? Using dramatic footage, including interviews with residents on the front lines over the last 15 years, this documentary opens a rare historical window into the systematic creation of poverty stricken communities plagued by gun violence.
07 Apr 2025
In Mumbai, once an island city linked by the sea, modern bridges and land reclamation have reshaped the landscape, disrupting the lives of its original communities.
06 Sep 1989
A tomato is planted, harvested and sold at a supermarket, but it rots and ends up in the trash. But it doesn’t end there: Isle of Flowers follows it up until its real end, among animals, trash, women and children. And then the difference between tomatoes, pigs and human beings becomes clear.
02 Jan 1994
Filmmaker Anand Patwardhan looks to history and psychology as he delves into the possible reasons behind the demolition of the Babri Mosque.
15 Jun 1953
This documentary presents a before-and-after picture of people in a large-scale public housing project in Toronto. Due to a housing shortage, they were forced to live in squalid, dingy flats and ramshackle dwellings on a crowded street in Regent Park North; now they have access to new, modern housing developments designed to offer them privacy, light and space.
03 Jan 1972
An old hermit lives in a slum and wants to teach the alphabet to the children who regularly go there to play. When a child proposes he use the word “Pelican” for the letter ‘P’, the hermit goes to the nearby park to see this animal he has never heard of.
12 Jul 2018
Ice (Baraf) is essential to almost every step of the fishing supply chain at Sassoon Docks, Mumbai's largest fish market, and this short documentary takes you through a day in the life of the workers responsible for it.
24 Apr 2005
A man emerges from the slums of Rio to lead the nonviolent cultural movement known as Afro-reggae.
01 Jan 1942
Sheffield stands in as 'Smokedale', an industrial Everytown, in this stirring call for "new schools, new hospitals, new roads, new life", after WWII.