Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite--until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar-wai's In the mood for love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. With its aching musical soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-bin, this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past decade of cinema, and is a milestone in Wong's redoubtable career.
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A nine-year-old boy's preening obsession with straightening his hair elicits a tidal wave of homophobic panic in his hard-working mother, in this tender but clear-eyed coming-of-age tale. Junior is a beautiful boy, with big brown eyes, a delicate frame, and a head of luxurious dark curls. But Junior aches to straighten those curls, to acquire a whole new look befitting his emerging fantasy image of himself as a long-haired singer. As the opportunity approaches to have his photo taken for the new school year, that ache turns into a fiery longing. Junior's mother, Marta (Samantha Castillo), is barely hanging on. The father of her children has died, she recently lost her job as a security guard, and she now struggles to put a few arepas on the table for Junior and his baby brother. Junior doesn't even know yet what it means to be gay, but the very notion prompts Marta to set out to "correct" Junior's condition before it fully takes hold. This is a story of people doing what they feel they have to, partly out of fear, but also out of love.
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The walls in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte are inundated with painted pictures and words, from stunning murals to old-school graffiti, and from enigmatic cries from the heart to furious cursing. Marcos Pimentel uses his mostly static camera to capture an impressive number of these public statements, painting a picture of the city as a canvas for artists, poets, and outraged citizens. Ranging from the ironic to the inflamed, the words and images of murals, tags, and posters give a voice to the voiceless. In Skin, fragments of memory and silent screams reveal the desires, fears, fantasies, and daydreams of those who inhabit urban centers. The letters and drawings interact with the different bodies that move through the public space with cars driving past, buses stopping, and pedestrians hurrying along--some of them unaware of the artwork behind them, others quickly snapping a selfie.
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Using stories, batucadas, and songs, Diaspora drums addresses a political and cultural vision embedded in the course of two drums of African origin and their ramifications in Brazil, which move through rituals, cultural manifestations, musical productions, and social celebrations. Directed by João Nascimento, the documentary intertwines percussion performances and instruments with themes such as cultural racism, traditional drumming, technological drumming, African mythologies, and other contemporary sounds.
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With the arrival of the conquistadors, many ancient Mesoamerican rituals were absorbed into Christian holidays. This program examines a collection of sacred, social, and artistic traditions that survived European assimilation and now compose one of Mexico's most important annual festivals. The film follows the travels and experiences of a young Purepecha artisan, her grandmother, and their family during the weeks leading up to the Days of the Dead. As these struggling craftspeople market their wares, study new techniques, and prepare for their deceased patriarch's spiritual return, viewers will see a wide variety of folk art practices--from pottery painting to flower decoration to papier-mâché skeleton sculpture--coalesce into a momentous cultural event.
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This lively film goes behind the scenes of the samba and carnival world in Rio de Janeiro to reveal how the cultural clash of the African/Black and European/White cultures gave birth to a new tradition. The historian Haroldo Costa, an expert in carioca folklore, explains how African slaves' beliefs, gods and music mixed with Spanish Catholic and Indian influences centuries ago to create the remarkable fusion that is Brazilian culture.The film includes interviews with many active performers and writers of samba such as the composer and singer Xango da Mangueira.
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Barbie leads a dream life in Barbieland until, one day, she suddenly starts having dark thoughts. So she goes to the weird Barbie to get advice. Weird Barbie explains that a breach has been created between the real world and their universe, and that Barbie must go to Los Angeles to find the person responsible for her troubles. Accompanied by Ken, Barbie goes to Los Angeles only to discover that the Barbie doll is not the model of confidence, assurance, and fulfillment that she believed. In addition, Ken will discover the patriarchy, which does not bode well for the future.
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Have you heard from Johannesburg is seven documentary stories chronicling the history of the global anti-apartheid movement that took on South Africa's entrenched apartheid regime and its international supporters who considered South Africa an ally in the Cold War. Almost fifty years ago, South Africans began to realize that their freedom struggle had to be built in four arenas of action: mass action, underground organization, armed struggle, and international mobilization. These documentaries take viewers inside that last arena, the movement to mobilize worldwide citizen action to isolate the apartheid regime. Inspired by the courage and suffering of South Africa's people as they fought back against the violence and oppression of racism, foreign solidarity groups, in cooperation with exiled South Africans, took up the anti-apartheid cause.
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Catharine Deane is a psychotherapist who is part of a revolutionary new treatment which allows her mind to literally enter the mind of her patients. Her experience in this method takes an unexpected turn when an F.B.I. Agent comes to ask for a desperate favor. They had just tracked down a notorious serial killer, Carl Stargher, whose method of operation is to abduct women one at a time and place them in a secret area where they are kept for about forty hours until they are slowly drowned. Unfortunately, the killer has fallen into an irreversible coma which means he cannot confess where he has taken his latest victim before she dies. Now, Catherine Deane must race against time to explore the twisted mind of the killer to get the information she needs, but Stargher's damaged personality poses dangers that threaten to overwhelm her.
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In 1937, the science fiction writer H.G. Wells imagined a "world brain" containing all of the world's knowledge, accessible to all people, that would be "so compact in its material form and so gigantic in its scope and possible influence" that it could transcend even nation states and governments. Seventy years later, Google set about realizing Wells's vision, launching a massive project to scan millions of books from university library collections. But when it was discovered that over half of the first ten million books Google scanned were still in copyright, authors from around the world joined together to wage a fierce legal battle against the Internet giant, culminating in a dramatic courtroom showdown in 2011. In gripping detail, Google & the World Brain tells the fascinating story of this complicated struggle over intellectual property and access to human knowledge, offering crucial insights into broader debates surrounding data-mining and privacy, downloading and copyright, fair use, freedom and surveillance.
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In the footsteps of Taytacha follows a group of Quechua-speaking musicians and dancers as they leave their remote villages high in the Andes Mountains of Peru and join thousands of other highlanders on the annual religious pilgrimage to the sacred peaks of Qoyllur-Rití. Quollur-Rití, the largest and most important religious ritual in the southern Andes, occurs only five days out of the year and involves walking both day and night in terrain over 4,400 meters in altitude. From the point-of-view of the villagers, the festival is an elaborate ritual that retraces the escape-route of an Andean god who fled from the Catholic priests during the conquest and now lives up in the snowpeaks. For the Church, however, the site of Qoyllur-Rití is important because a Christ-child appeared there in 1780. Throughout the festival, the villagers explain what the ritual means to them, both personally and collectively.
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Grounded in strong community and Earth-based wisdom, Candomblé is a potent legacy of enslaved Africans in the Americas. Yemanjá : wisdom from the African heart of Brazil explores contemporary and historical social challenges, resiliency, and triumphs of Candomblé and its devotees through the voices of extraordinary women leaders.
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Following the thread provides a critical view of the delicate balance Indigenous communities of fabric makers face as they struggle to maintain age-old artisanal practices in a globalized market economy. In the Peruvian Andes, textiles are omnipresent in the lives of Indigenous people; they are both eminently practical and stunningly beautiful as generations of weavers have applied their creativity to invent techniques and designs found nowhere else in the world. Textiles still form a powerful part of their identity but this identity is at risk. Indigenous people still face racism on a daily basis. And a globalized market economy that produces cheap, machine-made products destroys respect and interest in the hand-made. Infringement on the intellectual rights of Native peoples only makes this worse. The Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco (CTTC) was established by Andean weavers and their supporters to aid in the survival of Cusqueñan textile traditions and to provide support to the Indigenous people who create them.
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A new kind of bohemian (Beat generation gets "hip") provides an overview of the Beat Generation, a literary movement that broke with the conventions and conformity of 1950s America. This video highlights the life and writing of Jack Kerouac--as well as Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Neal Cassady--and discusses their social impact.
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Set during the early days of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship, Chile '76 builds from quiet character study to gripping suspense thriller as it explores one woman's precarious flirtation with political engagement. Carmen (Aline Küppenheim) leads a sheltered upper middle class existence. She heads to her summer house in the off-season to supervise its renovation, while also performing local charitable works through her church. Her husband, children, and grandchildren come back and forth during the winter vacation, bringing reminders of the world beyond. When the family priest asks her to take care of an injured young man he has been sheltering in secret, Carmen is inadvertently drawn into the world of the Chilean political opposition and must face real-world threats she is unprepared to handle, with potentially disastrous consequences for her and her entire family.
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Stop filming us but listen explores the history of colonial representations in the Congo and follows the journey of Congolese filmmaker and journalist Bernadette Vivuya and her fellow local artists as they strive to challenge Western narratives around the city. In Goma (DRC), Vivuya seeks funding for her decolonial film. At the same time, a Dutch director wants to make a film about the conflicting perspectives of Goma but is quickly confronted with the local community's refusal to be filmed. This sparks a conversation around power and trust, colonialism and representation. A re-edited version of Joris Postema's Stop filming us, Vivuya and Twahirwa's film takes a closer look at the imbalance of power inherited from colonialism and its consequences on the representation of the DRC, cinematic and otherwise.
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Edge codes provides a history of the principles and techniques of motion picture editing through film excerpts and interviews with film editors, directors, and academics.
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An inspired collaboration between filmmakers Emma Davie and Peter Mettler and radical writer and philosopher David Abram, this is an urgent and immersive audiovisual quest, forging a path into the places where humans and other animals meet. It is where humans pry open their senses to witness the so-called natural world, which in turn witnesses humans, prompting them to reflect on the very essence of what it means to inhabit their animal bodies.
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A Torres Strait Islander sets out on a voyage of discovery to the great museums of Europe where his cultural heritage now lies.
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GAZA takes us to a unique place beyond the reach of television news reports to reveal a world rich with eloquent and resilient characters, offering us a cinematic and enriching portrait of a people attempting to lead meaningful lives against the rubble of perennial conflict.
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The indigenous Samis finally get back their stolen ancestral heritage while filmmaker Suvi West recreates the outside image of the Samis for the wellbeing of the whole nation.
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In Her Words: 20th Century Lesbian Fiction charts a literary journey from post-war lesbian pulp to modern bestsellers.
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A filmed diary of the daily life in the biggest Palestinian refugee camp--Yarmouk, in Damascus, Syria and its besieged inhabitants, who decided to face bombing, displacement and hunger with rallying, study, music, love and joy.
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A year in Lara Gut's universe, from the victory of the Alpine Ski World Cup Overall title in 2016 to the comeback after an injury at the peak of her career. A documentary about a young woman and a champion trying to find her way amidst self-fulfillment and public expectations.
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An inquisitive look at the identity and evolution of those who seek solutions to armed crises in the 21st century. In the background of some of the most intrenched conflicts on the planet, we see the conflicts through the eyes of the negotiators and learn of their challenges and their personal sacrifices as they try to resolve conflicts in the most difficult of circumstances.
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Diana, Romi, Rona, Shelly, Rucha and Liat openly speak about their life in prostitution: from the initial lure, through learning the rules, to survival strategies. They present stories of independence, resourcefulness, pain & trauma, expressing an extreme feminine and human experience. Michaela (pseudonym)--a young woman currently engaged in prostitution, sounds off on the struggle to survive, turning her cellphone camera into a weapon.
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Silicone Soul explores the emotional connection some people have to their synthetic companions and what that means for the future of human relationships.
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Gorgeous images of dances, stunning while thought provoking: the dancers are handicapped.
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Embark on a risky year-long UN peacekeeping mission into earthquake-ravaged Haiti with an all-female Bangladeshi police unit. Leaving their families behind, these police officers shatter stereotypes as they rise in the name of building peace.
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