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- An anti-western propaganda film about the influences of American visual and consumption culture on the rest of the world, as told from a North Korean perspective.
- When soldiers are killed, they often end up as anonymous numbers in news reports. But behind every number there is a person who leaves behind heartbroken family members. 1489 refers to the anonymous number assigned to Soghomon Vardanyan.
- A look at the life of Lawrence MacEwen who has farmed the Isle of Muck since the 1960s.
- Documentary about Lithuania in the years 1989 to 1991, when the Baltic country broke away from the Soviet Union. Because of the peaceful protests with much singing, this period was later also called the 'singing revolution'. As one of the founders of the independence movement, Vytautas Landsbergis was at the heart of the historical upheaval. His incisive reflections are complemented by extensive archive footage of demonstrations, party congresses and the Soviet military intervention.
- Just after the Second World War, 5,000 young children were sent from Austria to stay with host families in Portugal, where they could recover from the violence of war. They were often welcomed in by well-to-do families with domestic staff living in sunny villas, and for most of the children this was a holiday in paradise. The contrast with their living conditions at home, and the huge difference between the lives of rich and poor in Portugal in this period, made a deep impression on the young Austrians.
- The New Greatness Case offers remarkable access to a group of young Russians entrapped by the secret service, resulting in unjust trials and prison sentences - echoing the intensified crackdown on dissent and free expression in Russia we see on the news every day. As we are witnessing the intensified crackdown on dissent and free expression in Russia, The New Greatness Case brings you into the life of young Russians caught in the crossfire. Anya was an ordinary teenager, discussing Russian politics and social issues on the internet with a group of friends, when a secret agent joined their chat group and rented them a meeting space - pushing them towards direct physical action. Police storm their homes to arrest and jail the teens, accusing them of plotting to overthrow the government and fabricating charges of extremism. Three years later, Anya's mother, continuing her desperate fight to prove her daughter's innocence, has transformed from a loyal follower of Vladimir Putin to a hunger-strike enacting political activist. With hidden camera footage, and an intimate relationship with the protagonists, director Anna Shishova shows the complete repression of present-day Russia, and how young, free-thinking people, are seen as a threat to the government.
- Enter the universe of three mujra dancers in Pakistan as they dodge state censorship and violence to vie for stardom.
- In Libya, two siblings put their heart and soul into the future of their country during the 2011 revolution, but each on a different side: he supported Gaddafi, she was one of the "rebels". Now belonging to the ruling class, she is again standing up for the oppressed and seeking rehabilitation for people like her brother. We follow these fervent, resilient siblings over six years, during which she stands for elections and he struggles with the traumas of war.
- On 21 September 1972, president Marcos promulgated a new constitution, in which the democratic principles of the Philippines had been laid down. In the subsequent fourteen years, however, Marcos did not take much notice of his own laws. He ignored the parliament, had opposition leaders arrested and tortured, and his other enemies killed. Together with his greedy wife Imelda and a group of friends and acquaintances, he plundered the Treasury on a large scale. Both those who committed the oppression and their opponents who survived it are introduced in this documentary. Examples are former president Corazon Aquino, but also Imelda Marcos herself and the left-wing leader Bernabe Buscayno. Illustrated by numerous interviews, a reconstruction is made of fourteen years of dictatorship on the Philippines. The film includes photographs, film and video recordings that have never been shown before.
- In Yugoslavia in 1947, 211,000 of the country's young people, joined by 5,735 from abroad, worked with great enthusiasm building the 242 kilometer railroad between Sarajevo and Samac. A newsreel from the period shows them toiling away with spades, pickaxes and shovels to complete the job in just seven months. Newsreel 242-Sunny Railways is both a tribute to these idealistic young people and an elegy for the loss of hope for a better world. "The visions of the future suffocated in the rivers of blood and mass graves," we hear in voice-over, referring to the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia and to a broader context. The railroad, laid over the rubble of the Second World War, damaged during the Bosnian War, and neglected in the new millennium now looks like the ruins of some ancient civilization. This documentary essay argues that the story of the railroad harbors enduring ideas for a world beyond capitalism, and that we must rediscover the values of times past.
- Diana is not the only one for whom the monthly period is no fun at all. Headaches, nausea, depression -- why is it so widely accepted that women all over the world should feel so lousy on a regular basis? And why is the subject still not openly discussed? With a keen sense of perspective, humor, and self-mockery, Diana goes in search of answers. The most wide-ranging theories put forward by anthropologists, psychologists, journalists, gynecologists, and belly-dance teachers are intercut with old-fashioned information films and animated clips. The connecting factor throughout the film is 11-year-old Dominika, who keeps the audience updated about her impending menstruation, bringing up all kinds of questions. Why is blue liquid used in advertisements for sanitary napkins? Is the pill being used to adjust our body's rhythm to that of a male-dominated society? Why do we bleed when, in nature, blood is synonymous with death? Diana's quest brings her a deeper understanding and appreciation of her body. And also of her moods, because as one expert claims, whereas women are sometimes perceived to be complaining during menstruation, it is actually the hormones giving them the courage to finally say what they really always thought.
- A survivor of the Rwandan genocide resurfaces to confront his parents' murderers, and provides himself and his beloved ones peace.
- In poor areas of rural India, large numbers of villagers-most of them young men-are leaving their homes to look for work in big cities. Many of them disappear into the anonymity of city life, leaving their families to wonder what became of them. For the people left behind, the sense of loss remains huge even many years later. Absence is a cinematic portrayal of the grief, agony and anguish of separation that is expressed with the Hindi word "birha". In a faraway village, missing people, mothers and tired lovers yearn to see beyond the mist. They meet each other in impenetrable silences and endless mourning. They curse the moon for witnessing their insomnia. Guided by Shiv Kumar Batalvi's birha poetry, the film captures the pain, lamentation and yearning caused by separation. The locations are not marked, characters are not named. Absence situates itself in a season of waiting and a climate of uncertainty, where only a loud screech can measure the distance between loved ones.
- Deep in the misty jungle of southern Colombia, between treacherously steep mountain slopes, stands an unfinished concrete bridge as an absurd symbol of human folly. Once intended as a link in the new "bypass" that was supposed to replace the perilous old road from Pasto to Mocoa, it's now a bizarre attraction for day trippers taking selfies and kids doing motorcycle stunts. In 1991 a devastating landslide hit the old road, known as the "trampoline of death", killing dozens of people. An engineer in his jeep describes it as madness that this lethal road was constructed like this back in the 1940s. After all, Catholic missionaries had already found a better route decades earlier. Local residents view the futuristic design of the new bridge under construction on their laptops. Workers pour concrete in the midst of mud and fast-flowing waters, unaware of the impending doom. It's as if there's a conspiracy between nature, politicians and foolish arrogance.
- "The wind got up in the night and took our plans away," reads the proverb in the opening titles of Museum of the Revolution. The words are a reference to the 1961 plan to build a grand museum in Belgrade as a tribute to Socialist Yugoslavia. It was supposed to "safeguard the truth" about the Yugoslav people. But the plan never got beyond the construction of the basement. The derelict building now tells a very different story from the one envisioned by the initiators 60 years ago. In the damp, pitch-dark building live the outcasts of a society reshaped by capitalism. The film focuses on a girl who earns a little cash on the street by cleaning car windows with her mother. The girl has a close friendship with an old woman who also lives in the basement. Against the background of a transforming city, the three women find refuge in each other.
- It is true that there is still tomorrow, what a pity that there is still tomorrow.
- A camera in the hands of African Union soldiers in Mogadishu, Somalia, captures the war on the jihadist militants in Al-Shabaab.
- An old railway station in a remote valley of Georgia suddenly becomes a site for a big change, when hundreds of Chinese settle around it to build the New Silk Road.
- The story of Pacifist German Writer Erich Maria Remarque, author of the book that sold the most copies after the bible. "All Quiet on the Western Front"( 60 millions copies). A man who fought in WW1, who wrote about the horror of the war in the trenches and on the fields, of gas, comraderie and death and the stolen youth. This documentary is about him, his love for beautiful women, his love story with actress Marlene Dietrich and his love story with actress Paulette Goddard, later his wife.
- West Lake Restaurant in South China's Changsha can safely call itself the biggest Chinese restaurant in the world, with its staff of 1,000 working 5,000 tables and serving no fewer than 150 ducks per day and 200 snakes per week. The words of the restaurant's staff and guests are used in the film to paint a picture of modern China: the proprietress, one of the city's 20 self-made millionaires, speaks candidly about her failed marriage; a bridegroom-to-be who is celebrating at the restaurant explains the modern Chinese customs associated with the wedding party; and a waitress visits her poor parents in the countryside. Through these scenes, we gain insight into the unique combination of the ancient religious values and the new capitalist values with which China is stepping into the 21st century. What becomes very clear is that not everyone is set to benefit from the economic boom. In an approach comparable to Jia Zhang-ke's in his portrait of a theme park called "The World," by focusing on the microcosm of the West Lake Restaurant, this film manages to gain a perspective on the huge changes China is going through.
- August 9 2006. Three Mexican fishermen are found near the Marshall Islands, more than 5,000 miles away from home, after 9 months and 9 days adrift. They declared, "We survived by eating raw fish, capturing rain water and our faith in God". A book editor from Atlanta, and a Colombian cosmetics seller living in Mexico City, see in this story a message from God they must spread. Weeks later they all sign a contract for 3 million dollars to make a film of their ordeal. It seems that the real danger is still to come.
- A poetic essay and an uneasy love story, Lagos at Large is a tribute to the largest city of Nigeria by poet Njideka, a daughter of the diaspora living in Austria. The short film is a lyrical collage told in short segments, as we plot a course through the noise and urban chaos, made pressing and real in VR.
- This documentary looks for an answer to the question of why the number of suicides among young American veterans and soldiers of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is so frighteningly high.
- Maasja Ooms closely follows Jason as he struggles with the psychological effects of a traumatic childhood, which were only intensified when he was taken into juvenile residential care at the age of 16. During intense therapy sessions, it becomes clear how much he has been harmed, and how far-reaching the consequences are when wrong decisions are made in the youth care system.
- In shades of gray, the calm, static shots show young female visitors to a public hospital in Argentina. This is the place where teenage girls have to make a decision about the new life growing inside them. A few of them have, at a very young age indeed, already had children. For others, the idea of a future as a mother is new and terrifying. In many cases, though, having an abortion isn't a decision to be taken for granted. Some of the girls have learned from childhood that getting pregnant is your own fault, and you have to accept the consequences. What they know about abortion comes from horror stories of clandestine practices in backstreet clinics. The hospital gynecologists and other staff, who can be heard but not seen, ask the girls about their well-being, their relationship, their family ties, and how they see the future-with or without a child. In these intimate and non-judgmental conversations, the girls respond with powerful candor in their most vulnerable moments.
- In spite of its wonderfully picturesque location in a valley in the Italian Alps, the population of the tiny village of Viganella has been reduced by half since World War II. Young people are nowhere to be seen, and tourists appear only sporadically, in the summer months. During the winter, the sun is blocked by a mountain, meaning that the village is cloaked in shadow for 83 days a year. The village's ever-optimistic mayor Pierfranco Midali refuses to think in terms of limitations, however, and has come up with an ingenious solution. To make Viganella more attractive, he wants to install a massive mirror on one of the mountaintops, to reflect the sun onto the village in the winter. In this way, the painstakingly restored village square can also enjoy a little sunlight during the dark winter months. While helicopters put the mirror in place, a German Buddhist commune established on top of the mountain in question back in the 1980s looks on with trepidation. Midali does everything in his power to make a success of his precarious plans and bring his village to the attention of the international press, even if only for a moment. A touch of megalomania is not out of place.
- A glimpse at the daily lives of patients in a Romanian psychiatric hospital.
- In the United States, a poetry subculture has grown up around a group of young, mostly non-white spoken-word artists. Although the work they produce is widely diverse, it tends to have a strong affinity with contemporary social reality and urban culture. The poets' work is not aimed at a mass audience, and they perform in small clubs. Each of them has found his or her own way to focus the power of the spoken word. Spitting Ink is a portrait of some of these artists. Interviews and live performances are interspersed with images of the streets of New York - not the orderly, well-to-do neighborhoods, but their lively and sometimes dilapidated backstreet counterparts, with their graffiti-covered walls, subway trains, and bars. Spoken-word artist Mike Ladd speaks about this poetry's origins and background (its roots in gospel and other forms) and about how it reached a turning point with the arrival of rap. Beau Sia creates poetry both to impress the girls and to rebut prejudices about his Asiatic roots; Celena Glenn only writes once a year, when her head is full to overflowing and dozens of poems suddenly stream out.
- From the translucent golden eggs of the Tibetan bearded vulture to those of the British guillemot with their Jackson Pollock-like splashes, German ornithologist Max Schönwetter (1874-1961) collected them all. He devoted his life to oology, the study of birds' eggs. But while Schönwetter created order in his world of eggs, chaos broke out in the world around him on the eve of the Second World War.
- PATIENT is the word used for those following medical instructions or for the moment we need to calmly wait. Colombia is a country where the inclement Health System obligates its users to confront absurd bureaucratic obstacles for them to obtain service. A PATIENT is not only the person who suffers an illness hoping for recovery but also the person who provides personal care to the ill, fighting daily to warrantee what's needed for his or her loved one. Nubia is a PATIENT, a mother head of family, that regardless the fear of loosing her daughter from a cancer, she manages to firmly overcome the labyrinths established by the Health System procedures, which are the only hope for her daughter.
- Dutch author, poet and columnist Remco Campert (b. 1929) still sits at his typewriter every day, despite his advancing age. This veteran of the experimental Dutch literary movement of the early 1950s known as the Vijftigers sees himself mainly as a poet, even though he might be more famous for his columns, short stories and public performances. He has carefully created an image of himself as a charming Sunday's child, loved by everyone. But who is he really? Director John Albert spent a year with Campert, quietly documenting his everyday life (the daily game of scrabble with his wife Deborah, a cup of tea, a cigarette, a glass of wine), as well as more intimate moments such as his admission to the hospital and conversations with his daughters and friends. He turns out to be a man of few words - at least verbally - but his poems tell a story of melancholy, mortality and approaching death. Fortunately, his writing keeps him going: "Poetry is an act of affirmation. I affirm that I am alive."
- The Rwandan Night is a feature ethno-documentary that is centered around the haunting memories of one of the oldest survivor of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. One night, in the spring of 2006 before a large audience at Mumena stadium in the capital city of Rwanda, Sakindi bears witness to the story of his survival since 1959. Both poetic and moving, Ndahayo's use of original Rwandan music of commemoration, produces a vivid cinematic rendering of this unique voice forcefully testifying to the long ordeal of his people during so many decades before April 1994. Alternating between footage filmed in Kigali during a commemoration night and more recent testimonies of survivors and genocide scholars in the United States, Ndahayos second film creates a fascinating dialog between survivors and those who seek to understand the roots of genocide.
- In the daytime, Vicky goes fishing out on the sea, in the evening she runs a little bar on the blustery beach of her small village in Ecuador. The silences, emptiness, and meager catches all feed into the sense of unfulfilled longing that pervades her life, but The Beach of Enchaquirados also glows with an irresistible and liberating warmth.
- Filmmaker Daniela Muñoz Barroso, who is almost completely deaf, searches for the identity of the great musician Mafifa. Her quest leads her on the trail of an enigmatic woman, and also makes her question her own head and heart.
- Sixteen-year-old Juan has Asperger Syndrome. He also makes whodunits that he films, directs and edits himself at home. He dedicates a lot of time to these self-created crime stories, which are raw and filled with foul language. His grandmother-a small and frail 96-year-old-is his partner in crime and most important costar. She helps him create the dialogues and plays dangerous criminals with zest, even when it involves wearing a fuchsia wig. Juan's older sister Mercedes filmed the unique way that grandson and grandmother interact and the role they play in each other's lives: Juan forms the welcome diversion in the life of a very elderly woman, and she takes the fantasies of her grandson very seriously. For Juan, the films are an escape and a means to express himself. But with her health declining, how long can his grandmother continue to do this for her vulnerable grandson?
- For Thelma and Sahlina, hunting is an important part of their identity. Now aged 17, they are allowed to hunt without parental supervision for the first time. They search for game in a wintry Swedish landscape, practice shooting and give each other tips on the best way to position your shotgun. In between, the two best friends sing and joke about the future. When they shoot a wild boar, they skin it themselves of course, showing in passing that it's no problem to combine jobs like this with a love of make-up and pearl earrings. Atmospheric shots of the snowy Swedish countryside and close-ups of the friends in action give an intimate picture of two very ordinary teenagers with a not-so-ordinary hobby.
- It is an observational documentary which features the story of three brothers and their granny.
- Ever since she was a young child, filmmaker Ester Gould has been amazed by the sheer self-confidence of her older sister Rowan, whose boundless creativity and natural beauty tended to make everyone around her jealous. She has the world at her feet, and the universe is her playground. But can such a well-developed sense of your own worth go too far? Self-assurance is greatly valued - until it spills over into an unhealthy overestimation of the self. In this incisive, personal visual essay, Gould explores our society's increasing obsession with the self. Thanks in part to social media, the pressure to have a fantastically successful life is ever greater; personal development seems to be the only thing that counts. The filmmaker follows a number of seemingly successful people going out, socializing and participating in the art world, as they reflect in conversations or interviews on the level of self-confidence they display and how this relates to their actual "self." Meanwhile, dreamy reenactments tell the story of the filmmaker's sister Rowan, illustrated by excerpts from correspondence between the sisters. How marvelously everything is going; how fantastically she's doing; she's taking yet another inspirational course; she gets so many invites that there's simply no time. Gould gradually starts to question her interesting sister's stories, which leads to a disconcerting denouement. - See more at: https://www.idfa.nl/industry/tags/project.aspx?id=0EB122D3-2D7D-474F-9AFE-25948DD336E8#sthash.wgBgnTGl.dpuf
- Told entirely in drawings made over nearly thirty years by British artist/filmmaker Penny Andrea, Locks and Keys, Water, Trees portrays the genesis of a rare brain tumor with its origins in early childhood. Diagnosed and treated in the artist's late twenties, the film reflects an ongoing process of recovery from traumatic brain injury. Portraying drawing as both escape and embrace, a 'shuttle between inner and outer worlds', and video as its counterpart medium in time, the film speaks to the communicative power of art to connect, explore and heal trauma.
- About the life and work of one of the most famous artists of the world's heritage. The name Gustave Courbet inevitably recalls his most striking painting. The nude body of a reclining woman, thighs spread apart, with neither head nor feet portrayed... Ahead of its time, it's a painting that counters all prejudice, placing itself beyond all criticism. Beyond all subjective considerations of his painting, Courbet is an artist who breaks with what went before. He represents a rupture in the history of art as well as in the positioning of the painter in public life. This film aims at finding what led the painter to focus on realist paintings. It means grasping his painting, exploring colors, substance and the concrete. Following the path that winds through his paintings.
- Herta Müller (1953) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009. Müller's parents were German speaking Rumanians. Her adult life were darkly overshadowed by the repression of the Ceausescu regime and the continuous harassment of the Securitate. The fears and traumas resulting from those experiences largely continue to dominate her life. When Herta Müller is not working on a novel, she composes so-called 'collage poems'. The bewilderment and fear that characterize her prose also pervade her poetry.
- They are refugees-but what they need is a refugee status. When the lights in Tel Aviv go off for the night, the lines outside the immigration office start swelling. Everybody wants to be on time for when the office opens at 8 a.m. By midnight, there are hundreds of people in front of the door, most of them Ukrainian. While one of them sleeps on the pavement, another irritably attempts to make sure that everyone gets their rightful place in the line. Time ticks slowly on, and with dawn approaching a small group of office staff arrives, accompanied by security guards whose job it is to ensure the crowd doesn't all flood in at once. Most of them won't get in anyway, and even those who do will start an asylum procedure that offers limited prospects for success.
- It was on 9 November 1989 that the Berlin Wall fell. With the revolution in the German Democratic Republic, a world exploded. A world that looked so solid in the economic, political, military, ethical, social and psychological sense. The reunification of Germany not only signifies the outlines of a new course, but simultaneously means an ending. In the splendor of happiness combines fragments of this process: images of an auction of the Wall alternated with confessions of a Stasi member. Fear and hope go hand in hand. Political rhetoric flowers unprecedentedly, as does the system of informers and other monstrosities, proliferating in the vacuum of the transition.
- A portrait of three deserters from the American army, who now live in Canada. In Redemption, they speak about their memories of the war in Iraq, a war that they all now view as senseless. "Even sitting here now, I'm smelling burning flesh," one of them says. Such memories simply refuse to go away, however much the young men would like them to. If they could, they would all like to take back their decision to join the army. They also talk about the methods used to entice soldiers to join up. And we see how they now live: disillusioned, slumped on the sofa, drinking beer and smoking joints. In their early twenties, they already seem to have lost most of their youthful energy. These deserters also feel guilty -- not about deserting, but about having taken part in the war in Iraq at all in the first place. The interviews are interspersed with footage of the war and of the homes the deserters have left behind. So why did they ever join up? Boredom, unemployment, lack of self-worth. And -- above all -- the rosy picture painted of the army's role in Iraq: "I thought I would be feeding hungry children."
- Bullet sees Netherlands-based Peruvian video artist Maya Watanabe exploring the skull of an unidentified victim of the Peruvian Civil War, which raged from 1980 to 2000. A truth commission has estimated that 70,000 people died-most of them from indigenous communities-in this conflict between state military organizations, guerilla group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), and other factions. The film bears powerful witness to this past and to the neglected state in which the victim's remains are left.
- In this lively collage of fiction, animation, and YouTube videos, rich in references to South Africa's past and present, five young students from the film department of Wits University in Johannesburg examine their personal relationship with the national anthem. Its lyrics are in five languages, which are reflected in the film. But what does it mean if you don't understand your own national anthem?, one of the students wonders. He can speak the language of the Queen, but not of his own grandmother, and laments that his grandfather felt like a foreigner in his own country. Combining their diverse experiences, the film students remix the complex South African identity and give it their own twist. They each choose their own perspective and film language. An energetic radio DJ declares that you can't unscramble an omelette. He links the fragments and brings the different voices together. The title refers to the first line of the South African national anthem, Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika, which means "God bless Africa."
- In this chronological, almost clinical inventory, film student Paloma Orlandini Castro uses image and word to examine the history of her sexual awakening-from her fascination as a five-year-old for a photographic artwork by Tracey Emin to the production of her own modular porno art in her 20s.
- It took Victor Brecheret 30 years to complete his Monument to the Bandeirantes, which measures 16 meters high and 50 meters long. Since 1953, this masterwork by one of Brazil's most successful sculptors of the 20th century has been on display in São Paolo. It is an ode to the development of the Brazilian hinterland by indigenous, African and Portuguese Brazilians. Two horses are at the front, followed by a collection of angular, brawny men - together, they are dragging an enormous tree trunk. The sequence of details gradually gives the beholder a feel for the artwork's proportions and composition. It is filmed from bottom-up, causing the surrounding city to fade away, and the black-and-white cinematography endows the clouds with a monumental aura as they glide by. This study gets an extra dimension by replacing the actual sound environment with a score of what it might have sounded like during the exploration: men and horses drudge in silence and the jungle speaks.
- Horacio is a 45 year-old Uruguayan soldier. For his good service at the Naval Forces, he received the duty of lighthouse keeper at the Island of Sea Lions in the Atlantic Ocean. Horacio is poor and will soon retire. Meanwhile he sits amongst the 250 thousand sea lions who keep him company, he dreams of building a sewing machine repair shop in his backyard and giving a future to his daughter. But Horacio has to go to war to save up sufficient money. He will soon part to Congo as member of Uruguay's peace keeping force.
- The village of Petrovo Selo is located in the Serbian nature reserve Djerdap. This is the native village of director Dragan Nikolic's mother, and these days, it is practically deserted. Only a few weed-infested ruins recall the liveliness of years gone by. But this place does not only contain the remains of the former village. Hidden under the lush vegetation of Petrovo Selo lie the traces of a mass grave full of Albanians. For the filmmaker, this sinister, secret place more than 300 kilometres from the border with Kosovo symbolises a society that wants to conceal its violent past and make it disappear forever. He travels back to Petrovo Selo with his mother, trying to uncover the story behind the mass grave. With the beautiful landscape as a backdrop, Nikolic's mother reminisces about her youth and her native village. As a result, the dark history of a recent war is offset by the cheerful childhood memories of a passionate woman.