A short documentary on the chateaux of the Loire in France was commissioned by the French Tourist Bureau.
Social & External
Narrator (voice)
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Hungary was the site of serial murders on ethnic basis. Over the course of one year, the murderers killed and seriously injured Roma children and adults. The state charged 4 men with committing the crime with racial motivation. This historical trial started March, 2011, and ended August, 2013 in Budapest. The 167 days of hearings was only documented continuously by our crew. We had exclusive permission to use multiple cameras in the court-room. The film is a classical chamber-drama, taking place in a small, claustrophobic court room, in the middle of Europe. What will be the outcome of the marathon, 3 year-long trial?
The Kitades run a butcher shop in Kaizuka City outside Osaka, raising and slaughtering cattle to sell the meat in their store. The seventh generation of their family's business, they are descendants of the buraku people, a social minority held over from the caste system abolished in the 19th century that is still subject to discrimination. As the Kitades are forced to make the difficult decision to shut down their slaughterhouse, the question posed by the film is whether doing this will also result in the deconstruction of the prejudices imposed on them. Though primarily documenting the process of their work with meticulous detail, Aya Hanabusa also touches on the Kitades' participation in the buraku liberation movement. Hanabusa's heartfelt portrait expands from the story of an old-fashioned family business competing with corporate supermarkets, toward a subtle and sophisticated critique of social exclusion and the persistence of ancient prejudices.
Agnes may not seem like someone with much to laugh about. For one thing, she has albinism - a lack of pigment in the skin, hair and eyes - and her appearance has provoked prejudice from family, friends and strangers since she was born. But despite all odds, Agnes refuses to lead a life of sorrow. This fascinating and inspiring documentary also shares the stories of seven other people's individual experiences of living their lives with albinism in Kenya, a predominantly black society. While each person's story is unique, they all have one thing in common: they know what it is like to stand out uncomfortably from the crowd.
In this heartwarming docudrama, Chilean immigrant Marilú Mallet strives to make a film about her experience of deep isolation. Her English-speaking husband, a prominent film director, criticizes her subjective approach to filmmaking; her young son, raised in Quebec, speaks only French. Interviews with Isabel Allende and other Chilean exiles reveal a deep bond in this powerful and resonant film about language and genre, exile and immigration.
Once described by the press as "one of the most controversial figures on the Australian art scene", avant-garde poet and playwright Christopher Barnett achieved a level of notoriety in the Melbourne underground theatre scene during the ‘70s and ‘80s, before self-exiling to France. He remains there today, running an experimental theatre lab working with the marginalised and underprivileged, applauded by the establishment (including former French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault) and faithful to his belief that art can change the world. These Heathen Dreams is an intimate portrait of Barnett's life and revolutionary philosophy. Combining archival footage dating back to the ‘60s with contemporary observational documentation and text from Barnett's writings, it is a poignant and inspiring study of the power of both art and political activism.
In 1970, Melek Tez came to Berlin as a young worker from Turkey. A confident woman, she first countered racist resentments and remarks with irony and wit. Jokingly, she even referred to herself as a "Kümmeltürkin", a derogatory German term for Turkish migrants. Yet after fourteen humiliating years, her fighting spirit has given way to resignation: Melek Tez is returning to Turkey. Blending documentary, interviews and re-enacted scenes, director Jeanine Meerapfel chronicles Melek Tez' life experience.
This one hour documentary examines the life of the famed Sharp Shooter and Wild West performer, Annie Oakley from her birth in mid nineteenth century rural Pennsylvania to her death in 1926. Many myths are overturned and the program also features a little known trial when Annie Oakley had to sue The Hearst Newspaper chain all throughout the country for libel when they reported the activities of someone who was impersonating the famed sharpshooter and besmirching her reputation.
Conflict between man and machine has been a science fiction staple for over a century. From 2001: A Space Odyssey to The Terminator the perceived threat posed by super-intelligent robots has been exploited by Hollywood for decades. But do advances in Artificial Intelligence mean we are now facing a future in which that threat could become a reality?
ŽIŽEK! trails the thinker as he crisscrosses the globe, racing from New York City lecture halls, through the streets of Buenos Aires, and even stopping at home in Ljubljana, Slovenia. All the while Žižek obsessively reveals the invisible workings of ideology through his unique blend of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Marxism, and critique of pop culture.
The tiny village in the far north of Sweden called Ensamheten (Solitude) has sixteen inhabitants. They all share an unusual passion - armwrestling.
At the peak of her immense popularity in the 1920s, evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson was drawing larger crowds to her revivals than those of P.T. Barnum or Harry Houdini. This chapter of "American Experience" paints a vivid portrait of the controversial and charismatic religious figure. Credited with mainstreaming religion in American culture, Sister Aimee created one of the country's first Christian radio stations, among other accomplishments.
Saroyanland is a docu-drama focusing on the journey of famous writer William Saroyan to the birthplace of his Armenian family Bitlis, in Turkey in 1964. While retaking the same road, the film aims to understand Saroyan's unique attitude to belonging, witnessing the self-discovery of a man who followed the traces of his Armenian ancestors.
A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.
A group of young women from Ouagadougou study at a girl school to become auto mechanics. The classmates become their port of safety, joy and sisterhood, all while they are going through the life changing transition into becoming adults in a country boiling with political changes. In a country with youth unemployment at 52 percent, jobs are a hot issue. The young girls at a mechanics school in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou are right in the middle of a crucial point in life when their dreams, hopes and courage are confronted with opinions, fears and society’s expectations of what a woman should be. Using interesting narrative solutions, Theresa Traore Dahlberg depicts their last school years and at the same time succeeds in showing the country’s violent past and present. This is a feature-film debut and coming-of-age film with much warmth, laughs, heartbreak and depth.
After surviving the massacre in which the police killed ten landless workers in Pará’s Amazon region, Fernando dos Santos becomes the only survivor to reveal his identity and testify. Still shaken, he recounts how the police murdered his boyfriend and tortured his companions, yet the film portrays him as far more than a victim: a courageous man who left the city’s comfort to chase the dream of owning land, using humor and intelligence to endure the solitude of being a gay man in rural Brazil. Alongside him is José Vargas, an idealistic lawyer defending the survivors and their right to justice. As he faces threats and isolation, the film exposes the human cost of truth, resilience, and the struggle for dignity in a land scarred by violence and inequality.
American Experience presents Summer of Love, a striking picture of San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district during the summer of 1967 -- from the utopian beginnings, when peace and love prevailed, to the chaos, unsanitary conditions, and widespread drug use that ultimately signaled the end. Academy Award-nominated filmmakers Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco (Daughter from Danang) examine the social and cultural forces that sparked the largest migration of young people in America's history.
Nicholas Vreeland walked away from a worldly life of privilege to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Grandson of legendary Vogue editor Diana Vreeland and apprentice of photographer Irving Penn, Nicholas' life changed drastically upon meeting one of the Dalai Lama's teachers. Soon thereafter, he gave up his glamorous life to live in a monastery in India, ultimately returning to his roots in photography to help his fellow monks rebuild their monastery.
Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.
One day in 2005, Lina Fruzzetti receives a startling email that reads, "If this is your father, we are cousins." There follows a decade-long quest to learn more about her Italian father who died young in Italian ruled Eritrea and her Eritrean mother who does not dwell on the past. Above all, Fruzzetti strives to understand her far-flung African, European, and American family against the backdrop of colonial rule, worlds at war, migration, grief, diasporas, and the global world in which we all live.
Lucas and Clementine live peacefully in their isolated country house, but one night they wake up to strange noise. They're not alone... and a group of hooded assailants begin to terrorize them throughout the night.
Impressions of the rue Mouffetard, Paris 5, through the eyes of a pregnant woman.
Join Timon and Pumbaa, your favourite friends from The Lion King, for outrageous laughs and high-spirited, globe-trotting adventures. First destination - Africa. In 'Kenya Be My Friend', Timon and Pumbaa forget how to be friends when Timon forgets 'Bestest Best Friend Day'. In 'South Sea Sick', Timon plays doctor when Pumbaa eats a bad bug - but the cure may kill first. Then in 'Uganda Be An Elephant', Pumbaa learns he's happy just being himself after he tries to be one of the more popular animals in the jungle. Then, it's off to Central America in 'How To Beat The High Costa Rica'. A crook and his money are soon parted when Timon and Pumbaa try to recover stolen money from the evil bank robber, Quint.
On the set of his amateur short film, Tim unwittingly meets a certain Stéphane, a gruff, loud-mouthed man with stories that smack of a competition mythomaniac. Tim is convinced that he has a golden documentary subject.
Choreography of familiar gestures that the author was able to spice up with a peculiar and original perspective.
Didier, 28 years old, is still livning with his parents. Prisoner of his own habits, he doesn't communicate with them anymore. When he casually meets his former girlfriend, Valerie, he finds again his serenity.
Professor Phillip Brainard, an absent minded professor, works with his assistant Weebo, trying to create a substance that's a new source of energy and that will save Medfield College where his sweetheart Sara is the president. He has missed his wedding twice, and on the afternoon of his third wedding, Professor Brainard creates flubber, which allows objects to fly through the air.
In the boorish city of Agrabah, kind-hearted street urchin Aladdin and Princess Jasmine fall in love, although she can only marry a prince. He and power-hungry Grand Vizier Jafar vie for a magic lamp that can fulfill their wishes.
When Alex is caught using magic to clean her room she is forced to go to wizard school with Justin. Max and Jerry camp out on the terrace to prove their manhood.
The nefarious Warwick the Warlock has returned from his astral imprisonment, and plans to make the final sacrifice for ultimate power - all he needs is the soul of a pure heart. The Buddies, alongside their new spectral friend Pip, race against the clock to defeat the sorcerer, who has enlisted the Halloween Hound to do his dirty work under the cover of the neighborhood festivities.
In the Headquarters of the T.I.A. (Terminal Intelligence Agency), someone has stolen Professor Bacterio's most dangerous invention, the D.O.T. (Demoralizer of Troops), an artifact that ends up in the hands of a very short, wacky dictator who is ready to use it for criminal purposes. The T.I.A Chief, though, is firm in his resolve: if he wants to get the D.O.T. back, he must NOT count on his agents Mortadelo & Filemon. But when the crime fighting duo discover that the T.I.A. has engaged a cocky and slimy detective from outside the agency, they decide to act at their own risk, even if that risk involves all of Humanity.
Five years after the all-out war between the Sanno and Hanabishi crime families, former yakuza boss Otomo works in South Korea for Mr. Chang, a noted fixer. When tensions rise between Chang and the Hanabishi, and Chang's life is endangered, Otomo returns to Japan to settle things once and for all.
Combat has taken its toll on Rambo, but he's finally begun to find inner peace in a monastery. When Rambo's friend and mentor Col. Trautman asks for his help on a top secret mission to Afghanistan, Rambo declines but must reconsider when Trautman is captured.
A mysterious and immortal Tibetan kung fu master, who has spent the last 60 years traveling around the world protecting the ancient Scroll of the Ultimate, mentors a selfish street kid in the ancient intricacies of kung fu.
A group of young people leave a disco and bump into a shepherd who is ready to spend his night worshipping Satan.
Get ready for a howling good time as an all new assortment of irresistible animal heroes are unleashed in this great family tail! In an unlikely alliance, the outrageous Waddlesworth - a parrot who thinks he's a Rottweiler - teams up with Oddball - an un-marked Dalmatian puppy eager to earn her spots! Together they embark on a laugh-packed quest to outwit the ever-scheming Cruella De Vil.
Abandoned by his father, a young boy is left in the hands of an unqualified childcare provider.
The story of the love affair between FDR and his distant cousin Margaret Stuckley, centered around the weekend in 1939 when the King and Queen of the United Kingdom visited upstate New York.
César Borgnoli, an unsuccessful car salesman from Italy, lives well beyond his means. In order to get out of his financial disaster, he agrees to a deal: he pretends to be the husband of his sister's girlfriend Kim so she can legally adopt a little girl from Thailand. Caesar believes this to be a great idea and is looking forward to his trip to Thailand. After all, he is going to be able to mix business with pleasure--so he thinks. He didn't expect the local police, the Chinese Triads and the director of the orphanage to chip in, who want to make sure that little Mai is going to end up in a nice family.
A man tries to uncover an unconventional psychologist's therapy techniques on his institutionalized wife, while a series of brutal attacks committed by a brood of mutant children coincides with the husband's investigation.
