Queen - of the Manta Rays

Beyond Tradition – The Power of Yodelling and Yoiking

What is tradition? This is the question posed by yodeller and food researcher Meinrad Koch from Canton Appenzell. In search of an answer, he embarks on a journey.

Nomad Solitude

In their vehicle, Laurie, Kristy and Linda live alone on the American roads. Like thousands of modern American nomads who can no longer afford to pay for their housing. With no money to spare, these three sixty-year old women are fleeing, in their own way, a part of their history that has left a deep mark on them. Driving away, they try to regain some form of peace. But as the miles and seasons pass, despite their impressive temerity and resilience, their quest for a better future is challenged by unexpected events that hit a country in crisis. Will they nevertheless manage, at the end of the road, to find the serenity they are looking for, in order to become someone again?

The Times That Are

Four years after Pour la suite du monde (1963), director Pierre Perrault asks Alexis Tremblay if he'll agree to travel with his wife Marie to the country of their ancestors, France. In a montage parallel, we follow them in France and listen to them talking to their friends about it.

Il sasso in bocca

The "stone in the mouth" is the scar that the mafia makes on betrayal's corpse. The modern mafia has the historical and sociological roots into the birth of the american capitalism at the time of Roosevelt. The American "Cosa Nostra" applies the similar methods as the sicilian mafia: same apparatus, same "omertà", same power and same terror. Giuseppe Ferrara, journalist and writer, uses fragments footage, film clips, and current news to make this film.

Cary Grant: A Class Apart

Documentary that explores the life and career of leading man Cary Grant through film clips and interviews. Produced as S18E03 of the long running series American Masters.

Moravian Hellas

Karel Vachek’s graduate film offers us a documentary essay which is both a light-hearted and aggressive little piece and also a parody of investigative film journalism. The Strážnice folk festival, backed by the cultural Party apparatus of the time, for years had little to commend itself to authentic folklore. In the film the event assumes the form of a bizarre stage spectacle with almost surrealistic elements that Vachek reinforces with unconventional approaches (commentary appearing as titles on screen, singing, declamations into the camera, feature etudes, the fusion of news coverage and fiction). The result is a stirring film collage depicting various characters, from crowd-pleasers, Easter egg decorators, kitsch artists and peddlers, to museologists and local residents, all of whom come up against the eccentric "identical” twin reporters Karel and Jan Saudek and a bored actress who appears as an extra. Using their special blend of irony and wit, they present us with the sad truth.

To Be Continued

An ascetic walks through the narrow streets of a village every morning while his family is still asleep. In his semi-somnolent state he dreams about the history of the village mixing up myths, folklore and facts.

The Museum of Imagination

Amit Dutta recorded several conversations with Prof. B.N. Goswamy, an important art historian of India, covering his entire body of work. Interspersed with his talks were also some silences. This film draws upon some of those moments of silence and weaves them into a web of ideas and images that fill the art-historian’s mindscape.

Orientations: Chris Doyle - Stirred But Not Shaken

The life and work of Chris Doyle, the acclaimed Australian cinematographer who found regular work as the collaborator of maverick Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-Wai.

Jakub

Jakub presents an extensive ethnographical-sociological study of the life of the Ruthenians, filmed in the Maramuresh mountains in the north of Romania and in the former Sudetenland in Western Bohemia. The film was made over a period of five years during the time of both totalitarian regimes and was completed in 1992 after the revolution.

A Visit to Ogawa Productions

A Visit to Ogawa Productions offers a rare insight into the social and cinematic philosophy of one of Japan's best-known documentary film collectives. As the film reveals, Ogawa Productions' in-depth portraits of Japanese society - whether of protest movements or traditional agricultural life - grew out of an unusual commitment to integrate themselves with the communities they filmed, to the extent that their film-making literally became an alternative lifestyle.

Bombay: Our City

A documentary on the socio-economic injustice meted out to the slum-dwellers in Bombay, and an attempt to understand the factors responsible for it.

In the Name of God

The film explores the campaign waged by the Hindu right-wing organisation Vishva Hindu Parishad to build a Ram temple at the site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, as well as the communal violence that it triggered. A couple of months after Ram ke Naam was released, VHP activists demolished the Babri Masjid in 1992, provoking further violence.

Todd Barry: The Crowd Work Tour

A Todd Barry show consists of two things: amazing jokes and amazing crowd work. In September 2013, he went on a tour without the amazing jokes and did entire shows of riffing and bantering with the audience. Filmed in seven west coast cities, “Todd Barry: The Crowd Work Tour” was directed by Lance Bangs and produced by Louis CK.

Life in Loops (A Megacities RMX)

Timo Novotny labels his new project an experimental music documentary film, in a remix of the celebrated film Megacities (1997), a visually refined essay on the hidden faces of several world "megacities" by leading Austrian documentarist Michael Glawogger. Novotny complements 30 % of material taken straight from the film (and re-edited) with 70 % as yet unseen footage in which he blends original shots unused by Glawogger with his own sequences (shot by Megacities cameraman Wolfgang Thaler) from Tokyo. Alongside the Japanese metropolis, Life in Loops takes us right into the atmosphere of Mexico City, New York, Moscow and Bombay. This electrifying combination of fascinating film images and an equally compelling soundtrack from Sofa Surfers sets us off on a stunning audiovisual adventure across the continents. The film also makes an original contribution to the discussion on new trends in documentary filmmaking. Written by KARLOVY VARY IFF 2006

The Face of Anonymous

"The Face of Anonymous" by Gary Lang, which profiles Christopher Doyon, a.k.a. Commander X, who has hidden from the FBI in Toronto and Mexico.

Miinavaara!

The sculptor and protector of finncattle Miina Äkkijyrkkä is a person who provokes strong passions. Miina is an exceptional woman who has done both exceptionally courageous and exceptionally strange deeds. She is passionately hated - but also admired and loved. At the Skatta farm in Helsinki, Äkkijyrkkä breeds finncattle and fights for the existence of the farm. In addition to conflicts over livestock, Miina’s disagreements with animal welfare authorities and police are escalating. Miina is arrested and her dogs are taken into custody. Miina faces charges about opposing the police and a trial is ahead. At the same time as Miina is struggling with the authorities, she is building a sculpture of a Holy Cow from car wrecks, which she is erecting in Helsinki's Ruoholahti.

Imad's Childhood

A five-year-old Yazidi boy is released after nearly three years in ISIS captivity. Profoundly disturbed, brainwashed and weaponized by the abuse he endured, he displays violent hatred towards the world around him, and particular revulsion for his mother, who was held hostage alongside him. Imad considers himself to be an ISIS fighter and lashes out against children and adults alike in this intense horror film about a child possessed by terror. As menacing as his behaviour is, it is a mere imitation of the humiliation and brutality he was moulded by. He did exactly as he was told by ISIS in order to survive, and now, surrounded by other survivors, the love of his family and help from a therapist, will he thrive?

Satoshi Kon: The Illusionist

A subtle portrait of Japanese director Satoshi Kon by the specialist of Japanese cinema Pascal-Alex Vincent and a dive into a rich work. With interviews of the greatest Japanese, French and American directors inspired by his work.

Clone

Explore the miraculous potential and frightening possibilities of genetic cloning as National Geographic’s cameras reveal the history, controversy, and cutting-edge developments of a scientific breakthrough capable of literally changing the destiny of the human race.

Los Hermanos/The Brothers

Virtuoso Afro-Cuban-born brothers—violinist Ilmar and pianist Aldo—live on opposite sides of a geopolitical chasm a half-century wide. Tracking their parallel lives in New York and Havana, their poignant reunion, and their momentous first performances together, Los Hermanos/The Brothers suggests what is possible when walls come down, and borders are crossed. A nuanced, intensely moving view of nations long estranged, through the lens of music and family. Featuring an electrifying, genre-bending score composed by Cuban Aldo López-Gavilán, performed with his American brother, Ilmar, with a guest appearance by violin maestro Joshua Bell and the Harlem Quartet.

Free and Easy 8

When Su-san invites his late friend's daughter to come along on a fishing trip, she falls in love with Hama-chan's fishing protégé.

Satan Tempts with Love

A crime movie directed by Rudolf Jugert.

Geisterkatzen (1)

The Racket Boys

The Racket Boys is a modern comedy about two men and a woman driving from Los Angeles to San Francisco for individual reasons, but the same goal -- finding happiness and a reason for it all. A simple story of friends on the road, searching for meaning in an indifferent existence

Pirita

Mexican feature film

Pídele cuentas al rey

Fidel, an Asturian miner, after the closure of the mine where he works, decides to walk to Madrid with his family, to ask the king why the Constitution is not met, specifically the article that points out that all the Spanish citizens have the right to have a decent work. Will the king receive him?

Annie Was a Wonder

In this John Nesbitt's Passing Parade series short, narrator John Nesbitt tells the story of Scandinavian immigrant Annie Swenson, who worked as cook and housekeeper in his family's home while he was growing up.

Death in the Eifel

A money transporter is ambushed near the small Eifel village of Eschbach. The young LKA chief inspector Lona Schanz then determined in the village and its surroundings.

Meathook Massacre

3 young women encounter car trouble on the way to a Dragonsclaw concert during a rainstorm. They are forced to go seek help, where one by bloody one they are attacked by a masked maniac and hung on meathooks. Who will survive and what will be left of them?

The Belovs

Portrait of a troubled peasant family. The film tells the story of two times widow Anna Belova who lives together with her brother Mikhail. Blending the two personalities, Kosakovsky characterizes the true Russian soul: she is the rational worker, honest and strong - he is the drunken poet, the idealist, his philosophy fades into radical nonsense time after time.

The Process

This film by Stan Brakhage investigates the process of memory and thought by melting a series of images and a field of color. The positive-negative flickering graphs a sort of shutter-window all over the matter of the vision. Jittery flocks of space are interweaving as pieces of language in a scant illumination, whereas the process of thought is sheared in fuzzy transience.

Neville Shah Going Downhill

In this show, Neville narrates stories about his struggles with his age, bring orphaned, adulthood, death, depression, divorce and suicide. This isn't the only thing that doesn't make it a regular stand up special, it's also that he's doing sitting down. He treats his audience like is therapist and pretty much leaves them bereft of hope but bloated with laughter. It's dark, it's poignant, it's melancholic but it's hilarious. Considered one of the comics with the darkest material in India, Neville doesn't disappoint. The topics he deals with are narrated anecdotally, making them approachable. He doesn't make fun of them; he makes fun about them. Afflictions, vulnerabilities and flaws are a part of human beings and Neville takes his feelings about them, analyses and then presents them. It's a perspective of someone who is going through them. And you see him crumble and rise with each story, you can also see him going downhill.

Boston Johnny

A spokesman rises to the top of the Greater Boston area spokesperson game.

Tigullio minore

In the Tigullio region near Gênes this shortdocumentary shows the funeral of a local fisherman.

As Aventuras do Pequeno Colombo

To save the family from bankruptcy, Christopher Columbus convinces friends Leonardo da Vinci and Mona Lisa to go to a treasure island. On the trip, they are attacked by the Beast Nautilus

Nikolai and Watermelon Paradise

The film is about the melon growers of the Orenburg region, who plant watermelons and melons every year at their own risk. It is not easy to grow an environmentally friendly red berry. It's even harder to sell it…

Luz de redención