Social & External
The people behind it
Álvaro Zermeño
Eleazar García Jr.
Rebeca Silva
Last Man’s Land follows Isiah, a hardened survivor navigating a post-apocalyptic America two years after the world’s collapse. When a ruthless survivalist steals a cache of desperately needed medical supplies meant for a group of sick children, Isiah sets out across a dangerous, lawless landscape to track them down and bring the supplies back—no matter the cost.
Chile, early 20th century. José Menéndez, a wealthy landowner, hires three horsemen to mark out the perimeter of his extensive property and open a route to the Atlantic Ocean across vast Patagonia.
The Aït Atta tribe of the High Atlas mountain range in Morocco preserves their ancestral right of access to the agdal, a communal land management system that dates back hundreds of years. The film follows Ben Youssef family’s arduous transhumance journey from the desert-like landscape of Nkob to the green pastures of Agdal Igourdane, throughout uneven terrain of steep climbs and descents of these High Atlas mountains. They migrate each summer with their 800 goats, donkeys, mules, camels and dogs, as they embark on this formidable journey on foot.
Emília Pedro e Fernanda Jorge revisit childhood memories to identify over 70 land parcels inherited from their father. As physical traces fade, memory and oral tradition become the only way to 'see' what is no longer visible.
When an Ivy League lawyer challenges her family’s claim to their longtime home, small-town attorney LouEster Sadie Gibbs must fight a courtroom battle that pits privilege against legacy.
In 2020, just as the pandemic was beginning, Gazala purchased land in western Ohio, on which sits a disused school building. This site allowed her to explore her complex relationship with “the land.” As the daughter of displaced indigenous Palestinians, she attempts to form a proxy bond with the earth, on ground that was stolen from the displaced indigenous Shawnee people. Closeness to the Land is video footage of hand-painted text signs that translate the word الأرض (ard) into six English words, displayed performatively in multiple locations to capture the now-invisible nature of indigenous culture in Ohio. These signs were installed on the old schoolhouse in early 2021.
Jarred by the loss of his closest friend, a farmer on Tasmania’s remote West Coast, begins to mentor at-risk local youth. In an area renowned for its poverty, low literacy, and high suicide rates, Stafford Heres is determined to provide opportunities for kids who have few. Eden Alone Surpasses Thee explores his relationship with the land, loss, and the young men he takes under his wing.
A Maasai human rights lawyer fights to stop the evictions of his people from their homelands in Tanzania. On the outskirts of Serengeti National Park in East Africa, Maasai face eviction from their land to make way for international tourism and hunting grounds. Human rights lawyer Joseph Oleshangay campaigns for his community to remain on its homeland as it has done for generations. While he represents Maasai communities in court, Joseph also remains close to his traditions among the cattle at his rural home near the Ngorongoro Crater. Risking his life to gather evidence from recently depopulated villages, Joseph battles in court where he leads the fight to resist the evictions.
Something from there is a short film on the substance of our original lands. Weaving between the voices of the artist’s parents, one a refugee and the other not, the film is personal, yet evokes a shared Palestinian experience.
Tragic pages in the history of the formation of the independent Lithuanian state in 1918-20.
Just when everyone thought the nightmare was over, a new menace strikes the city in a savage and bloody manner.
In the Christmas holidays, a mysterious extra-terrestrial force bursts into the life of a suburban couple on the brink of divorce. However, none of them notices this otherwordly presence, so this entity will have to live with them in this grey, sad and lifeless home, observing as their relationship finally desintegrates.
As queer trans and gender non-conforming children of the Vietnamese diaspora, we are fragmented at the crossroads of being displaced from not only a sense of belonging to our ancestral land, but also our own bodies which are conditioned by society to stray away from our most authentic existence. Yet these bodies of ours are the vessels we sail to embark on a lifetime voyage of return to our original selves. It is our bodies that navigate the treacherous tides of normative systems that impose themselves on our very being. And it is our bodies that act as community lighthouses for collective liberation. Ultimately, the landscape of our bodies is our blueprint to remembering, to healing, to blooming.
An experimental documentary featuring care-led practices of audiovisual archive remix, interviews and collaborative performances. The film features the home movies of Paul Berry, who was an Oscar-nominated animator, whose personal Super 8 collection is a sadly rare example of queer domestic life in film archive collections. Supported by research at the North West Film Archive, these moments of queer joy, chosen family, rural trips, and celebrations are reimagined alongside other regional film collections to a newly composed original score. Five portraits of specially featured artists discuss narratives that reflect how queer and trans creatives understand themselves, their histories, and their representation in relation to environment and landscape. These interventions weave through each artist’s practice in photography, spoken word, performance, sculpture and music, moving towards an expansive language of BODY(s) and LAND(s).
Sand is the second-most exploited resource in the world. In Southeast Asia, escalating demand fuels an opaque and often illegal trade. Hourglass, an immersive documentary short, juxtaposes Singapore's ever-rising skylines to the sinking shores of Vietnam's Mekong Delta, creating an unsettling portrait of an urgent crisis carrying profound human costs.
In Dear Home of Scars, we see celebrated visual artist Ibrahim Mahama return to his hometown of Tamale in Northern Ghana to visit Red Clay Studio, a lively cultural centre and art space he founded, where he works on a new art installation involving old colonial railcars and the reconstruction of a stretch of track. During British rule of Ghana (1821-1957), the colonisers used trains to transport gold and other resources to the coast. Remnants of track now lie abandoned as silent reminders of this history of exploitation. They are ‘scars in the landscape’, in the words of Mahama. The project brings new energy and self-awareness to local residents. Meanwhile, Mahama reflects on his role as a sought-after artist and builder of local communities.
We are in a housing crisis. We urgently need new ideas. Step forward… We Can Make. We are taken to Knowle West, South Bristol, a 100-year-old council-built estate and one of the most deprived areas in Europe. The spirit in the neighbourhood is unbroken though and this community are taking a different route to affordable housing.
For generations, the Samburu people and their livestock have had a deep connection with water, depending on the rains for their survival. The Land Smiles Back is the story of the Samburu community in Westgate Conservancy, who made the land “smile” again by returning to ancient hydrotechnology.
When a celebrated architect discovers an obsessive solace in designing a residential home on a plot of farmland, he must first address the matters in his own house.
A scorned woman enlists the help of five strangers to execute a bank robbery. Tensions rise as the men anxiously await her arrival with the money, leaving the crew to wonder if they have been betrayed.
Jake Remy leads a gang of outlaw cutthroats making their escape toward Mexico from a successful robbery. Barring their way is a river--crossable only by means of a ferry barge. The barge operator, Travis, refuses to be bullied into providing transport for the gang and escapes across river with most of the local populace--leaving Remy and his gang behind, desperately seeking a way across. A river-wide stand-off begins between the gang and the townspeople, both groups of which have left people on the wrong side of the river.
While passing through the town of Bannock, a bunch of drunken cattlemen go overboard with their celebrating and accidentally kill an old man with a stray shot. They return home to Sabbath unaware of his death. Bannock lawman Jered Maddox later arrives there to arrest everyone involved on a charge of murder. Sabbath is run by land baron Vince Bronson, a benevolent despot, who, upon hearing of the death, offers restitution for the incident.
A peace-loving, part-time sheriff in the small town of Firecreek must take a stand when a gang of vicious outlaws takes over his town.
Pacer Burton, a young man of mixed Kiowa and white heritage, is caught between two worlds as conflict erupts between Native Americans and white settlers in Texas.
Jim Douglass arrives in the small town of Rio Arriba in order to witness the hanging of the four men he believes murdered his wife. When the convicts escape, Jim tracks them into Mexico, determined to see that justice is done. But the farther Jim goes in his quest for vengeance, the more merciless he becomes, losing himself in an unrelenting spiral of hatred and violence.
A pioneering family fights back against a gang of vicious outlaws that is terrorizing them on their newly-built farm on the plains of Montana.
A con man heading west to search for gold teams up with a pair of scheming brothers along the way. The trio soon find themselves in the middle of a feud between two rival families and two underhanded land developers.
One of the last bills signed by President Lincoln authorizes pushing the Union Pacific Railroad across the wilderness to California. But financial opportunist Asa Barrows hopes to profit from obstructing it. Chief troubleshooter Jeff Butler has his hands full fighting Barrows' agent, gambler Sid Campeau; Campeau's partner Dick Allen is Jeff's war buddy and rival suitor for engineer's daughter Molly Monahan. Who will survive the effort to push the railroad through at any cost?
When vigilante land baron David Braxton hangs one of the best friends of cattle rustler Tom Logan, Logan's gang decides to get even by purchasing a small farm next to Braxton's ranch. From there the rustlers begin stealing horses, using the farm as a front for their operation. Determined to stop the thefts at any cost, Braxton retains the services of eccentric sharpshooter Robert E. Lee Clayton, who begins ruthlessly taking down Logan's gang.
Karl Westover, an inexperienced farm boy, runs away after unintentionally killing a neighbor, whose family pursues him for vengeance. He meets Barbarosa, a gunman of near-mythical proportions, who is himself in danger from his father-in-law Don Braulio, a wealthy Mexican rancher. Don Braulio wants Barbarosa dead for marrying his daughter against the father's will. Barbarosa reluctantly takes the clumsy Karl on as a partner, as both of them look to survive the forces lining up against them.
Two tough westerners bring home a group of settlers who have spent years as Comanche hostages.
After crossing the border illegally for work, Miguel, a hard-working father and devoted husband, finds himself wrongfully accused of murdering a former sheriff’s wife. After learning of his imprisonment, Miguel’s pregnant wife tries to come to his aid and lands in the hands of corrupt coyotes who hold her for ransom. Dissatisfied with the police department’s investigation, the former sheriff tries to uncover the truth about his wife’s death and discovers disturbing evidence that will destroy one family’s future, or tear another’s apart.
Cole Thornton, a gunfighter for hire, joins forces with an old friend, Sheriff J.P. Harrah. Together with a fighter and a gambler, they help a rancher and his family fight a rival rancher that is trying to steal their water.
A gunfighter and a cowboy help a Mexican girl avenge the land-related murder of her parents.
When an evil contractor goes to extreme measures to evict a testy tenant who is standing in the way of his new project, he fails to take into account that this seemingly harmless old woman is a trained killer and will do anything to protect her beloved home.
Davy Crockett and his sidekick Georgie compete against boastful Mike Fink ("King of the River") in a boat race to New Orleans. Later, Davy and Georgie, allied with Fink, battle a group of river pirates trying to pass themselves off as Native Americans.
Tom Destry, son of a legendary frontier peacekeeper, doesn’t believe in gunplay. Thus he becomes the object of widespread ridicule when he rides into the wide-open town of Bottleneck, the personal fiefdom of the crooked Kent.
The origins, exploits and the ultimate fate of the James gang is told in a sympathetic portrayal of the bank robbers made up of brothers who begin their legendary bank raids because of revenge.
When the most wanted man in America surfaces in a small Kentucky town, his violent history -- and a blood-thirsty mob seeking vengeance and a king’s ransom -- soon follow. As brothers face off against one another and bullets tear the town to shreds, this lightning-fast gunslinger makes his enemies pay the ultimate price for their greed.
