Efrain, known as the Reaper, has worked at a slaughterhouse for 25 years. We will discover his deep relationship with death and his struggle to live.
Social & External
For her entire professional life, renowned ecologist Nalini Nadkarni pioneered climbing techniques to study "what grows back” after an ecological disturbance in the rainforest canopy. Now, after surviving a life-threatening fall from a tree, she must turn her research question onto herself in order to understand the effects of disturbance and recovery throughout her life.
Titou will soon be forty. He lives high up in a sheep shed in the Corbières mountains. With Soledad, who lives in a nearby caravan, they make their own wine, compose their music, live their love in step with the seasons – much as you might cultivate resistance.
Entrails, a flock of sheep, one spring. The cooing of doves and songs hummed. Some vultures, bones, flowers and many hands. Hands which feed, milk, stroke, shear, film; hands that kill. Hands which inhabit the doubts and contradictions about using other species.
In 2011, the director and screenwriter Wolf Gremm receives the diagnosis - prostate cancer. According to the doctors, he has not much longer to live, maybe eight months. Wolf Gremm is torn by these devastating news in the midst of an active, fulfilling life, but he decides to deal with the disease offensively and to fight. From now on smartphone and mini camera are his constant companions.
Filmed at Masonboro Island, an undeveloped barrier island in southeastern North Carolina, “Tides” contemplates the liminal space between the modern technological world and that more ecological dimension we label as “nature” or “the environment.”
The 20 km zone surrounding the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant was designated an evacuation zone due to the radiation caused by the accident in March 2011. However, the thousands of people of Itate, situated just outside the zone, and those who had fled the area and taken shelter there were left to their own devices for over a month. Later on Itate became a restricted area and the residents were allowed only visits having to leave the area for good. The place became a ghost town, as it was too close to the Zone and many pets and farm animals are stranded there. There are said to be 150~200 dogs, 400~800 cats, 50 chickens and a pig although the exact numbers are unknown. The public interest in the accident has all but gone but there is one man who still cares what happens to those animals.
A film about the artist Daniel Spoerri. It's actually a film about a thought by Daniel Spoerri: a film almost without Daniel Spoerri, it's actually mostly acted out by a child - to say no less than that everything somehow goes on in life, even if you die in between.
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.
Since 2007, dozens of young people have been found hanged in Bridgend, a town in southern Wales. Many of them knew one another-they were friends, neighbors, and family. The striking similarities between their deaths have confounded authorities and struck fear into the hearts of parents. Headlines splashed across the UK earned Bridgend its infamous nickname: ""Death Town."
Parallel stories connected through an intimacy with death. The living and the dead communicate through visions, memories and reality.
Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying is a short meditation on love, grief, and imagination. The hand-drawn animated documentary was created through a collaboration between mother, elder and narrator Edith Almadi and filmmakers Natalie Baird and Toby Gillies. This poetic piece celebrates life and the transformative ability of art to elevate and transcend us. Through vivid drawings and Edith’s simple yet magical words, the film explores our enduring bond with loved ones who have passed. In honouring her son’s life within the cosmos, Edith’s artworks embody colours, shapes and metaphors that remind us of the timeless power of love, gravity, and grace until our final breaths.
An exclusive interview with Death as he goes about his everyday business.
A short documentary on the River Ouse, following it downstream from Lewes to Newhaven, meditating on the surrounding area.
In the depths of a Maine winter, an end-of-life doula prepares her clients for death while grappling with her own uncertainties about loss and mourning.
A climatologist, a physicist, and a volcanologist set out to conquer the highest peak in the Alps. Through exceptional images, the film recounts their odyssey and reveals the immense wealth of this natural laboratory. Straddling France, Italy, and Switzerland, the Mont Blanc massif was formed 240 million years ago. Four times the size of Paris, it covers 400 km2. Its summit, the highest in Western Europe, rises to 4,810 meters. Three scientists begin its ascent: Martine Rebetez, a Swiss climatologist; Étienne Klein, a philosopher and physicist at the French Atomic Energy Commission; and Jacques-Marie Bardintzeff, a geologist and volcanologist. Advancing in two roped teams, they are accompanied by Jean-Franck Charlet and François-Régis Thévenet, mountain guides, as well as physiologist Hugo Nespoulet.
For years, chemical pesticides were considered an efficient method of killing off agricultural pests. However, in the long term, they not only harm the supposed attackers, but also people and the environment. Biological pest control offers an alternative, because who could fight pests more efficiently than their own natural enemies?
A beautiful and disturbing film recounts America’s story from the environment’s point of view. From the arrival of Columbus to the simple wilderness living of the 16th and 17th centuries, through the agrarian lifestyle of the 18th century, the changes from the Industrial Revolution, to the 20th century when most of the planet’s resources have been depleted — this film examines the North American landscape and all the wildlife destruction, deforestation, soil depletion and pollution that have been wrought to make the American Dream come true.
The third installment of the infamous "is it real or fake?" mondo series sets its sights primarily on serial killers, with lengthy reenactments of police investigations of bodies being found in dumpsters, and a staged courtroom sequence.
Andrés returns home on the occasion of his mother’s death. As he is reunited with his family, he discovers a new conflict which, once revealed, will force him to decide if he will stay and face it or run away again in order to save himself.
In the middle of a broadcast about Typhoon Yolanda's initial impact, reporter Jiggy Manicad was faced with the reality that he no longer had communication with his station. They were, for all intents and purposes, stranded in Tacloban. With little option, and his crew started the six hour walk to Alto, where the closest broadcast antenna was to be found. Letting the world know what was happening to was a priority, but they were driven by the need to let their families and friends know they were all still alive. Along the way, they encountered residents and victims of the massive typhoon, and with each step it became increasingly clear just how devastating this storm was. This was a storm that was going to change lives.
While an opulent Dashain arrives at Hakimsaab's house, Bhaire, his neighbor and employee, struggles to afford even the basic necessities for his family. This film shows the divergence within the same festival, serving as a callous reminder of the stark differences between socio-economic classes in Nepal.
The story follows Risa, a girl with zero experience in romance. Meanwhile, a boy named Yuugure is the most popular student in Risa's school year. Even though the two have had no contact with each other in the past, they find themselves at school at the same time one night.
Dick Romans is a washed up TV host whose wife walks out on him the day before their ten year anniversary celebration. Alone with his thoughts, his dog, and a ton of booze, Dick decides to go through with the week-long party... by himself. The seven event-filled days become Dick's reluctant vision quest, filled with odd characters, awkward romance, and some long-overdue self examination.
A New York family implodes over three days as they careen through mid-life and quarter-life crises.
"Parasite Memories" is a brand new retrospective piece on the film produced by High Rising Productions with lively contribution from effects artist Joe Blasco, actresses Lynn Lowry and Barbara Steele, actor Allan Kolman, and Canadian critic Kier La-Janisse.
51 films to date, a unique body of work whose common thread is the search for love: this is the cinema of Claude Lelouch. As a Jewish child hunted during the war, the filmmaker offers his very personal vision of betrayal, scoundrels, good people, travel, parent-child relationships, and the ghosts of his deceased friends whom he will always love.
When a university student moves in with a family in Mexico City, conflicts emerge. An inevitable affaire with the father, a rebellious bond with the adolescent daughter and tensions with the mother lead up to a painful secret that will shake the family apart.
Joy flies to Hong Kong, where she meets her best friend Alain. With him, she visits the hottest districts of the city. She is kidnapped and imprisoned in a brothel and has to pay a high price for her freedom.
Story about Incest and the Iraq war.
The film is a continuous time-lapse with multiple exposures of the sunset from the same angle and position on 16mm film. The shoot was done in a span of 5 years. The title 13 is because the time-lapse has a 13-second interval per frame.
Comanche Creek, Colorado, 1875: Prisoner Jack Mason is broken out of jail by a gang of strangers. They use him in a robbery, then when the dead-or-alive reward is high enough, they shoot him and collect. The National Detective Agency, now knowing the gang's methods, arranges to have agent Bob Gifford jailed in Comanche Creek for train robbery. The gang takes the bait (not before Gifford catches the eye of lovely saloon-keeper Abbie). But how will the bait get off the hook?
Minako is at the age where her father is more like an alien to her than a person. The situation is exacerbated when he comes home drunk one night and tries to climb on top of her. Minako's mother deserted them for another man when Minako was a child. Now working as a hostess, she has little time for her own six year-old daughter, Yu, Minako's half sister. Both girls are yearning for their mother's love. Minako runs into Yu at a game center in the mall and proposes they take a trip. She changes out of her school uniform and into adult clothes and the pair hops on an overnight bus out of the city.
Professor Duton Lang is an obese scientist who has made many great discoveries. When he finally weights 497 pounds he develops a compound which permits him to eat as much as he wants and still lose weight. He gets down to 150 pounds in weight but is still the same body-size as when he weighed nearly 500 pounds. Eventually, he becomes a minus-weight and floats off into outer space.
A dark, gritty drama that wraps around Louie Lazaro. a drug addict and a male dancer. As he tries to escape the evils of his past.
