Flowers from the Mount of Olives

Right alongside Jerusalem, in a Russian Orthodox Convent in the Mount of Olives, in the middle of the Arab quarter, lives the 82-year-old Estonian nun Mother Ksenya.

People, Years, Life

Using images shot in Russia and Armenia from World War I to the 1930s and retrieved from a Soviet film archive, Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi constructed a meditative film about the status of Armenians as a people without a state. Inspired by the diary of Gianikian’s father, People, Years, Life uses rare footage depicting the region’s major historic events: the end of Tsarist Russia, violence in the Caucasus during World War I, the 1918 Armenian exodus from Azerbaijan. Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi’s treatment of the material manipulates the speed of the images, adds color and music, and magnifies various parts of the image, so that the movement of bodies across the frame begins to carry the weight of exile, mourning, dispossession.

Balkan Inventory

Comprised of images shot by amateur photographers and German soldiers in the Balkans from the twenties through the forties, BALKAN INVENTORY was begun by Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi in response to the tragedy unfolding in the former Yugoslavia.

Ghiro ghiro tondo

Inspired by their beloved Dolomite area in Northeast Italy, a battle theater in World Wars I and II, Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi continue to explore issues of war and peace in their most recent production. The film uses shots of ordinary toys found in the area, many missing limbs and other pieces, to represent, in both direct and oblique ways, the historical period between Fascism, Nazism, and the postwar era.

Criminal Animals

In this filmic comment on Fascist ideology - which uses footage from the recently discovered archives of Luca Comerio - invisible hands push captive animals to fight among themselves.

Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids

Documentary depicting the lives of child prostitutes in the red light district of Songachi, Calcutta. Director Zana Briski went to photograph the prostitutes when she met and became friends with their children. Briski began giving photography lessons to the children and became aware that their photography might be a way for them to lead better lives.

Full Metal Village

The film describes the microcosmos of the small village Wacken and shows the clash of the cultures, before and during the biggest heavy metal festival in Europe.

Kathryn Bigelow: Hollywood Adrenaline

For more than 40 years Kathryn Bigelow has been making films that explore male violence. With movies like Blue Steel, Point Break, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, the Oscar winning American filmmaker has impressed with hard-hitting moviemaking that holds a mirror up to contemporary America and the world.

Dig!

A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.

In the Realms of the Unreal

In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.

Weiss ist die Farbe der Verlierer

Short film against the oppression of women. At first, differences in education are presented and then how the relationship between women and men looks like in the professional world.

Jesus Camp

Jesus Camp is a Christian summer camp where children hone their "prophetic gifts" and are schooled in how to "take back America for Christ". The film is a first-ever look into an intense training ground that recruits born-again Christian children to become an active part of America's political future.

How Good to See You Alive

Four years after a military coup overthrew the Brazilian government in 1964, all civil rights were suspended and torture became a systematic practice. Using a mix of fiction and documentary this extraordinary film is a searing record of personal memory, political repression and the will to survive. Interviews with eight women who were political prisoners during the military dictatorship are framed by the fantasies and imaginings of an anonymous character, portrayed by actress Irene Ravache.

Prenatal & Postnatal Yoga

Both during and after pregnancy, yoga is a perfect way to firm your body, build strength, and gain flexibility. These two yoga practices, filmed in a serene garden overlooking the Pacific Ocean, are also a wonderful way to maintain emotional balance and reduce stress during the exciting and often hectic times surrounding the birth of a child. In the prenatal sequence you'll practice safe and simple movements intended to strengthen and tone your body at any stage of pregnancy, while providing relaxation that will help create a luminous space in which your baby will thrive. The postnatal sequence is designed to redefine your body, restore your energy, and help you reconnect to yourself and your own wellness.

Adriana's Pact

Lissette's favorite aunt Adriana, who lives in Australia, is arrested in 2007 while visiting her family in Chile and accused of having worked for dictator Pinochet's notorious secret police, the DINA, and of having participated in the commission of state crimes. When Adriana denies these accusations, Lissette begins to investigate her story in order to film a documentary about her.

Chavela

Inspired by an exclusive interview and performance footage of Chavela Vargas shot in 1991 and guided by her unique voice, the film weaves an arresting portrait of a woman who dared to dress, speak, sing, and dream her unique life into being.

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.

Two Hitlers

One is a former police officer, bodyguard and hairdresser. Currently retired, he takes care of his extravagant and almost hundred-year-old illiterate mother. He writes poems and hopes to see them published one day. The other, a declared womanizer, workaholic, and leftist, was imprisoned during the dictatorship, runs a small grocery shop, and controls the life of his young second wife. Both were born in the Uruguayan hinterland during the Second World War, and share the same name as well as the fact that neither has wished to change it. The film is a tragicomic portrait of a country whose cultural diversity, its peculiar history and the character of its inhabitants allow the existence of exceptional and remarkable persons that depict a live picture of Uruguay, with its plurality and contradictions, its small and large history, without departing a single moment from irony or reflection.

How to Cook Your Life

A Zen priest in San Francisco and cookbook author use Zen Buddhism and cooking to relate to everyday life.

Sur les traces de Louis Braille