A 1975 documentary short about a strike being conducted by public-housing residents in St. Louis.
Social & External
Harry Schein was an anomaly in Swedish cultural society. Equal parts playboy, intellectual, and political visionary, his life story could very well be the foundation of a Hollywood film. Citizen Schein is a film about a refugee who refused to look back, a film about powerful men, and the myths that fuel them.
The everyday life of a Belo Horizonte lower class neighborhood.
$avy investigates the historical, cultural, and societal norms around women and money.
This is a semi documentary about a Belgian woman trying to deal with her confused ideals after the big industrial strikes in Wallony. To do so, she goes to Spain to try and find out if there is a future for anarchist ideals.
Based on the letters of a fictitious poetess to her lover. Duras reads extracts from the letters, about the poetess’s Jewish past, while the film shows stark waves beating against the seashore. – BFI
Long Tack Sam was an internationally renowned Chinese acrobat and magician. He overcame isolation, poverty, cultural and linguistic barriers, extreme racism and world wars to become one of the most successful vaudeville acts of his time. His showmanship was unrivalled, yet he refused to appear in movies because of the way Chinese were portrayed at the time. A celebration of the spirit of Long Tack Sam's magic and art, this richly textured first person road movie is an exhilarating testament to his legacy and a prismatic tour through the 20th Century. It all begins in a small village in China... https://www.nfb.ca/film/the_magical_life_of_long_tack_sam/
After several farmyard analogies featuring chicks and calves, the well-spoken narrator and director of the film, Winifred Holmes, considers the subject of girls and how they reach adulthood and readiness for the 'important job of motherhood.
A Bit of Scarlet excavates clips from Britain's cinema archives to create a moving and humorous testament to the closeted gay and lesbian images from filmmaking's earliest days.
In Echigo, Japan, the snow often lies several feet deep well into May, covering landscapes and villages. Over the centuries, the inhabitants have organised their lives accordingly. In order to record their very distinctive forms of everyday life, their festivals, and religious rituals, Ulrike Ottinger journeyed to the mythical snow country – accompanied by two Kabuki performers. Taking the parts of the students Takeo and Mako, they follow in the footsteps of Bokushi Suzuki, who in the mid-19th century wrote his remarkable book “Snow Country Tales”.
In this entrancing documentary on performance artist, photographer and underground filmmaker Jack Smith, photographs and rare clips of Smith's performances and films punctuate interviews with artists, critics, friends and foes to create an engaging portrait of the artist. Widely known for his banned queer erotica film Flaming Creatures, Smith was an innovator and firebrand who influenced artists such as Andy Warhol and John Waters.
Tongue-in-cheek look at the French Riviera, especially in summer when it overflows with tourists. Reviews its history and famous visitors; displays its faux-exotic buildings, its crowded beaches, its trees and monuments; and, pokes fun at the colors women wear and the vagaries of fashion. The film celebrates the use of "Eden" as a place name, suggesting that paradise comes to the coast after all are gone, perhaps only on a remote island beach.
Now We Live on Clifton follows 10 year old Pam Taylor and her 12 year old brother Scott around their multiracial West Lincoln Park neighborhood. The kids worry that they'll be forced out of the neighborhood they grew up in by the gentrification following the expansion of DePaul University.
Contrasts traditional and modern village life, as changes occur with better transport and as country estates are sold off for housing.
FAR FROM POLAND is probably the first American non-fiction film (Godmilow calls it a "drama-tary") to explode cinema verite's mythic claim to be the only trustworthy mode of representation for discussing the real world, and in particular, social and political issues, on film. Refused a visa to travel to Poland, "Jillski" (her Polish nickname in the film) has to literally re-invent the documentary to deal with the Polish situation and she does so with a particular eye to deconstructing not only documentary's specific claims to objectivity, but also the bourgeois audience's desire to sit comfortably in their seats, feel compassion, feel themselves part of the solution (not part of the problem) by having felt compassion for the poor oppressed Poles, who, Godmilow would argue, are far more acutely aware of their situation and what forces oppress them than the liberal American folk in the movie house.
What are the social climate and cultural traditions in Costa Rica which nurture "machismo" and allow the domination of women to continue in Latin America?
Addresses misunderstandings of learning differences and demonstrates potential in dyslexic persons.
“A Short History of the Highrise” is an interactive documentary that explores the 2,500-year global history of vertical living and issues of social equality in an increasingly urbanized world. The centerpiece of the project is four short films. The first three (“Mud,” “Concrete” and “Glass”) draw on The New York Times's extraordinary visual archives, a repository of millions of photographs that have largely been unseen in decades. Each film is intended to evoke a chapter in a storybook, with rhyming narration and photographs brought to life with intricate animation. The fourth chapter (“Home”) comprises images submitted by the public. The interactive experience incorporates the films and, like a visual accordion, allows viewers to dig deeper into the project’s themes with additional archival materials, text and microgames.
Person is a documentary about the life and work of filmmaker Luiz Sérgio Person. The documentary brings the reconstruction of the history of the São Paulo filmmaker through the personal journey of his daughter, Marina. Through interviews with friends, family, and people who worked with Person, she seeks to discover more than dates and biographical data.
In 2003, the infant Chinese twin sisters Mia and Alexandra were found in a cardboard box. They ended up in an orphanage and were put up for adoption, at which time the authorities apparently decided that it was a good idea to separate them, and to keep silent about the fact that they were twins. Twin Sisters tells their story from the perspective of both sets of adoptive parents: one from Sacramento, California, the other from a tiny village in picturesque Norway. Through a series of coincidences that they later attribute to fate, the parents meet each other during the adoption procedure in China and launch an investigation that reveals the little girls are sisters.
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