USA

On Honolulu’s famed Waikiki Beach stand four giant boulders placed as a tribute to the four legendary mahu – individuals of dual male and female spirit – who brought the healing arts from Tahiti to Hawaii long ago. Although the stones have survived for centuries, their story has been hidden and the respected role of mahu erased. The Healer Stones of Kapaemahu documents the trail of post-colonial suppression through the eyes of a Native Hawaiian director, herself mahu, and uses rare archival materials, new historical findings, and vivid animation to bring the unexpurgated story back to life. This is the first feature documentary to be presented in Olelo Kanaka Niihau, the only form of the Hawaiian language unbroken by foreign contact.

When Kyle Felter, the lead singer of I Don’t Konform sent out a demo album to Flemming Rasmussen, the Grammy Award-winner producer of Metallica, they never imagined themselves a few months later rehearsing with Rasmussen inside a hot hogan on a Navajo reservation before recording their debut album at the iconic Sweet Silence Studio in Denmark. While following I Don’t Konform’s fairy tale journey, our documentary Rez Metal, tells the larger compelling story of the heavy metal scene on Navajo reservations where many youths have grown disaffected as a result of endemic poverty and high rate of suicides.

The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (in South Dakota) declares a State of Emergency when youth suicide rates reach the highest levels in the country. A respected female elder leads the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s only suicide prevention team, while mentoring a group of suicide-survivor teenagers to find their voice, encouraging them to bring hope and awareness to the reservation.

The robots are at our doorstep. Scientists as well as tech-visionaries are certain that in a few years robots will be an integral part of our everyday life. But humanoid robots are more than just another gadget. Bearing a resemblance to living creatures in their conduct and looks, they are more like new beings on our planet. We are the Robots, shows robots interacting with humans in everyday-environments already today.

What will we gain from this new technology? And what will we lose?

Humanoid robots are like new creatures on our planet. They work at reception desks, in shopping malls or as chefs. And they are coming into our private lives…

„With an A.I., you have to keep your sentences short and to the point.“

This piece of advice is given to Chuck as he’s picking up his new robot partner Harmony fresh from the factory. Together they go on a road trip through California. As it turns out at a second glancing, the sex robot Harmony likes books and can ad lib quote Ray Kurzweil.

In Tokyo, Grandma Sakurai is introduced to the cute robot Pepper, a present from her son, so she has someone to keep her company. But soon Pepper turns out to be quite capricious, fnding the old lady’s conversation topics of little interest.

While Harmony and Chuck are searching for love, and Pepper and Grandma are killing time, pressing questions arise: How will robots and artifcial intelligence change our lives? What will we win, what will we lose? And, who will be the main actors in the future world? The documentary shows us tomorrow’s world today.

The story of how Dr. Mutulu Shakur, stepfather of Tupac Shakur, along with fellow Black Panthers and the Young Lords, combined community health with radical politics to create the first acupuncture detoxification program in America in 1973 – a visionary project eventually deemed too dangerous to exist in America.