In the evacuated zone around the nuclear plant of Fukushima, five years after the “catastrophe,” a few rare individuals still live on this land burning with radiation. The seemingly irrational yet peaceful existence of these diehards reminds us that, as a last resort, a patch of land is our strongest bond to the world.
“The Chinese make things, the Malagasy fix them.” Just for the time of a film, let’s have fun reversing roles… Let’s imagine it isn’t for the economists anymore to demonstrate their growth model, but for the farmers, artists, craftsmen, and streetwise sellers of all kind to showcase their skills. There are those who recycle tires into shoes, those who make…
1+1+363=365
1= The game has finished. The crowd thunders out applause. The young ball players on the field smile, yell in excitement, and run about. Its fall of 1998 in Monterey and the players’ last game.
1= They are met at the airport by all sorts of media, dazzling lights, and a showy welcome parade. People pack the streets…
An enthralling look inside the hidden world of a New Zealand funeral home, After Life explores a unique, enigmatic institution, following the men and women who work with the dead and the delicate ritual of the body’s preparation for its final journey. A compelling glimpse into a rarely seen world, After Life reveals a place rich in meaning and humanity…
AFTERMATH is the story of young people from an ancient tribe who are driven into a new world by the Tsunami of 2004 from one day to the other. Overwhelmed by history´s biggest wave of aid and development soon after, they are now searching with pride and humour for their own, self-determined life in a globalized world.
Saltspring Island: close to a city, but full of magical, almost untouched places. A small town with a Saturday market. And in the middle of the island… trees, lots of trees. When chainsaws begin ripping through the early morning silence of Saltspring, residents confront logging trucks and face the threat of prison terms to stop land developers from logging this…
A long, long time ago, the ancestors of the Hani (Akkha) and other people lived together in the same valley. Much later, as the population grew, they fought over land,
and the Hani fled to another valley far away. After hundreds of years, war plagued the new valley, and some people fled to where a valley meets the mountains…
A valiant island warrior, wounded in battle against foreign invaders, falls into a mysterious underwater world. When the octopus who rescues him transforms into a handsome young man, they fall in love and an epic adventure begins.
Alfred Melotu is a Big Man and Paramouth Chief among the Melanesians in the Reef Islands group off, the Solomon Islands. In 1994 a film crew visited Alfred in order to plan a future film. Unfortunately, on the return in 1996 Alfred was on his deathbed suffering from mouth cancer. Nevertheless, he was still a Big Man. Alfred consequently allowed…
Alireza Rofougaran’s childhood dream of meeting Muhammad Ali had long been forgotten, till it sprung back to life following the death of Ali’s former rival, Joe Frazier. The reawakened dream brings back to memory a whole era in which Muhammad Ali had been embedded in Iranian culture as a legend, compared in mythical proportions with National Iranian heroes, a people’s…
Cina Alis, 74, who now resides in Hucida Tribe in Kaohsiung in Taiwan, is one of the few Bunun natives who have refused to move into the prefabricated houses offered to them by the insensitive charity organizations for free. As a matter of fact, the tribe that Cina Alis belongs to has been evicted and placed to a new location…
An original portrayal of a small Czech village where – as the locals put it – an UFO has landed in the form of a kilometre-long silverish factory: a Korean Hyundai automobile plant. The village, hitherto famous mostly for its sauerkraut and the “Radegast” beer was thus turned into an industrial zone – the largest greenfield investment project in the…
Hidden among the mountains north of Beijing, a Wild West-themed gated community promises to deliver the American dream to its several thousand Chinese residents. In Americaville, Annie Liu escapes China’s increasingly uninhabitable capital city to pursue happiness, freedom, romance, and spiritual fulfillment in the town; only to find the American idyll harder to attain than what was promised to her.…
Amis Hip Hop documents how a group of young Amis men in A’tolan have blended influences from contemporary social and cultural life in Taiwan with their traditional practice of ritual dance performance in the village. Rooted in the Amis ethos of respect for male age-grade organization, matrilineal affiliation, intimacy with the ocean, and appreciation of joking relationships, these young men…
Amis Hip Hop documents how a group of young Amis men in A’tolan have blended influences from contemporary social and cultural life in Taiwan with their traditional practice of ritual dance performance in the village. Rooted in the Amis ethos of respect for male age-grade organization, matrilineal affiliation, intimacy with the ocean, and appreciation of joking relationships, these young men…
Presenting a unique first person perspective, filmmaker/subject Michelle Maren gives access to the rarely seen inner world of Borderline Personality Disorder. Inspired by Michel Negroponte’s film Jupiter’s Wife, Maren contacted Negroponte, convinced that having him tell her story would change her life. He agreed. Each with their own cameras, Maren and Negroponte embarked on a truly collaborative project over the…
In the wings of the opera “Maraina”, the film combines history and oral memory, to recount in music the Europeans’ first contacts with the natives of the Indian Ocean islands, made of violence and love stories. Between the XVIIth century and today, this historical road movie follows the cast’s fantastic journey to the place where it all began – Fort-Dauphin,…
In an era defined by the rapid advancement of digital technologies, this film captures the daily lives of artists, retailers, and repairers who intimately engage with obsolete or discarded technologies.
This experimental ethnographic film creatively explores audiovisual cultural research methods, portraying analogue film communities in Berlin and Vienna, as well as mechanical repair shops in Istanbul.
According to the Yami (Tao) people of Orchid Island, evil spirits possess the sick. Because of this belief, the sick are seen as inauspicious, and are avoided. Many sick people become isolated and do not receive any form of medical care. This situation is particularly acute with people suffering chronic illness or among the elderly.
The director of “And Deliver…
In Madagascar, country of oral tradition, the history is told in poetry. And here also, the word is left to the storytellers so that they say the origin and the history of the island and his inhabitants, such as they were transmitted by the tales, the myths and the legends. Images of everyday life, habits family or traditional festivals illustrate…