What if your community had to decide whether to leave their homeland forever and there was no help available? This is the reality for the culturally unique Polynesian community of Takuu, a tiny low-lying atoll in the South Western Pacific. As a terrifying tidal flood rips through their already damaged home, the Takuu community experiences the devastating effects of climate…
In December 7th, 2003, the first nationwide organization of “foreign brides,” the Taiwan Southern Asia-Pacific Sisterhood, was established. The association calls for foreign sisters to actively interact with their local communities throughout the island.
Despite diverse nationalities, cultural backgrounds and languages, these sisters are inseparably bound by the fate they share. Languages in Taiwan—Mandarin, Hakka, Minnan—become their common tongue in…
This film tells the story of my relationship with my parents, especially my mother, while we are living under one roof in Dhaka, Bangladesh. For a long time, my mother was a passionate artist. She passed on to me her love of poetry, theater, and film, which became my profession. But ever since she made the Hajj, the great Muslim…
A documentary that recounts the lives of passengers traveling on the longest railway route in the world. The director tells the stories and fortunes of ordinary Russians met by chance on the Moscow-Vladivostok train. The endless journey is a metaphor of the country in perpetual motion, while the passengers’ stories form a social portrait of contemporary Russian society.
How do the Palestinian and Israeli (Arab and Jewish) education systems teach the history of their nations? The film follows several Israeli and Palestinian teachers over one academic year. Through observing their exchanges and confrontations with students, debates with the ministries curriculum and its restrictions, the viewers obtain an intimate glimpse into the profound and long lasting effect that the…
A team of film workers of Han descent went to Cinsbu and Smangus—two Atayal villages located in the deep mountains of the Hsinchu County—to shoot a film about the migration history of the Atayal people. This film brought conflicts to the tribe, including distrust of Atayal villagers against the Han outsiders and quarrels within the tribe. An aboriginal director recorded…
A coming of age story about three young Tibetans trying to realize their dreams. The struggle to enter the modern world while holding onto tradition is palpable as a young woman waiver between teaching and a career in Tibetan medicine. Her childhood friends, a monk and a painter, also grapple with which direction their lives will take in this rare…
Daniel, Marika and Leo have Tourettes. And they are fed up of being stigmatized by society and unsuccessful therapies. So they are traveling to the European far north – trying to find the place where they can be as they are.
Upon advice of neurologist Prof. Dr. Alexander Münchau, Leo, Marika and Daniel are visiting different Tourette research facilities in…
The death of the older brother of Medias Gayet, a young entrepreneur from Benin, has greatly affected his family. Alongside the very sensitive portrait of this bereaved African family, the director explores the different facets of the rich African spirituality of the cradle of Voodoo, Benin. Passing by the importance of the sacred in the animist religion, by the meeting…
Amidst the highest prevalence of HIV in the world and the lowest life expectancy, three grandmothers in Swaziland, a small, landlocked country in southern Africa between South Africa and Mozambique, cope in this critical moment in time. For these grandmothers, there is no choice but to raise their grandchildren and maintain basic needs. As more and more insight into the…
Baunay Watan enthusiastically traces his Atayal ancestors’ trail, with the help of the elders of Mepenox and some young cultural workers. They successfully revive an old convention, which had disappeared from daily life for 45 years — the ceremonies of the millet-growing cycle, and the wisdom that comes from people, nature, and local customs working together. They spare no efforts…
A performance of the kris dance, a Balinese ceremonial dance drama in which the never-ending struggle between the witch and the dragon – the death-dealing and the life-protecting – as it is given in the village of Pagoetan from 1937-39. The dancers go into violent trance seizures and turn their kris (dagger) against their breats without injury. Consciousness is restored…
At the age of 33, Eylon Nuphar, co-creator and founder of the Mayumana group, is at the peak of her career. One day, Eylon gets a distressing message: The mammogram that she had taken revealed a suspicious lump in her breast; and so it begins – she finds herself facing a whirlwind of challenges. She also has difficulty coping with…
It was 2005, the year of Chicken according to the Chinese calendar. A new life was born in a Naxi village named Dandu. Meanwhile, another life went to the end. Is it just the natural rhythm to see one life ends and another comes into being? Or is there some sort of destined connection between these two souls in the…
Tribal Justice is a feature documentary about a little known, underreported but effective criminal justice reform movement in America today: the efforts of tribal courts to create alternative justice systems based on their traditions. In California, the state with the largest number of Indian people and tribes, two formidable Native American women are among those leading the way. Abby Abinanti,…
Framed by the beautiful poetry of the oppressed Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas, this revealing documentary features memorable portraits of five gay men and one transsexual woman living in and around Havana. Their disparate stories and candid interviews dispel myths while demonstrating a range of experience, opinion and social status: A vibrant nineteen year old, Raudel attends illegal gay parties, since…
Since Taiwan became a member of WTO in 2002, the tobacco industry has been on the downgrade year by year. Uncle A-Li, who is 70 years old, begins to plant tobacco every autumn. His greatest achievement of labor in his entire life was being able to bring up his little son, who grew up to be a doctor. However, God…
Soanin Kilangit is determined to unite the people and attract international tourism through the revival of culture on Baluan Island in the South Pacific. He organizes the largest cultural festival ever held on the island. But some traditional leaders argue that Baluan never had culture. Culture comes from the white man and is now destroying their old tradition. Others, however,…
Unity: Dress-scapes of Accra is an ethnographic film about African fashion in the capital of Ghana. The comeback of African print seems to be emerging in the fashion world of Accra. While following Allan, a fashion designer, and his wife Cynthia, this mosaic film shows the great diversity of tailor-made fashion and hybrid styles, the ways that African wear is…
Grierson award-winning director Iris Zaki enters the heart of Tekoa, an Israeli settlement in the West-Bank,and sits down to talk to the locals. Though fearful at first of the left-wing invader, settlers from various backgrounds gradually open up to her. Their honest, surprising and sometimes funny conversations offer a fresh take on Israeli reality from both sides of the Green…