Zeitgeist Films (Firm)
Summary
In 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army, made up of impoverished Mayan Indians from the state of Chiapas, took over five towns and 500 ranches in southern Mexico. The government deployed its troops and at least 145 people died in the ensuing battle. Filmmaker Nettie Wild travelled to the country's jungle canyons to film the elusive and fragile life of this uprising.
2) Payback
Summary
Margaret Atwood’s visionary work *Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth* is the basis for this riveting and poetic documentary on “debt” in its various forms—societal, personal, environmental, spiritual, criminal, and of course, economic. Filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal (*Manufactured Landscapes*) strikingly interweaves these debtor/creditor relationships: two families in a years-long Albanian blood feud; the BP oil spill vs. the Earth;...
Summary
To explore the ramifications of terrorism, Rainer employs an extended therapy session—in which an American woman speaks to a series of psychiatrists—to evoke the daily experiences of power and repression. Winner of the Independent/Experimental Film and Video Award at the **Los Angeles Film Critics Associations Awards.**
Summary
Astonishingly gripping, LET THE FIRE BURN is a found-footage film that unfurls with the tension of a thriller. On May 13, 1985, a longtime feud between the city of Philadelphia and controversial radical urban group MOVE came to a deadly climax. By order of local authorities, police dropped military-grade explosives onto a MOVE-occupied rowhouse. TV cameras captured the conflagration that quickly escalated—and resulted in the tragic deaths of eleven...
Summary
In this groundbreaking cult documentary from 1985, director Kirby Dick (*This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Derrida*) weaves a fascinating study of the curious role of a sex surrogate in the (then) recently established discipline of sexual therapy. Maureen Sullivan and two of her clients agreed to have the entire progression of their therapy taped, and what emerges is a disarming and compassionate look at the struggles people face in connecting with one...
Summary
A striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris. The film follows him through China, as he shoots the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution. With...
Summary
Tom of Finland is one of the major icons of the gay world. His provocative erotic drawings have had an enormous influence on gay identity, attitude and self-understanding. This ground-breaking work combines interviews with Tom (prior to his death in 1992) and his leather men acolytes with hundreds of his original drawings and steamy fantasy scenes inspired by his work. Winner of the Special Jussi Award for Best Documentary at the **Jussi Awards.**...
10) Uprising
Summary
In January 2011, millions of Egyptians took to the streets in a spontaneous eruption against thirty years of oppression under the regime of Hosni Mubarak. Communicating via Facebook and Twitter, the largely peaceful protesters braved tear gas, beatings, and live bullets in the hope of facing down security forces and overthrowing the government. Over eight hundred lost their lives, and several thousand were arrested and tortured by security forces....
12) Forbidden Films
Summary
1,200 feature films were made in Germany’s Third Reich. According to experts, some 100 of these were blatant Nazi propaganda. Nearly seventy years after the end of the Nazi regime, more than 40 of these films remain under lock and key. Director Felix Moeller interviews German film historians, archivists and film-goers in an investigation of the power and potential danger of cinema when used for ideological purposes. Utilizing clips from the films...
Summary
Eight times a week, from 1960 to 2002, the Sullivan Street Playhouse in New York City’s Greenwich Village played midwife to a musical theater ritual that attracted theater-goers from across the globe. That show was the legendary and beloved Fantasticks, and for 42 years and 17,162 performances, a legion of performers—including future luminaries such as F. Murray Abraham, Ricardo Montalban, Elliott Gould, Liza Minnelli, Glenn Close, Richard Chamberlain...
Summary
This documentary follows the charismatic Qi Moxiang, a former boxing star and state coach who recruits young fighting talent from the impoverished farms and villages across Sichuan province. A select few boys (and girls) are sent to national training centers, with the hope of discovering China's next Olympic heroes. But will these potential boxing champions leave it all behind to be the next Mike Tyson? Their rigorous training, teenage trials and...
16) Afghan Star
Summary
After thirty years of war and five devastating years of Taliban rule, pop culture is beginning to return to Afghanistan. Since 2005, millions have been tuning in to Tolo TV's wildly popular American Idol-style series Afghan Star. Like its Western predecessors, people compete for a cash prize and record deal. More surprisingly, the contest is open to everyone across the country despite gender, ethnicity or age. Two thousand people audition, including...
17) Last Train Home
Summary
Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos as 130 million migrant workers journey to their home villages for the New Year’s holiday. This mass exodus is the world’s largest human migration—an epic spectacle that reveals a country tragically caught between its rural past and industrial future. LAST TRAIN HOME follows one couple who have embarked on this annual trek for almost two decades. Like so many of China’s rural poor, Zhang...
Summary
“He has other reputations as well—as an academic, as a maker of curious artifacts, as a cataloguer of the bizarre and as a librarian of the absurd.” Peter Greenaway might well have been describing himself in this thumbnail sketch of Canton Remodell, a character in an unmade project. Before his international arthouse hits like THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER, Greenaway made a series of highly inventive films that established all the...
Summary
One of Himalayan Buddhism’s most revered lamas, Khyentse weaves parallel fable-like tales about two men who seek to escape their mundane lives in TRAVELERS & MAGICIANS. Young government official Dondup dreams of escaping to America while stuck in a ravishingly beautiful but isolated village. Along the way, a perceptive yet mischievous monk tells Dondup a story of another young man who sought a land far away: a tale of lust, jealousy and murder that...
Summary
In 1998 Edith Stein (1891-1942) was canonised by Pope John Paul II. A German philosopher of Jewish descent, Stein converted to Catholicism in 1922 and lived as nun in the Carmelite Convent of Echt in the south of the Netherlands. During World War II, she was deported and died in Auschwitz. Director Frederieke Jochems worked for nine years to bring Edith Stein's story to life and to illuminate the controversy surrounding the canonisation.
