“This project was made in response to the murder of John T. Williams by a Seattle police officer. We decided to make this piece when we first heard the news reports that the officer who shot Williams four times was not being criminally charged. The idea was to produce an audio-visual work that could be used to create awareness for people and communities who otherwise would never have been exposed to Williams’ death as well as to the ongoing violence against Aboriginal peoples in North America.” (Ehren Bear Witness Thomas)
Planning a workplace is an art, as this documentary shows. In a near future, the non-territorial office ideal fulfils and companies motivate their employees by making them feel right at home and special. The architechture, cold and majestic, but liberal, allows free circulation and a more efficient production. In the common areas informal conversations happen and give birth to the best inventions. Job interviews are mathematical and while the people interviewed wait for their final evaluation, half protected by the hugeness of the buildings, we learn about the interviewer’s selection process. We abandon this space with a captivating yet disturbing shot, as the binary language of the decoration reminds us that we are elements of a whole, individuals that can be numbered and scored just like answers to specific questions. (Ágata Pinho)
At early age children begin to work in the Mexican countryside. “The Inheritors” is a portrait of theirs lives and their daily struggle for survival. They have inherited tools and techniques from their ancestors, as well as their day-by-day hardship. Generations pass and they remain captive in a cycle of inherited poverty.
Subtle observation of an everyday life of two refugees from Chechnya living in Warsaw, Poland ‚ 10-year-old Magomed and his father Vakha, which becomes a story about human’s love and dignity. (Marta Prus)
Drawing upon the thinking and analyses of renowned intellectuals, this documentary sketches a portrait of neo-liberal ideology and examines the various mechanisms used to impose its dictates throughout the world. But beyond the panacea of the invisible hand, what is really going on?
At the foothills of the empire, some go fishing, some go flirting. Time flies. Cigarette after cigarette, we reinvent the world. When the weather is good on the other side, we can see the lost paradise. Is it a mirage?… The time has come for us to become unreasonable: the whole world is passing through Calais.
On the coal road linking the Shanxi mines with the large port of Tianjin, in northern China, the drivers of 100-ton trucks shuttle endlessly to and from, day and night. On the roadside: prostitutes, cops, petty racketeers, garage owners, mechanics.
Webster convinces his wife and two children that the whole family should go on an oil diet, yet without having to give up their middle class suburban lifestyle. In this comedy of errors they find themselves questioning their values and putting to test their will power and ultimately, their happiness.
Patrice Lumumba, elected prime minister of the Congo in the 60’s, was brutally murdered in one of the darkest episodes of the country’s decolonization. He returns in this documentary to haunt Belgium, as the hero of a History that almost seems to be a legend. Amidst encounters, conversations, celebrations and emotive visits, we accompany the journey of a belgian citizen who was in Elisabethville at the time, as he exorcizes ghosts. Bach’s St. John Passion plays in the background as aspects of colonialism emerge from the biopolitical framing, along with questions of duty and responsability. History and politics aside, the film shares the personal memories of a family, as the director takes us too on a raw yet poetic trip to another side of Belgium. (Ágata Pinho)
This piece takes place on the outskirts of Kabul, where the landscape is littered with the detritus of more than 20 years. These are uncanny sights, a symbol of the presence of the physical and psychological traumas of wars that have defined the history of Afghanistan for almost three decades now.
A film that begins by showing Ai Weiwei trying to understand the real reasons why public schools failed to withstand the earthquake that struck Sichuan, and then evolves into a confrontation between the artist and the Chinese authorities, culminating in his very recent imprisonment. (Rui Pereira)
The film is built as an homage to cinema, with fixed shots that speak piercingly about the present and the supposed progress, with the use of images and time that recalls the early films. A voiceover witnesses the facts, giving us questions to solve. Also there is a mesmerizing final scene. (Miguel Valverde)
Ai Weiwei was involved in the conception of the famous Bird’s Nest Stadium, built for the Olimpics in Beijing. Maintaing the partnership with the same two Swiss architects, Herzog & de Meuron, Ai Weiwei was assigned a task: to build a city inside the desert of Mongolia. That is how the Ordos 100 project was born and in it’s implementation 100 architects from 27 countries were invited to design a villa with 1000 square meters. In this film we keep up with three periods of visits from the architects to the construction area. It is fascinating to watch how they dazzle and get involved in this megalomaniac project and how Ai Weiwei keeps his bonhomie even when they have to deal with childish organization flaws from official entities promoting the project. (Rui Pereira)
It is in the spirit of the Nuremberga Trials that the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) convenes in Arusha, Tanzania, at the foot of Mt Kilimanjaro. It was established to prosecute those responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which killed nearly one million people, most of them Tutsis, over the course of three months while the rest of the world stood by and watched.
The world’s oldest proffesion, prostitution. Being a prostitute has a sord of disarming frankness in relation with other proffetions, it never confusses love with work no matter how much sex it involves. Red light district is the Meca of prostitution and Luise and Martine Fokkens, two adorable twin sisters, have over 50 years of experience. The sisters are simple and happy telling their story with no need to explain, apologise or dramatise. The film it self is not raising any moral questions and they never get victimised, the film is pragmatic given by an optimistic angle with lots of humor. Those girls are simply adorable, they buy condoms, the check the new arrivals in vibrators they are updated on every sex toy of Amsterdam just as any housewife is in kitchen equipment. They are so alive and adventurous, they spank their clients, they dance with them, they engage in dominatrix game, they have a full life. (Nina Veligradi)
Travelling through the city of Las Vegas and the encircling desert, Las Vegas | The Meadows examines the soul of a city both real and unreal. Moving from outside to inside, images of facades and voids reveal an empire of ghosts and electricity. The amusement park-fantasy-frenzy of Las Vegas becomes a psychological landscape of spaces forgotten, people unseen and multiplying kilowatts filling what used to be the meadows of the Nevada desert. (Benjamin R Taylor)
East of Democratic Republic of Congo. In the Kivu war-devastated region a woman struggle to comfort and help the victims of a never-ending conflict that has claimed so far 4 to 4.5 million lives. Rape is commonly used as a way to destroy the communities, religions strive back, armies and militias rule. But yet, there is hope. There must be. (Karim Shimsal)
Future’s Market opens with a drawing of the sky with shiny dots that resemble the planets and then a voice over describing how the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos invented the art of memory that was used for centuries by philosophers, poets and architects. A meditation of dreams and desires that ultimately turn into a product. A real estate salesperson delivers to the potential investors the virtualization of an urban space even with furniture, a space of their thoughts keeping in mind primarily the profit. The quality of hopes, ideas and dreams as spiritual values have been replaced by material ones reminding us that we forgot how to look at people and things. A brilliantly composed documentary, with extraordinary framing of the art of Michelangelo and post-modern compositions of open spaces. (Nina Veligradi)
