Ken Ward was the first Native Canadian to go public with his HIV diagnosis. Seven years later he has developed AIDS and remains a passionate advocate for HIV prevention and treatment. Ward works primarily with First Nations populations, where the epidemic is often compounded by isolation and poverty. He also takes his message into prisons where the infection rate among…
The film director lived in the mountain village of Fotuoyan for more than a year to record the living condition, traditional customs, religious beliefs, as well as the impact of Socialist rural development of the peasants on the Loess Plateau in Northern Shaanxi. The film narrative develops in accordance with the four divinations: summer, autumn, population, and national affairs. The…
Twice, the people went into the streets. Twice, the police drove them away. What began as protests became uprisings. In the once-prosperous industrial city of Maribor, Slovenia, anger over political corruption became unruly revolt. This participatory documentary places audiences in the midst of the third and largest uprising as crowds surround and ransack City Hall under a hailstorm of tear…
This is a video diary of the surreal lockdown made by the filmmaker couple who were trapped in a small, rented apartment in Shanghai. In the face of endless madness, the camera gradually breaks free from the window and observes a vast social isolation unprecedented in the country’s history.
In the village of Vourbira, in the Lobi country, Burkina Faso, people celebrate the second funerals of Bindute Da. Outstanding cultural and historical event, the ceremony is, beside the unchanging rituals, the scene of a collective improvisation, final meeting between past and present. In order to welcome the deceased, each of his nineteen wives prepares sorghobeer in large jars because…
The memory of glitch explores the entanglements of smoke and pixels, trees and humans, loss and recovery. Attempting to connect to a ‘lost’ landscape, a filmmaking researcher dives into a burned-down forest in Oregon, U.S.A., to create a sense for the (de)composition of memory and place. Her voice guides the audience with personal reflections on loss while glimpses of bare…
This film looks at the work of a research team that has spent long years keeping records of Atayal culture and history. They study Lmuhuw – ancient Atayal singing – in traditional territories, learning about Atayals’ past through the mouths of elders. Lmuhuw is the Atayalic equivalent of Roman epic poetry. It passes down old migration routes, ancestors’ teachings, place…
What happens when you grew up in a family that’s been silent about its past andyou suddenly find your roots on the other side of the planet…?
For 2000 years there’s been a flourishing Jewish community in the South Indian city ofCochin. When I started to shoot my film, there were only 7 people left. Among them Icame to discover…
For hundreds of years, this island, Taiwan, has been under different rules. From the Dutch, the Spanish, the Japanese, and nowadays Republic of China, each regime left their footprints on this island. During these periods, only the indigenous people of this island truly experienced of the process. As being ruled, indigenous peoples were labeled in different names and self-cultures had…
“Hawfwen”, a traditional gathering that once popular where the Zhuang people sing folk songs. It often takes place around the clan temples or under the old trees. Singers are divided into male and female groups. They improvised their lyrics to sing in correspondence with one another.
Traveling along the songs in antiphonal style, the camera has found different singers and…
A long time ago, there is a story about a flood among the Tsou people. At that time, a wise crab stood out and resolved the blood caused by a weird eel. Then after thousand years, the blood happens again and is caused by a mutated eel. At this time, the eel is caused by the industry civilization and the…
After 1989, the military training of college freshmen extended to nationwide universities.In 2017, the last batch of post-90s college students and the first group of post-00 college students entered the university campus together. The film records the management and operation of military training at a key university in southern China in the summer of 2017, based on direct cinema.
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Oroqen means “people of the mountain.” China’s 6,000 Oroqen inhabit the Oroqen Autonomous Banner in the Greater and Lesser Hinggan Mountains of Inner Mongolia. Some live in Heilongjiang Province. Historically, the Oroqen were a nomadic people. The Oroqen love to dance and sing and have a repertoire of folk songs praising nature, love, hunting and the struggles of life. They…
KE is a failed businessman in Taiwan who seeks to rebound and then works as a “Taiwanese Expat” in Shenzhen, China. Lili, a laborer from China, meets her Taiwanese husband online and moves to Taiwan in hope of a better life. Both KE and Lili cross the straits in hopes of achieving what they cannot find in their homeland. But…
This is not just one more film about the monuments of Angkor, their history or their architecture. This film is about the people who live there. An inside view, in the shadow of the temples and the great kapok trees, an inhabited shadow that the world’s tourists pass through unawares, wrapped up in contemplating the treasures of Khmer art. In…
Young people living in a residential care unit conceive and develop a gangster film in which the staff are cast in the roles of the international mafia. Scenes of the gangster drama are interwoven with the daily hassles the kids have to negotiate.
A Potrait of Ibrahim Kadir, one of Gayo old “Ceh” (poets), a person who leads and acts as the lead singer of didong (one of Gayo People Oral Traditions). This oral tradition is a combination of literature, music, and dance. The documentary focus on Ibrahim daily lives, singing his ballads, dancing, and performing/commenting didong competition in his beautiful Linge Homeland…
Dong-gang, a fishing village in the southern part of Taiwan, is a place where exceptional historical traces of a past mysterious ritual are still alive. One of the most important characteristic of being part of the Dong-gang community is joining a ritual that takes place every three year, They call the ritual as “Yi-Wang”. Performing this ritual, the people show…
“The Queen Has No Crown” is Tomer Heymann’s poignant meditation on family, loss, and the mental maps of homelessness. Three of the Heymann sons take their families and leave Israel, one after the other, for “better” lives in America. They fulfill their dreams, but shatter those of their mother. A divorcee, she is left alone in Israel with her two…
Within a neoliberal context marked by poverty and exclusion, land re-distribution together with food production become part of the return to the countryside.