USA

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 gas canisters. Soon the mayor will resign—and the movement will spread to cities across the country.

The Maribor Uprisings takes up urgent questions raised by these events, and by uprisings elsewhere, from the Arab Spring, through Paris, to Black Lives Matter. What sparks such popular outrage? How are participants swept up in—and then changed by—confrontations with police? Could something like this happen in your city?

The directors invite audiences to engage these questions through an unusual and participatory form. Drawing on the dramatic frontline footage of a video activist collective embedded within the uprisings, this film places viewers amidst the jostling crowds. It requires them to make their own choices about which cameras they will follow and therefore how they will participate. Like those who joined the actual uprisings, audiences in the theater must decide whether to listen to organizers and remain with those committed to nonviolent protest on Freedom Square or to follow rowdy crowds toward City Hall and almost certain conflict.

This live participatory documentary invites audiences to grapple with the intimate as well as the public meanings of protest through reflection on the choices of actual participants in the uprising—as well as the choices they themselves make during the screening. How are citizens’ senses of themselves changed by experiences of state force: tear gas, stun grenades, armored vehicles, water cannons, and helicopters? Is this what one protester described as “feeling the state on your own skin?” In these violent encounters, why do so many protesters feel “love at the barricades?” What are the perils—and the possibilities—of these increasingly common eruptions in urban life?

This is the story of an unusual nuclear family, Roberta and Philip and the two chimpanzees they adopted, Charlie and his half sister Casey. It shows the joys and challenges of life with our closest primate relatives. The film investigates the chimpanzees’ adaptive abilities when removed from their natural habitat, their amazing mental capabilities, and the bonding love that exists between chimpanzees and humans when they share intimate space.

Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives. They are also known to be intensely social creatures capable of close and enduring attachments. Most often they have been observed in the wild and in laboratories. What would happen if chimpanzees and humans were members of the same family?

Mark and Erik are an “unmarried” gay couple who have been together for ten years. They long to have biological children. Searching for a surrogate mother on the internet, they meet Wen, a wife, mother and practicing witch. Over the next three years, this unique partnership encounters unforeseen obstacles that challenge their desire for a child and threaten the growing bonds between them. The film is a ruthlessly honest portrait of an American family …with a 21st century twist. Paternal Instinct chronicles a journey of mythical proportions as Wen leads Mark and Erik on a journey of deep love, loss (miscarriage, fertility challenges), doubts, failure and finally, preparation for parenthood. The documentary climaxes with the triumphant arrival of Cecilia Alexis Kulleseid-Eisenhardt after an agonizing home delivery in an inflatable kiddies’ pool.

This film depicts a moment of flirtation in a joking relationship between N!ai, the young wife of Gunda, and her great uncle, Tik!kay, under the shade of a big tree. Through the lens, the director of this film leads the audience to ponder on the possible relationships between the two sexes. The flirtation between the protagonists, indeed, is based on the flowing sexual desires between females and males, yet the intricate possibilities have gone far beyond sexual attraction. ”Seize-the-day” enjoyment, indecisiveness, unpredictability, light-heartedness, whim, exaggeration, and deceit are all part of the flirtation, yet sexuality is only the surface of the whole event, a means of expression.

John Marshall is reunited with Toma’s family in 1978. Like the majority of Ju/’hoansi, they have settled at Tjum!kui, an administrative post run by the South African government. They came looking for water, jobs and an easier life, but found poverty, malnutrition and violence. Desperate for a more stable existence, the family heads back to their traditional water hole, /Aotcha, with shovels, cattle, and plans to start farming.