Videocracy

In a country where bella figura is a national pastime, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is the maestro of media manipulation. Having risen to political primacy with the aid of his Mediaset empire, he now controls 90% of the bel paese’s television channels including the state-run RAI network. Quantity, it seems, does not equal quality. Fed on a diet of semi-naked dancing girls, inane competitions and rickety reality shows built around the most ridiculous of premises, is it any wonder that Italians are becoming a nation of fame-hungry wannabes?

Solidbodies: The 50 Year Guitar War

Starting with their conception and design in the early 1950s, "Solidbodies", focuses on the five decade competition of sounds between the two guitars that have been heard on more popular recordings than any other instruments during the rock era. The documentary features players, historians, instrument dealers and collectors expressing their views on the competitive influences

Before the Music Dies

B4MD tells the story of American music at this precarious moment. Filmakers Andrew Shapter and Joel Rasmussen traveled the country, hoping to understand why mainstream music seems so packaged and repetitive, and whether corporations really had the power to silence musical innovation. The answers they found on this journey are what makes B4MD both riveting and exciting.

A Chair Fit for an Angel

For two hundred years, the Shakers have been America's most successful utopian society. While seeking harmony, order and perfection in every aspect of their lives, they built minimalistic furniture and buildings that influenced modern design. The Shakers wrote songs of exquisite beauty and danced to the point of ecstasy during their religious meetings. Inspired by this music and dance, choreographer Tero Saarinen created Borrowed Light, a dance piece about communal life and individual sacrifice. Shot in Finland and the United States, featuring interviews and excerpts from Borrowed Light, this documentary explore the cultural legacy of this religious group devoted to creating heaven on earth.

Gott würfelt nicht

Los posibles

Santiago Mitre co-directs his first movement following The Student together with choreographer Onofri Barbato. Although it would have been more accurate to say “his first film-story-adventure-movie-great movie following The Student”, the word movement fits perfectly in Los posibles, the most overwhelmingly kinetic work Argentine cinema has delivered in many, many years. The film deals with the adaptation of a dance show directed by Onofri together with a group of teenagers who came to Casa La Salle, a center of social integration located in González Catán, trying to find some refuge from hardship. Already entitled Los posibles, the piece opened in the La Plata Tacec and was later staged in the AB Hall of the San Martín Cultural Center. Now, it dazzles audiences out of a film screen, with extraordinary muscles and a huge heart: Los posibles is a rhapsody of roughen bodies and torn emotions. Precise and exciting, it’s our own delayed, necessary, and incandescent West Side Story.

Zénith Zénith

Inspired by the wind in the grass, the song of birds, the tapestry of the forest, two bodies of water and natural erosion, two dancers and a filmmaker explore the beauty of the Memramcook valley.

The Exclusive Brethren

Documentary on the religious group - The Exclusive Brethren, a cult part of the Christian evangelical movement.

Mannislam: Maskulinitet og Islam

Why does a man in Kuwait inspired by the 99 names of Allah and the Quranic stories create a comics and cartoon series about super heroes called The 99? Why does a man in Bangladesh travel from one village to another, teaching the community how to play a board game? Why does a man in Indonesia encourage other men to wear mini skirts in a demonstration? They all have the same goal. They want to change the dark side of the masculinities in their cultures by playing games. They all want to reform Islam. They are the Muslim Davids against Goliath.

Le Coran, Aux Origines Du Livre

The Quran is the Holy Book of Islam, a religion shared by more than a billion followers worldwide. For the Muslim tradition, since its revelation to the Prophet Muhammad between the year 610 and 632 of the Christian era in Mecca and Medina, the Koran is immutable, and has remained maintained. However, recent discoveries of Koranic manuscripts analyzed by scientists, dated around the year 680 - the oldest known in the world - revealed that the Koran has a history. During the first century of Islam, and before the canonical version of the Caliph Uthman imposed itself, the holy book of Islam would have known competing versions, a different organization of the suras, variable readings due to a writing, in its beginnings, very rudimentary… It is to this meeting of knowledge, at the crossroads between the Muslim tradition and scientific research, that this journey to the origins of the Koran invites.

Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus

Filmmaker and evolutionary biologist Randy Olson tries to figure out if it is the Darwinists or Intelligent Design supporters who will become a flock of dodos.

Valentino: The Last Emperor

Film which travels inside the singular world of one of Italy's most famous fashion designers, Valentino Garavani, documenting the colourful and dramatic closing act of his celebrated career and capturing the end of an era in global fashion. However, at the heart of the film is a love story - the unique relationship between Valentino and his business partner and companion of 50 years, Giancarlo Giammetti. Capturing intimate moments in the lives of two of Italy's richest and most famous men, the film lifts the curtain on the final act of a nearly 50-year reign at the top of the glamorous and fiercely competitive world of fashion. (Storyville)

Le silence

From the 1950s to the 1980s, Catholic priests committed numerous sexual abuses on young boys in several French-speaking villages in New Brunswick. Brought to light when the victims were in their fifties, these scandals sparked shock and indignation in the media and the public. Why have affected communities chosen secrecy over justice and truth for so long? Taking advantage of their influence to impose a "pious silence" on their parishioners, several figures of authority have built a veritable structure of abuse that testifies as much to the oppressions specific to the Acadian populations as to the systemic denial of the Catholic Church. Challenged by the power of collective silence, seasoned filmmaker Renée Blanchar seeks to unravel the root causes by going out to meet the survivors.

Amin

AMIN portrays Qashqai musician Amin Aghaie, a young modern nomad and his family who despite facing steep financial, cultural and political obstacles are dedicated to their art and culture. Amin travels to remote towns and villages to record the music of the surviving masters whose numbers decline each year. His nomadic family are selling their meager belongings to help support their son's education in performance and ethnomusicology at Tchaikovsky's Conservatory in Kyiv, Ukraine, but it is not enough. Amin, desperate to finish his academic education, sells his violins one at a time just to pay for his tuition.

Me and the Mosque

Using original animation, archival footage and personal interviews, this full-length documentary portrays the multiple relationships Canadian Muslim women entertain with Islam’s place of worship, the mosque. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. In North America, a large number of converts are women. Many are drawn to the religion because of its emphasis on social justice and spiritual equality between the sexes. Yet, many mosques force women to pray behind barriers, separate from men, and some do not even permit women to enter the building. Exploring all sides of the issue, the film examines the space – both physical and social – granted to women in mosques across the country.

loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies

When college rock darlings the Pixies broke up in 1992, their fans were shocked and dismayed. When they reunited in 2004, those same fans and legions of new listeners were ecstatic and filled with high hopes. loudQUIETloud follows the rehearsals and live shows of the band as they struggle through the reunion tour "Sell Out"

L'avocat de la terreur

A documentary on Jacques Vergès, the controversial lawyer and former Free French Forces guerrilla, exploring how Vergès assisted, from the 1960s onwards, anti-imperialist terrorist cells operating in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Participants interviewed include Algerian nationalists Yacef Saadi, Zohra Drif, Djamila Bouhired and Abderrahmane Benhamida, Khmer Rouge members Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, once far-left activists Hans-Joachim Klein and Magdalena Kopp, terrorist Carlos the Jackal, lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, neo-Nazi Ahmed Huber, Palestinian politician Bassam Abu Sharif, Lebanese politician Karim Pakradouni, political cartoonist Siné, former spy Claude Moniquet, novelist and ghostwriter Lionel Duroy, and investigative journalist Oliver Schröm.

Dust to Glory

An action-adventure documentary chronicling the most notorious and dangerous race in the world--the Tecate SCORE Baja 1000. Rivaling the Indy 500 and 25 Hours of Daytona, the race across Baja's peninsula is unpredictable, grueling and raw--just like the uncharted American West of yesteryear.

Discoteca Merlin: The Last Dance

Merlin nightclub opened in 1992 in Barcelona and its medieval appearance did not leave anyone indifferent from the first day. After more than 30 years of enjoying the night with its characteristic atmosphere and varied musical selection, the castle was forced to close its doors in January 2023 despite filling the room every weekend. This video immortalizes the place through its regular customers and staff.

Bhoutan : Dans les pas de Matthieu Ricard

Buddhist monk and photographer Matthieu Picard as he returns to the Asian country in the Himalayas where he spent a decade after seven years away, revisiting breathtaking landscapes and experiencing local traditions.