On 15 September 1963, a bomb was tossed into the basement of an Alabama church which had become a focal point for the US civil rights movement, killing four little girls. This is silver-screen legend Spike Lee’s meticulously researched and movingly executed homage to the murdered children and surviving family and friends. Interviews with civil
The remarkable story of a tune composed by Zulu herdboy Solomon Linda, which became one of the most recorded songs in history, The Lion Sleeps Tonight, but left its originator penniless after an American songwriter stole the rights. Lion’s Trail takes you on a visual and aural adventure from the rolling hills and humble churches
Afrikaans poet Ingrid Jonker existed, in the words of Breyten Breytenbach, in the schism of “living in a social hell in a physical paradise.” A life of romantic compromise and socio-political injustice became unbearable, culminating in her suicide in 1965, aged 31. Her relentless inner dialogue expressed with searing intimacy and imagination the impasse of
A mother. A daughter. Two women—two radically different responses to AIDS. Pinky is loud and flamboyant. She likes dressing up and speaking her mind. A tireless AIDS awareness campaigner who contracted HIV from a blood transfusion, she spares no one’s feelings in her efforts to publicise the disease. But her daughter Ntombi, like any teenager,
The weapons of war continue to exact a grim toll long after peace treaties have been signed. This compelling film takes us from the forests and fields of Verdun, where French farmers are still being killed by inadvertently detonating shells dating from the First World War, to Stalingrad in Russia—the watershed battle of the Second
A celebration of music in the struggle, Amandla! looks at how changes in the lyrics, rhythms and melodies of liberation songs reflected the radicalisation of black resistance in response to ever harsher crackdowns by the Apartheid state. In the context of the defiance campaign era of the 1950s, jaunty ditties warned “watch out Verwoerd, the
A group of health professionals tours the most deprived regions of South Africa providing care.
Saeed Hanaei murdered sixteen prostitutes in the belief he was ridding Iran of ‘corrupt elements’. The press dubbed them ‘spider killings’ because of Hanaei’s habit of luring his victims to his home, and the film looks behind the headlines to reveal a twisted mind forged in a society torn between reformists and religious fanatics. The
In an absurdist romp reminiscent of Nanni Moretti’s Dear Diary, Mograbi sets out to make a film about what it is he hates about August in Israel. After a series of false starts derided by his wife as morbid and uninspiring, the true theme of his project emerges: recording people’s reactions to his own artifice
A colourful vehicle with an enormous inscription on the bonnet—Battu’s Bioscope—rambles along the sun scorched Indian roads. Mr Battu is the owner of one of 2,000 mobile cinemas in India. The bioscope comprises an old Soviet projector and a few sheets of white cloth. Andrzej Fidyk’s team accompanies them from Calcutta, via fishing villages, snake-hunters’
Occasionally, a film comes along which, simply by holding up a mirror to the smallest segment of human activity, manages to illuminate the entire spectrum of the soul. Two siblings living on a smallholding in post-Glasnost Russia squander their days digging up potatoes, chopping firewood or repairing a fence their cow keeps trampling. When their
This is the world premiere of an engaging and remarkable approach to a social problem that exists in our midst, and is judged harshly, even feared, but little understood. In 2003, Freda Darvel was a 19-year-old street kid that sniffed glue with her boyfriend Boeta Claassen. But she can sing, and she is plucked from
After 56 years of self-imposed silence, Traudl Junge unburdens herself with a detailed and fascinating account of the daily routine, the personal foibles and whimsies of her boss, the man whom she now recognises as demonic: Adolf Hitler. She is candid, admitting to, but not absolving herself of, her naïveté. As a young girl of
In this quirky and entertaining exposé of corporates covering up health risks associated with their products, Helfand uses what she calls her “uterus money”—the payout from a drug company that admitted the oestrogen therapy her mother received while pregnant gave Judith cervical cancer—to investigate PVC, a potentially toxic plastic used to make anything from cellphones
A sumptuous visual essay celebrating archetypal forces of creation and destruction in a stunning display culled from a century of cinematic record from around the globe, and set to a moving soundtrack composed by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead. Bodysong begins by exploring the individual’s traumatic eruption into the world, followed by the first shaky steps
A visually arresting exploration of the fate of music after China’s Cultural Revolution, during which all Western music and even Chinese traditional music was branded “bourgeois” and counter-revolutionary A new generation was eager to learn once music academies were opened again, and we see how a rich new world, so long suppressed, inspired five composers.
In July 2000, the daily grind in Rio de Janeiro is thrown into disarray by a terrifying hostage situation that unfolds on Bus 174 at the Jardim Botanico. Eleven innocent passengers are held hostage by an increasingly desperate street kid, Sandro, now trapped inside by the police, SWAT snipers, and TV cameras. Despite the negotiators, the
Displaying in detail every reason for and against an hysterical witch-hunt, this fascinating, intimate and controversial film objectively questions the notion of social justice. Arnold, Elaine and their three boys grew up in upper-middle-class suburbia. By all accounts, they have it all; until a paedophile magazine is tracked to the Friedman house. Arnold’s daily contact
Bartley & O’Briain went to Venezuela expecting to make an intimate profile of Hugo Chavez, the maverick president who’s become a new icon of the left. They got more than they bargained for. Chavez’s attempts to redistribute his country’s vast oil wealth inevitably made him many enemies whose smear campaigns, orchestrated through private TV channels,
This feature is all about the documentary, a fascinating retrospective of some of the century’s finest non-fiction films, and a celebration of the contemporary legacy of the cinema verite movement of the late 50s and early 60s. The Verite [or direct cinema] movement was driven by a group of rebel filmmakers tired of stilted documentaries.
As the US-led Coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003, every news channel flew in and relayed back to their audience information on the ensuing war that was coordinated by the US army, which was fighting both a media and a ground war. One channel had a different view of events. Offering a rare window into
An essay charting Switzerland‘s democratic approach to creating a law (Gen-Lex) regulating genetically engineered animals and crops, this intriguing film is so much more than a political film. It very simply presents the political games, compromises, deal-making, emotional battles and tender humanity of people who both embrace and fear the future, but are tasked to
At an intersection of roads from Uganda to Tanzania and from Kenya via Rwanda to Zaire, some half million refugees from Tutsi-Hutu violence stream in to create a boomtown called Benaco. The newcomers whose roles in the Rwandan genocide are unknown mean big business and a wave of petty crime. A single white wedding dress,
Cunnamulla… the end of the railway line in outback Queensland. Christmas in the bush, and there’s a lot more going on than the annual lizard race. Aboriginal and white Australians live together but apart. Creativity struggles against indifference, eccentricity against conformity. Daily dramas unfold. Famous country-and-western singer Slim Dusty is coming to town, a teenage