Film producer Xoliswa Sithole sets off on a deeply personal journey to interview young women who, like herself, have lost their mothers to AIDS. She meets an adolescent who fled her abusive stepfather after her mother’s death and now lives on the streets of a shantytown, exposing how HIV sufferers and their offspring are often
Documentary quest for the truth about the legend of the African boxing champion from the twenties.
Inspired and inspiring, Sunless is quite the best documentary film ever made! It takes the form of a visual letter, here are the musings and recollections of an intelligent, observant and inquisitive man who has been around the world and back. He has a sense of humour, he’s well read and he wants to share
An innovative visual spectacle which offers an intelligent analysis of the ravages of consumerism and the people violently opposed to it. The film focuses on anti-globalisation guru John Zerzan, whose call for a giant dismantling project, of everything that separates us from nature and puts people on the treadmill of constant work and consumption, has
Blackness is probed in many of its manifestations as the director travels from the US to Tanzania, and on to Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, to find out what it means to be black. A heartfelt quest for identity leads him to conclude that being black and the descendant of slaves makes Catholic Brazil—“a New World
Carol Morely returns to Manchester, where in the early 1980s five years of her life were lost in an alcoholic haze. This is a brave, unflinching poetic retrieval of an era in which rediscovered friends, acquaintances, and enemies speak directly to the camera with frank and unadorned tales of Carol’s drunken, promiscuous behaviour, her insecurities
Photographer Marcos Prados’ portraits of Brazil’s charcoal people inspired Academy Award-winning director Nigel Noble to focus on the plight of several migrant workers and their families. Their lives are led on the front lines of the massive ecological destruction of Brazilian forests. Their meagre existence comes from making the ovens and stoking them with the
Dissecting the personality of corporations as a legal “Person” with penetrating precision, the directors of this thought-provoking documentary come up with irrefutable evidence that these “Persons” are, in fact, psychopaths. But, this is not the mass slating of single corporate entities (although many are cited) -it is an investigation into why the “body” corporate has
Few authors have been as steeped in the culture of America’s ruling elite as Gore Vidal. His grandfather was a senator, his father Roosevelt’s aviation secretary and he himself ran for Congress in 1960. This lends unique authority to his elegant disgust with what he calls ‘a sanctimonious society of hustlers’ – or more recently,
The turbulent tale of Indonesia’s political and economic crisis in the late 1990s that forced President Suharto to resign after 32 years is told through the eyes of a 60-year-old woman and her two sons. The youngest can’t hold down a job and, according to his brother, is wasting his life on gambling, pigeon races
Our synopsis in 2001: Andile “One by One” Tshongolo has literally boxed his way out of the township. This film documents his struggle, his gruelling training regime and relationship with trainer Steve Naude, and his physically demanding job as a groom in Trudy Houareaus stable. All in an effort to achieve a better life for
Our synopsis in 2001: Debuted as a work in progress at Encounters 1999, we are pleased to screen the completed multi-award-winning feature. The San are widely acknowledged to be the oldest inhabitants of southern Africa, with an unbroken link to their ancestors who have lived in the same region for over 30,000 years. The film
The Hunt is the first documentary to explore, from the inside, the increasingly secretive, complex and fascinating world of English foxhunting set against the background of public outcry for the banning of this blood sport. The film follows the Ludlow Hunt in middle England over a full season. Never before has a film crew been
The massacre of 800,000 Rwandans in just 100 days was the worst instance of genocide since World War 2. Yet the world stood by and did nothing. This shameful episode is narrated through the eyes of Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, head of a UN mission sent to enforce a peace deal between the Tutsi rebel
To describe Il Palio as a horse race is to liken Table Mountain to an inconsequential hillock. Held in the very heart of medieval Siena, Italy, this ancient annual event inspires extreme commitment, dedication, and emotion, but mostly indomitable pride. Although incredibly dangerous, this battle is not fought between the jockeys; it’s an event that
The tale of Sara Baartman should be known to every South African. For it is a story that distils the audacity of European racism and is an accessible and moving account of her life. Sara was a Khoi-Khoi woman, born in the Cape in 1790, who at the age of 20 was taken to London
Escaped convict, war hero, media manager, mystic visionary—Khozh-Ahmed Koukhaev is the very modern model of a major Mafia don. Twenty-five years ago in Moscow, he founded an underground movement that became the cradle of the Chenchen liberation movement. Today, amidst the ruins of Grozny, he rides in an armoured Mercedes dressed in expensive Italian suits.
This must-see movie takes us to the lush Caribbean island of Mustique, the late Princess Margaret’s hideaway, and gives us a glimpse into the arcane mental meanderings of Lord Glenconnor. The riotously eccentric aristocrat bought the island back in the 1960s and was instrumental in turning it into a playground for the jet set of
A Cannes film festival prize winner and considered more ‘real’ than many documentaries, La Promesse engages and convinces with its evocative portrayal of the archetypal struggle between father and son, between right and wrong. Igor’s father trades in illegal immigrants. When Amidu, from Burkina Faso, falls and dies in their employ, Igor must reconcile his
This unobtrusive gem, formerly titled Bread & Water, is an inspiring yet unsentimental account of service delivery in action, which somehow acquires the force of a parable. In Sicambeni village, near Port St Johns, there is no electricity or running water. Villagers have to walk miles to a contaminated water source, and disease is rife. Then
In this remarkable gem, Mohsen Abdolvahab captures in delicate poetic images the lot of two Iranian widows who were married to the same man and now live on either side of a yard. Thrown together by an impotent man’s desire for children, there is little love lost between the pair. The first lords it over
Based on fact, this gripping film realistically re-creates one of the most miraculous accidents in the history of mountaineering. This is a nail-biting story of mental and physical hell, extreme pain, horrific choices and a nightmare bid for survival. Partly reconstructed, partly told by the two survivors, MacDonald artfully paints the story of two climbers
Cannes, festival and marketplace, appeals most to any filmmaker dreaming of discovery. The most important player on the scene is Harvey Weinstein, the make-or-break mogul of Miramax … if you can get to see him. Stephen Walker followed four filmmakers through the hustle and bustle of Cannes 1998. James Merendino from Los Angeles hopes his
Banned in India—this film is pertinent in the light of current events. “Nuclear nationalism was in the air. The memory of one who had opposed the bomb on moral grounds alone had begun to fade”. So begins Patwardhan’s terrifying account of the nuclear arms race between Pakistan and India. Juxtaposing footage of politicians whipping up