Imphal Bazaar (1934)

Picturesque India or, In and About Calcutta

Botanical gardens in Bombay plus the highly decorative Jain Temple in Calcutta.

The Writer from a Country Without Bookstores

The ruthless dictator Teodoro Obiang has ruled Equatorial Guinea with an iron hand since 1979. Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel is the most translated Equatoguinean writer, but he had to flee the country in 2011, after starting a hunger strike denouncing the crimes of the dictatorship. Since then, he has lived in Spain, feeling that, despite the risks, he must return and fight the monster with words.

Les filles c’est pas pareil

In this feature-length documentary, six teenage girls, aged 14 to 16, agree to open up and have their private worlds invaded by the camera. They have to face problems that they intend to take on "to the end": early experience of sexuality, belonging to a gang, relationships with parents, social tolerance, friendship... They live tender and pure lives in their own way.

Fascinating India

"Fascinating India" spreads an impressive panorama of India’s historical and contemporary world. The film presents the most important cities, royal residences and temple precincts. It follows the trail of different religious denominations, which have influenced India up to the present day. Simon Busch and Alexander Sass travelled for months through the north of the Indian subcontinent to discover what is hidden under India’s exotic and enigmatic surface, and to show what is rarely revealed to foreigners. The film deals with daily life in India. In Varanasi, people burn their dead to ashes. At the Kumbh Mela, the biggest religious gathering of the world, 35 million pilgrims bathe in holy River Ganges. This is the first time India is presented in such an alluring and engaging fashion on screen.

Welcome Home Freckles

After four years away, Huiju returns home to South Korea. Exchanges with her loved ones are awkward and clumsy. Huiju turns once again to her familiar rituals: pruning the trees, preparing a sauce, tying a braid.

China's Secret Monkey Kingdom

Plot unavailable

The London Nobody Knows

Based on Geoffrey Fletcher’s book, this captivating documentary exposes the real London of the swinging sixties. Turning its back on familiar sights, the film explores the hidden details of a crumbling metropolis. With James Mason as our Guide, we are led on an tour of the weird and wonderful pockets of London from abandoned music-halls to egg breaking factories.

Amazones, femmes guerrières de l'Antiquité

Plot unavailable

Dawn of the Damned

This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures, massacres and executions of Algerians. The real death of children, passers-by, resistance fighters, one after the other, becomes unbearable. Rather than be blatant propaganda, the film convinces entirely by its visual evidence, constituting an object lesson for revolutionary cinema.

Nose and Tina

Nose and Tina are a couple in love. The film captures the domestic details of their life together and documents their hassles with work, money and the law. The unusual bit: He is employed as a brakeman, and she as a sex worker.

Madwoman of God

This feature-length film tells the story of the passion between Marie de l’Incarnation, a mid-seventeenth-century nun and God, her "divine spouse." Fusing documentary and acting by Marie Tifo, whom we follow as she rehearses for this demanding role, the film paints an astonishing portrait of this mystic who abandoned her son and left France to build a convent in Canada, where she became the first female writer in New France.

Step by Step

Plot unavailable

Wacay, mujeres del tabacal

According to an ancient myth, there was a woman who, by violating the prohibition against leaving her house during menstruation, became a cannibalistic woman, an evil spirit. Amid the fear and outcry of the men, the woman was murdered and burned. But soon after, from the ashes of her pubic hair, the tobacco plant sprang forth. Today, the women of the tobacco fields are experiencing a resurgence in collective work that intertwines with personal aspirations. Five women tell us in their own words how they learned the trade from childhood. As they work, the women of the tobacco fields share their lives and their silenced childhoods. They share stories and veiled traditions.

Ruins of Delhi

Attractive travelogue filmed in and around Delhi's Qutb complex.

Mining Review 2nd Year No. 4

The majestic rebirth of Manchester's Bradford Colliery and other stories.

Meet the Mayor

A new piazza proposed for Leicester market is met by public opposition. This is a city described by one local historian as unromantic, so what do the developers expect?

Rewinding Dominoes

In her attempt to escape her past, Huiju relocated to the UK over 11 months ago. However, even after moving to a new country, she found that her nightmares from Korea continued to haunt her. Determined to move forward, she made the decision to confront her memories head-on in a very contemporary way, using dating apps to push the boundaries she had set due to her sexual trauma.

Broken Rainbow

Documentary chronicling the government relocation of 10,000 Navajo Indians in Arizona.

The Fearless Freaks

Equal parts punk and psychedelia, the Flaming Lips emerged from Oklahoma City as one of the most bracing bands of the late 1980s. The Fearless Freaks documents their rise from Butthole Surfers-imitating noisemakers to grand poobahs of orchestral pop masterpieces. Filmmaker Bradley Beesely had the good fortune of living in the same neighborhood as lead Lip Wayne Coyne, who quickly enlisted his buddy to document his band's many concerts and assorted exploits. The early footage is a riot, with tragic hair styles on proud display as the boys attempt to cover up their lack of natural talent with sheer volume. During one show, they even have a friend bring a motorcycle on stage, which is then miked for sound and revved throughout the performance, clearing the club with toxic levels of carbon monoxide. Great punk rock stuff. Interspersed among the live bits are interviews with the band's family and friends, revealing the often tragic circumstances of their childhoods and early career.

Somewhere Within Me

A tender exploration of friendship, identity, and transformation, this film follows Brahel and Andoeni, who met as children and grew up together in Guadalajara. Though their romantic relationship eventually ended, their deep friendship endured. Years later, after Brahel’s gender transition, the two reconnect and rediscover their bond. Through a rich tapestry of archival footage, music, intimate moments, and unspoken emotions, the narrative unfolds as a heartfelt journey of reconnection, vulnerability, and lasting affection.

Women, Maasai and rangers - The lionesses of Kenya

Leah and Purity are rangers in the Kenyan bushland. They roam around Amboseli National Park every day to track down wildlife. The Maasai shepherds also have their villages here. Conflicts can hardly be avoided. The young women are often called to missions to mediate or comfort. The two Maasai women themselves have to fight against discrimination

Invasion

In this era of “reconciliation”, Indigenous land is still being taken at gunpoint. Unist’ot’en Camp, Gidimt’en checkpoint and the larger Wet’suwet’en Nation are standing up to the Canadian government and corporations who continue colonial violence against Indigenous people. The Unist’ot’en Camp has been a beacon of resistance for nearly 10 years. It is a healing space for Indigenous people and settlers alike, and an active example of decolonization. The violence, environmental destruction, and disregard for human rights following TC Energy (formerly TransCanada) / Coastal GasLink’s interim injunction has been devastating to bear, but this fight is far from over.

Eyewar

What threads of history bind Manhattan's Ground Zero to those of Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Or connect sight to truth, games to war, or the silkworm to the drone? What does the United States hold to be the role of science in warfare? How has war historically been waged in Buddhist traditions? These are some of the topics addressed in Eyewar: 80 minutes of found footage which traces the development of the digital image from the maps of the second century to the screens of the twenty-first, and the uses of the field of cybernetics from Japan in the 1940s to Chile in the 1970s and Iraq in the 1990s.

Wild Japan: Snow Monkeys

In the frigid valleys of Japan's Shiga Highlands, a troop of snow monkeys make their way and raise their families in a complex society of rank and privilege where each knows their place. Their leader is still new to the job and something of a solitary grouch. But one little monkey, innocently unaware of his own lowly social rank, reaches out to this lonely leader, forming a bond with him that manages over time to warm his less than sunny disposition. It is a rare and remarkable gesture that alters both their lives. Changing seasons bring new babies to care for, a profusion of insects and blossoms to eat, family disagreements to squabble over and tragedies to overcome. Mating season brings competition for females, as the days grow shorter and colder in a rush toward winter. But with their now confident leader to guide them and their families to shelter and care for them, this troop of snow monkeys is ready to face the world.

Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death

This true, astonishing story describes how King Leopold II of Belgium turned Congo into its private colony between 1885 and 1908. Under his control, Congo became a gulag labor camp of shocking brutality. Leopold posed as the protector of Africans fleeing Arab slave-traders but, in reality, he carved out an empire based on terror to harvest rubber.

Rwanda : the silence of words

Their words had never been heard before. Co-directed by French-Rwandan musician and author Gaël Faye and director Michael Sztanke, this movie records with sensitivity and for the first time the testimonies of Prisca, Marie-Jeanne and Concessa about their lives during the genocide and after. The three Tutsi women tell the camera about their daily lives during the genocide and in the refugee camps of Murambi and Nyarushishi, where they lived a nightmare under the guard of the French soldiers of the Opération Turquoise who, under a UN mandate, where supposed to protect them. While the French army denies any rape accusation, the three women filed complaints with the French justice system in 2004 and 2012. The investigation is now at a standstill.

Caiti Blues

Caiti Lord had always dreamt of being a singer. A born-and-bred New Yorker, she studied at the best music schools and performed on Broadway. Her future was sparkling bright . . . But today, the only thing that glitters is the snow that falls on the desert. Self-exiled in Madrid, New Mexico, far from the glitz and glamour of the Big Apple, Caiti’s looking for a way forward. In this former ghost town, surrounded by mountains and old hippies, between her day job slinging drinks to tourists and the sleepless festive nights, her life is slipping by. That’s the story she tells each day on her radio show. As the United States sinks into madness and the world turns terrifyingly absurd, Caiti feels increasingly suffocated. She’s about to turn 30 and her future has never felt so uncertain. How can she find her way back to a place of meaning and self-expression?

Africa Blood and Guts

A chronicle of the violence that occurred in much of the African continent throughout the 1960s. As many African countries were transitioning from colonial rule to other forms of government, violent political upheavals were frequent. Revolutions in Zanzibar and Kenya in which thousands were killed are shown, the violence not only political; there is also extensive footage of hunters and poachers slaughtering different types of wild animals.

Pensionnats catholiques de Guyane, la blessure

Plot unavailable

Realm of Darkness - Caves of Glass

Caves of Glass is a documentary from director Sid Perou's Realm of Darkness series, focusing on the ice caves of the Austrian Tennengebirge Alps, including the Eisriesenweld and Eiskogelhöhle. It features Austrian speleologist Fritz Oedl, Belgian speleologist Guy Meauxsoone, and Ian "Tommo" White of the Northern Caving Community. First broadcast on Channel 4 on February 15, 1986, it won a Special Mention at the 5th Barcelona International Festival of Esoteric Cinema that same year.

The Pearl Button

The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds all the voices of the earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of two mysterious buttons which were found on its ocean floor. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline and the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian Indigenous people, the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.

And the Dogs Were Silent

For 'Et les chiens se taisaient' Maldoror adapted a piece of theatre by the poet and politician Aimé Césaire (1913–2008), about a rebel who becomes profoundly aware of his otherness when condemned to death. His existential dialogue with his mother reverberates around the African sculptures on display at the Musée de l'Homme, a Parisian museum full of colonial plunder whose director was the Surrealist anthropologist Michel Leiris.

CARA-B

A desktop documentary that focuses on the Golden Record that NASA sent into space in the late 1970s. The piece reflects on issues such as the power of scientific discourse to produce revisions of the world, the evolution of the concept of the archive and the resignification of borders in the rhetoric of space colonialism.