Life in Progress (2015)

Madonna: Truth or Dare

From the rains of Japan, through threats of arrest for 'public indecency' in Canada, and a birthday tribute to her father in Detroit, this documentary follows Madonna on her 1990 'Blond Ambition' concert tour. Filmed in black and white, with the concert pieces in glittering MTV color, it is an intimate look at the work of the icon, from a prayer circle before each performance to bed games with the dance troupe afterwards.

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.

2 or 3 Things I Know About Him

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit 1996

Sexy supermodels Tyra Banks, Valeria Mazza, Kathy Ireland, Stacey Williams, Ingrid Seynhaeve, Rebecca Romijn, Angie Everhart, Manon von Gerkan and newcomer Georgianna Robertson hit South Africa for the 1996 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

Appalachian Spring

A filmed version of Aaron Copland's most famous ballet, with its original star, who also choreographed.

Rize

A documentary film that highlights two street derived dance styles, Clowning and Krumping, that came out of the low income neighborhoods of L.A.. Director David LaChapelle interviews each dance crew about how their unique dances evolved. A new and positive activity away from the drugs, guns, and gangs that ruled their neighborhood. A raw film about a growing sub-culture movements in America.

Step

The senior year of a girls’ high school step team in inner-city Baltimore is documented, as they try to become the first in their families to attend college. The girls strive to make their dancing a success against the backdrop of social unrest in their troubled city.

Winnie

While her husband served a life sentence, paradoxically kept safe and morally uncontaminated, Winnie Mandela rode the raw violence of apartheid, fighting on the front line and underground. This is the untold story of the mysterious forces that combined to take her down, labeling him a saint, her, a sinner.

Mirr

Plot unavailable

Journey to the Safest Place on Earth

Over 350,000 tons of highly radioactive waste and spent fuel rods are in temporary storage on site at nuclear power complexes and at intermediate storage sites all over the world. More than 10,000 additional tons join them every year. It is the most dangerous waste man has ever produced. Waste that requires storage in a safe final repository for hundreds of thousands of years. Out of reach of humanity and other living creatures. The question is, where? Together with Swiss-British nuclear physicist Charles McCombie, who has been searching for a safe final storage site for highly radioactive nuclear waste for thirty-five years, director Edgar Hagen investigates the limitations and contradictions involved in this project of global significance. Supporters and opponents of nuclear energy struggle for solutions whilst dogmatic worldviews are assailed by doubt

Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony

The struggle to eradicate apartheid in South Africa has been chronicled over time, but no one has addressed the vital role music plays in this challenge. This documentary by Lee Hirsch recounts a fascinating and little-known part of South Africa's political history through archival footage, interviews and, of course, several mesmerizing musical performances.

National Gallery

A portrait of the day-to-day operations of the National Gallery of London, that reveals the role of the employees and the experiences of the Gallery's visitors. The film portrays the role of the curators and conservators; the education, scientific, and conservation departments; and the audience of all kinds of people who come to experience it.

I'm Not Black, I'm Coloured: Identity Crisis at the Cape of Good Hope

In the wake of one of the worst social experiments in the history of mankind, 'I'm not Black, I'm Coloured' is one of the first documentary films to look at the legacy of Apartheid from the viewpoint of the Cape Coloured. A people who in 1994, embraced the concept of Desmond Tutu's all encompassing 'rainbow nation', but soon thereafter realized that freedom, privilege, economic growth and equality would not include them. A people who for more than 350 years has been disregarded, ignored, belittled, and stripped of anything they can call their own enduring a complex psychological oppression and identity crisis unparalleled in South African history.

Flamenco

The film presents thirteen rhythms of flamenco, each with song, guitar, and dance: the up-tempo bularías, a brooding farruca, an anguished martinete, and a satiric fandango de huelva. There are tangos, a taranta, alegrías, siguiriyas, soleás, a guajira of patrician women, a petenera about a sentence to death, villancicos, and a final rumba.

Above and Below

Above and Below is a rough and rhythmic roller coaster ride seating five survivors in their daily hustle through an apocalyptic world. A journey of challenges and beauty in uncomfortable places: Rick & Cindy, Godfather Lalo in the flood channels deep down under the shiny strip of Sin City. Dave in the dry and lonesome Californian desert and April in simulation for a Mars mission in the Utah desert. Through the hustle, the pain and the laughs, we are whisked away to an unfamiliar world, yet quickly discover the souls we encounter are perhaps not that different from our own.

Cloudy Times

Arami Ullón must return to Paraguay to make an important decision: what will happen to her sick mother, Mirna? The heartfelt gaze of the camera reveals a relationship filled with love, but also unspoken and unresolved issues. A sensitive film which examines the inner turmoil of the daughter during the final stages of her mother’s degenerative illness.

Raised by Krump

“Raised by Krump” explores the LA-born dance movement “krumping,” and how the dance has helped the lives of some of the area’s most influential dancers.

No Maps on My Taps

The remarkable spirit of tap dancers and their history provides a joyous backdrop for intimate portraits of hoofers Sandman Sims, Chuck Green, and Bunny Briggs.

Voyages au centre de la Terre : Dans les pas de Jules Verne

Plot unavailable

Hardcore Chambermusic

This documentary follows Swiss improvisation musicians and tells their stories.

The Knowledge of Healing

A documentary film about Tibetan traditional medicine.

The Shelter

It is winter at an emergency shelter for the homeless in Lausanne. Every night at the door of this little-known basement facility the same entry ritual takes place, resulting in confrontations which can sometimes turn violent. Those on duty at the shelter have the difficult task of “triaging the poor”: the women and children first, then the men. Although the total capacity at the shelter is 100, only 50 “chosen ones” will be admitted inside and granted a warm meal and a bed. The others know it will be a long night.

Who Gets To Be an Influencer?

Chronicles the rise of Collab Crib, one of the first mainstream Black creator mansion, exclusively documenting their whirlwind drive to achieve social media stardom in 90 days.

Bach rencontre Buxtehude

Plot unavailable

Out of State

Out of State is the unlikely story of native Hawaiians men discovering their native culture as prisoners in the desert of Arizona, 3,000 miles, and across the ocean, from their island home.

The Sound of Insects: Record of a Mummy

The incredible story of how the mummified corpse of a 40-year-old man was discovered by a hunter in one of the most remote parts of the country. The dead man's detailed notes reveal that he actually committed suicide through self-imposed starvation only the summer before. Liechti's film is a stunning rapprochement of a fictional text, which itself is based upon a true event: a cinematic manifesto for life, challenged by the main character's radical renunciation of life itself.

The Official 2010 FIFA World Cup Film in 3D

Experience the journey of the most-watched sporting event in the world as it was meant to be seen: in dynamic and vibrant 3D on Blu-ray. Relive the action and intensity of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa as though you were actually in the stadium witnessing all the drama and athletic skill. The greatest players in the world--supported by the most passionate fans--met up on the biggest stage in sports and made history as the 2010 FIFA World Cup enthralled South Africa and the world.

The 16th Man

Rugby Union has long been viewed in South Africa as a game for the white population, and the country’s success in the sport has been a true source of Afrikaner pride. When the 50-year-old policies and entrenched injustices of apartheid were finally overthrown in 1994, Nelson Mandela’s new government began rebuilding a nation badly in need of racial unity. So the world was watching when South Africa played host to the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Though they had only one non-white player, the South African Springboks gained supporters of all colors as they made an improbable run into the final match where they beat the heavily favored New Zealand team. When Mandela himself marched to the center of the pitch cloaked in a Springbok jersey and shook hands with the captain of the South African team, two nations became one. Oscar winner Morgan Freeman and director Cliff Bestall will tell the emotional story of that cornerstone moment and what it meant to South Africa’s healing process.

Von Trier's 100 Eyes

Although at first sight this might look like a simple ‘making of DANCER IN THE DARK’, the later developments in the film reveal the whole drama of Lars von Trier’s inner life during the shooting process. All his doubts and insecurities in collaborating with the crew and actors - especially actresses - are exposed. The biggest drama started when Björk walked off the set. Nobody knew whether she would be back or not. Admitting that he feels threatened by women, who can ‘make him feel embarrassed’, the director gives this documentary the nature of a personal diary. When he discusses the importance, purpose and beauty of the use of a hundred cameras in a certain sequence or the meaning of the Dogma 95 rules, the audience is witnessing the process of the artist’s search. Is the pain that the director went through during the shooting really visible in the final result, as Lars von Trier claims in this film? (from: http://www.idfa.nl/)

Daughters

Four young girls prepare for a special Daddy Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers, as part of a unique fatherhood program in a Washington, D.C., jail.

Meerdolen

Plot unavailable

The Decimation of Sanity

A small skit-documentary hybrid, written, shot and edited all in the space of a couple of hours on the 25th of October 2021, by exclusively myself, for a university project.

David Wants to Fly

A documentary. David Sieveking takes the advice of his idol, David Lynch and tries out Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's transcendental meditation technique.

GLOW

She was a muse, model and performer – a star, dazzling and intense. Lady Shiva managed to rise from street prostitution to the top. She lived in the fast lane and died tragically young. Her dream was to become a singer. With her companions, we trace her life during a vibrant time that kindles a yearning and provokes until today. The story of a woman’s meteoric fate and a great dream. An irrepressible desire for freedom in all its beauty and destructive force - and a stirring friendship and love.

Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti

This intimate ethnographic study of Voudoun dances and rituals was shot by Maya Deren during her years in Haiti (1947-1951); she never edited the footage, so this “finished” version was made by Teiji Ito and Cherel Ito after Deren’s death.

Africa Fusion

Alex Honnold and Hazel Findlay head to Southern Africa for an experience of a lifetime. Africa Fusion takes us from the breathtaking orange granite and vast landscapes of Namibia, through the desert and across to lush red sandstone of Waterval Boven in South Africa. Carrying on the journey in South Africa we follow Alex and Hazel North to the wild and remote Blouberg (Blue Mountain) range. From the North we then journey far South to Cape Town, where Alex and Hazel explore a city crowned in mountains, from rock face to rock face. Their odyssey reveals surprising treasures and world-class climbing – while experiencing the joy of the journey along the way. Join them as they uncover these hidden gems in unforgettable settings.

Four Women

An imaginatively choreographed dance interpretation of the ballad by Nina Simone explores four common stereotypes of Black women.

Accordion Tribe: Music Travels

Five highly original musicians from different countries form the Accordion Tribe. Together they aim to reinforce the original power of the long disdained instrument. The film follows the energetic soundscapes and their performers on a journey through Europe. An extraordinarily intensive documentary on the communicative, connecting power of music.

Searching for Sugar Man

Two South Africans set out to discover what happened to their unlikely musical hero, the mysterious 1970s rock 'n' roller, Rodriguez.

Chris the Swiss

Croatia, 7th of January 1992: In the middle of the war, a young journalist's body is discovered dressed in the uniform of an international mercenary group. Twenty years later, his cousin Anja Kofmel investigates his story.

Maurice Hines: Bring Them Back

Maurice Hines, a charming, gay African-American entertainer navigates the complications of show business while grieving the loss of his more famous, often estranged younger brother, tap dance legend Gregory Hines.

And The Heads Keep On Movin

Plot unavailable

Arada

The story of three Turkish men. They all grew up in Switzerland and all got deported after various criminal offenses.

Salsa Lives

La Salsa Vive is a vibrant cinematic exploration of Afro-Cuban music's history, tracing its roots from New York's lively streets to Cali, Colombia, now the global salsa capital.

Darcey Bussell: Looking for Fred Astaire

Documentary in which Darcey Bussell profiles Hollywood dancer Fred Astaire, marking 30 years since his death.

Genesis 2.0

A well-preserved mammoth carcass is found in the remote New Siberian Islands in the Arctic Ocean, opening up the possibility of a world-changing “Jurassic Park” moment in genetics.