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- Original footage of the prosperous farming community of Glencoe Minnesota, 60 miles west of Minneapolis, was filmed in 1979 for a PBS documentary. But for the next six years Malle was too busy with other projects to finish this work. He returned in 1985 for a follow-up and found the community reacting to the mid-eighties crisis of overproduction in farm country. With weekly foreclosures on family farms and many families moving to the south, Malle documented a sense of frustration and apprehension from the same participants he had befriended in better times half a decade earlier.
- Told in a quasi-documentary style, this companion piece to I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967) deals with topics such as class society, religion, sex, contraceptives, and the Swedish prison Kumla.
- After reuniting with his mother in Ho Chi Minh City, a family tragedy causes Binh to flee from Viet Nam to America. Landing in New York, Binh begins a road trip to Texas, where his American father is said to live.
- Zeki Demirkubuz plays the lead character Ahmet who wants to make a film about Dostoyevsky's 'Crime and Punishment'. He falls into a deep depression, loses interest in the film and life, pushes those who love him away and cannot complete the film.
- When forced to divorce his wife by family and social pressure because her mother is a prostitute, Nazar (Khodaparast) works double shifts to pay back the loan he took out for his impulsive wedding and to pay some ongoing restitution to his sweet jilted bride, Reyhaneh (Kosari). When he falls behind in the payments he flees the police and ends up in the desert with an uncommunicative old man (Gharibian) who catches poisonous snakes for their venom. These two are forced to coexist in the desert, because Nazar is unwilling to return to the city and wants to catch snakes to make enough money to settle his debts. His verbose, chattering annoys the reticent old man until Nazar's life is endangered.
- Spanning 18 years in an Iranian women's prison, this follows two women: the new prison warden, a tough as nails devout Muslim who has served in the army on the Iraqi front, and a young midwife, Mitra, who is serving her sentence for killing her mother's abusive husband. In the early years, Mitra is repeatedly punished as the warden tries to break her. This includes punishment for delivering a baby in the prison cell while all of the prison staff has taken shelter during an Iraqi bombing. The warden's attitude starts to change after 8 years, when Mitra tries to protect a new inmate from rape at the hands of her older cellmates. When the baby comes back in 1991 as a 17 year old delinquent, Sepideh, the warden respects Mitra enough to protect the girl.
- A 57 minute documentary of a Helsinki concert featuring the Leningrad Cowboys and the Alexandrov Red Army Choir and Ballet, who collaborate on a number of US Rock songs sung in English (like "Sweet Home, Alabama") as well as more traditional Russian songs like the "Volga Boatman".
- With minimal narration by the director and very little context this is a kaleidoscope of stunning visuals from Calcutta, a city of 8,000,000 in the late 1960's: rich and poor, exotic and mundane, secular and religious, children and adults, animate and inanimate. Given only the images, the viewer can read any meaning she or he wants into the film.
- After acknowledging his own immigrant background, Malle, tries to present the range of immigrant experiences in the US during the 1980's. In an attempt to be comprehensive, the film includes interviews with migrant workers and illegal entrants along the Mexican border, conversations with an enterprising Indian motel owner, coverage of industrious African and Asian families in the cities, an extensive interview with the first Costa Rican astronaut, visits with Cuban exiles in Miami, several conversations with West Indian poet Derek Walcott, an extended portrait of the deposed Nicaraguan General Samoza (the surviving brother of Anastasio Somoza Debayle) and his extended family. The film finishes with a brief visit to the Russian Jewish community in Brooklyn, NY to tie in with the centenary of the Statue of Liberty.
- Political documentary about the 2000 United States presidential election. It examines the then-current state of American democracy, the issues handled by the typical political process, and the issues which remain unresolved. It also questions whether there is any actual difference between the two major parties, the Democrats and the Republicans.
- A coming of age story of a boy, Turi (Ernandes) and his younger sister, Teresa (Guarrasi) on an island off the coast of Sicily. Using mostly non professional actors in a neorealist style, this film creates a charming and seemingly authentic slice of village life.
- Set in 1955 when many migrated from Russia to the Steppes of Kazakhstan, this is the trip back to the Canal from the frontier and farms by a number of people who tell their settler stories. Alenka Muratova (Ovodova) is a winsome 13 year old who talks Dmitry Prokovich, the chief mechanic for the Soviet, into giving up his seat in the truck to a young mother with her infant daughter. Then Alenka and Dmitry share the back of the open truck with a young woman, newly graduated dentist who has not been able to find a position, Stefan, a hitchhiker with a dog who hopes his upper-class wife will return to him and the countryside, and Vasselina Petrovolka, a woman who lost one of her twin daughters in a riding accident by the river shortly after they arrived, and now is returning to tell the other twin of her sister's fate. A warm hearted look at common folks traveling in the frontier.
- About the shifting, unpredictable currents behind the Chinese Cultural Revolution, this documentary shows the various phases of the 12 years from 1964 through the purging of the Gang of Four at the end of 1976, with some retrospective information about the Long March and the 1958 Great Leap forward. It is built around contemporary interviews with survivors of three families: The most prominent is Liu Shaoqi, the President of China until 1967 & the highest ranking target of the revolution, his wife, Wang Guangmei and his daughter Liu Ting. The most complete coverage was given to a former secretary to Mao, Li Rui, who was banished when he questioned the Great Leap forward. He was rehabilitated in the early 60's, but not brought back into the Party and was banished again when the Cultural revolution started. Li's daughter Li Nanyang who was 11 or 12 when Li Rui was first imprisoned, was a staunch supporter of the Cultural Revolution, but she was never allowed to join the Party because of her father's background. Both daughters' reactions to and discomfort with their fathers was a major thread. This film also highlights the social pressure and Li Nanyang's loss of face among her student peers, which lasted until her father was rehabilitated in 1979. The third family was middle class and capitalist before the 1949 revolution and was therefore suspect. The older brother, Yu Luoke who was refused entry to university, asserted that the revolution was going astray by focusing on the family background of students. His poster asking for equal treatment for everyone, no matter what their family background was celebrated for several months, but then he was arrested and finally executed in 1970. His brother, Yu Luowen now still does not know the whole story, but can tell of how their paper was shut down when the winds changed in 1968. Another thread focused on two teenaged Red Guards, and their disillusionment with the violence that developed after the first few months of the Cultural Revolution.
- Three interrelated stories of thwarted young love in summertime Tashkent. Visually striking with some memorable images and two heartfelt performances, but the story line is difficult to follow as the subtitles are often lost in the bright sunlight through the trees or off the water.
- The proceedings of a Paris courtroom are the grist for this documentary. Drawn from over 200 appearances before the same female judge, the director chooses a dozen or so varied misdemeanor and civil hearings to highlight the subtle details of human behavior. In the process he draws attention to issues of guilt, innocence, policing and ethnicity in France.
- A Bolshevik army officer and Uzbek who has been nursed back to health by a young Uzbek woman to whom he is now married, gains responsibility for the local village in 1929. He is urged by comrades in Tashkent to have the local women drop their chadors and veils but he is also told that he should not force this on anyone. His wife declines to take off her veil, so a 14 year old girl steps forward to set the example, over the objections of the local Muslim clergy and most of the village men. After the girl is killed, and the commissar is shot, his wife takes him to the hills to nurse him back to health once again. She begs her husband to leave the village. Instead when he decides to return, she is pressured by her father to continue to wear the veil.
- Jewish tailor Albert (Abkarian) and his wife Lea (Breitman) are reestablishing their business in 1946 Paris. Albert hires six people, more than he needs to meet current slow season demand, and all but Jacqueline (Lubna Azabal) are Jews who somehow survived the occupation. Slowly, tentatively they get to know each other as they cut, stitch, press, and fit men's and women's clothes. But each has to reestablish his or her life and relationships among sometimes indifferent or hostile Parisians.
- Two teens, Tamari and Itai, are impoverished following the death of their parents when their uncle takes their plow which they need to feed themselves. While their preoccupied neighbors in the village ignore them, Itai leaves for Harare and Tamari stays behind to care for their younger brother and sister. Finally, some of the neighbors notice and come together to support the children.
- 20041h 37mUnrated7.8 (168)67MetascoreMenachem Daum, the son of holocaust survivors, and a New York Orthodox Jew worries that both of his sons, full time yeshiva students who live with their families in Israel, are becoming seduced to intolerance by their religious studies. "All religions today are in danger of being hijacked by extremists." To open their perspectives just a little he sets off with his wife, Rifka, and both sons, Tzvi Dovid and Akiva, to visit the Polish towns where his parents grew up and to try to find the Catholic farmers who hid his father-in-law from the Germans. Enduring the bemused tolerance of his sons, Menachem persists until they find Honorata Matuszezyk Mucha who as a young woman brought food nightly to Rifka's father and his two brothers for 28 months until the end of World War II. The Daum sons perspectives widen a bit to allow for good Gentiles, but they also encounter some resentment from the Poles who heard no word from the three brothers after they left their hiding place, not even a postcard with a thank you. A lot of issues are surfaced but left unresolved in this well crafted documentary.
- The opening scene in this film is of an arrest in Hillsborough County Florida where a woman has scratched her husband while he was trying to restrain her from getting back in her car and leaving after an argument. The officers explain that she has committed a battery and thereby earned herself an inescapable arrest and overnight stay in jail because by law they have no discretion. This sets the stage for two hours of court proceedings before three different judges, each trying to apply the Florida domestic violence laws. Though it gets repetitive, it also is fascinating to try to figure out what to do with such issues as restraining orders, parental visits, child support and punishment as each witness testifies, and to see how the judges react.
- Fereshteh loses her home and her two sons after her husband's accidental death when Hadj Safdar, her stubborn and powerful father-in-law, forces her to return to her parents. She is faced with the loss of her visitation rights when Hadj plans to send his grandchildren to live in a remote town. With the help of her circle of women friends she tries to take them beyond his reach, but in a patriarchal society it is hard to find a safe haven.
- In Black Tape: A Tehran Diary, a tape found in the garbage is revealed to be a young wife's daily video diary. The film courageously investigates injustice through a combination of political intrigue and innovative narrative technique.
- As a five year old boy, William lived with his uncle Gustavo who started a band just to woo a very attractive singer, Jazmín. This is a bittersweet madcap comedy about the tribulations of Gustavo and the band as William remembers them. But in the end, when the band disbands and Jazmín leaves, Gustavo keeps trying to woo her.
- In an unnamed country in a small village the young local executioner is carrying out the execution of three people on the orders of the outside hard core cleric, Hadji. After the first two are shot, he is told to stop, because Hadji believes that executing the young women will send the young virgin to heaven. Instead Hadji orders the young executioner to marry and deflower the virgin, so she will end up in hell after her execution. This is the start of the executioner's crisis of faith.
- Jurácek's feature debut is shot in two parts. In the first, a corporal accompanies a new recruit with a sore Achilles tendon for his physical, and all the girls or young women they see are played by the same actress (Ruzickova). In the longer second segment, shot with the help of the Czechoslovakia army, the soldiers pass the time during basic training and maneuvers by talking about girls. At the end of their training they plan a large dance on their base with women bused in from the local village.
- Senay (Blume) is a willful eleven year old girl in Hamburg who's Turkish father has just died. The only friend responding to the news about her father is a gay Turkish cabaret singer, Zeki (Siir Eloglu). Together they travel through Europe in search of the orphan girl's mother, Cicek (Fecht), who left at childbirth and whom Zeki represents as Senay's aunt.
- Shot in Uzbekistan during WWII, Takhir (Aglayev) is betrothed to Zukhra (Rysayeva) on their birth days by her father, Babakhan (Ismatov). They grow up together in the Kahn's palace, but at age 12, Takhir's father chooses to help the leader of the peoples rebellion escape and is later killed by Babakhan. On his 18th birthday, when he is supposed to be married to Zukhra, Takhir learns of his fathers killer, and confronts Babakhan. He is sentenced to be drowned in a chest and is dispatched down the river. Takhir survives and returns to the kingdom in time to prevent the marriage forced on Zukhra by her father, but is captured and sentenced to death.
- 180 kilometers down wind of Chernobyl, the village of Budische was evacuated except for 55 older residents who refused to leave and one young man, Alexei who wanted to stay with his parents. This is a simple story of life in Budische 14 years later, as told in voiceover by Alexei. The Belarus village is built around a common spring from which everyone draws water, toting it back to their homes, and to which the women walk to do their laundry outside.
- A group of uneducated cadets is sent to a snowy Iranian military outpost for basic training where they are toughened up and abused, and two of them make a difficult adjustment to military life. When one of the men gets the opportunity to visit Teheran, the others give him messages.
- This film is a followup to the 1988 documentary "The World is Watching". Fifteen years later the same director and producer follow some of the same journalists into Nicaragua to explore what happened after the international media attention faded. They discover a country of desperate poverty and political corruption, with some reconciliation among the former Sandinista and contra fighters, unreported by the international press, which is preoccupied with other stories aroound the world. In some cases thay are the first international journalists that many of the Nicaraguans have seen since the 1990 elections
- Jin (Yakusho), a young, widowed police detective who is thinking of leaving the force to better take care of his 8 year old daughter Misaki (Kanno), by chance arrests Neko (Emoto), an accomplished middle aged burglar who has just fixed Misaki's bicycle. After Neko has several weeks to see Jin in the interrogation room, he decides to confess to Jin and teach him how to become a capable detective and worthy adversary. By the time Neko serves his 10 year sentence, Jin is a highly regarded detective and they can they start their contest in earnest.
- Three student leaders in the 1980's protests that helped restore democracy to Chile, were children in 1973 when Pinochet lead the coup that killed two of their fathers. Through archival footage and contemporary reflections this film documents the journey each has taken from shock, to silence, to protest, to relief and now, as they reach 40, to reentering public life trying again to transform Chilean society.
- Toussaint (Diate) and Nixon (Ousseni) are teenage friends in the Ivory Coast who can't find jobs. After accidentally killing someone in defense of Nixon, Toussaint and Nixon join Bronx, the local gang that rules the ghetto, for protection. Toussaint quickly establishes himself as a worthy warrior in robberies arranged by his mentor (oldsta), Tyson (Shang Lee Souleyman Kere) and gains enough status to be seen as an oldsta, rather than yougsta among the kids that came in at the time he did. He uses this position to cut short a gang rape of Mariam (Dogo), a slender girl that he fancies, and then he takes her on as his woman. Meanwhile, Nixon and some other impatient youngstas, decide to pull a job on their own, with a fake gun. When they mess up, one youngsta is beaten to death by the neighbors and Nixon is tracked down by the police and jailed.