At a critical moment in the history of the written word, as humanity’s archives migrate to the cloud, one filmmaker goes on a journey around the globe to better understand how she can preserve her own Romanian and Armenian heritage, as well as our collective memory. Blending the intellectual with the poetic, she embarks on a personal quest with universal resonance, navigating the continuum between paper and digital—and reminding us that human knowledge is above all an affair of the soul and the spirit.
1940: Taking over French Cinema (2019)
Paris, 1940. German occupation forces create a new film production company, Continental, and put Alfred Greven – producer, cinephile, and opportunistic businessman – in charge. During the occupation, under Joseph Goebbels’s orders, Greven hires the best artists and technicians of French cinema to produce successful, highly entertaining films, which are also strategically devoid of propaganda. Simultaneously, he takes advantage of the confiscation of Jewish property to purchase film theaters, studios and laboratories, in order to control the whole production line. His goal: to create a European Hollywood. Among the thirty feature films thus produced under the auspices of Continental, several are, to this day, considered classics of French cinema.
I'm Not Black, I'm Coloured: Identity Crisis at the Cape of Good Hope (2009)
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.
Sangre Violenta / Sangre Violeta (2024)
Why does the Mexican government consider the feminist movement a bigger threat than most drug cartels? The short documentary 'SANGRE VIOLENTA / SANGRE VIOLETA' interweaves three narratives, illuminating the motivations behind their activism in Mexico. These stories include a radical feminist collective, an inspiring survivor of an acid attack, and a grieving father who tragically lost his seven-year-old daughter to femicide.
Returning Souls (2012)
In the historically most famous ancestral house of the matrilineal Amis tribe in Taiwan, the carved pillars tell legends, such as the great flood, the glowing girl, the descending shaman sent by the Mother Sun, and the father-killing headhunting event. After a strong typhoon toppled the house 40 years ago, the pillars were moved to the Institute of Ethnology Museum. Recently young villagers, with assistance from female shamans, pushed the descendants and village representatives to communicate with ancestors in the pillars. They eventually brought the ancestral souls rather than the pillars back and began reconstructing the house.
The Unlucky Rabbit (NaN)
A group of animators pitch “The Unlucky Rabbit” to Walt Disney, a documentary about how his earliest creation, Oswald The Lucky Rabbit, was forgotten to time.
Guide to a Midwest Hometown (2022)
Coming back during Winter, Alex Powell explores both the places and personal connections found in his hometown and how they've changed. “Guide to a Midwest Hometown” explores what makes the barren places at home feel sentimental and special, and the good and bad feelings that come when being back home. Inspired by "How To With John Wilson".
We're Not Even Supposed to Be Here Today: 3 Decades of Clerks (2022)
A documentary covering 3 decades of Clerks films
JFK: Seven Days That Made a President (2013)
'JFK: Seven Days That Made a President' investigates the seven key days in JFK's life that helped shape his character and have come to define him.
Far Beyond the Pasturelands (2022)
In a remote himalayan region, the villagers of Maikot are preparing for the harvest of a mysterious aphrodisiac caterpillar-mushroom worth more than gold.
Le Grand Méliès (1952)
A biographical film about cinematic illusionist Georges Méliès featuring Méliès’s widow, Jeanne d’Alcy, as herself, and their son André as his own father.
Small trades in Paris (1932)
Grinders, rag-men, China menders, mattress carders are among those small trades of yesteryear that have disappeared from our sight and fallen into oblivion. But way back in 1931 they were far from extinct and still populated and livened up the streets from dawn till dusk. The tenderness of Pierre Chenal look at them is only accentuated by the nostalgia experienced by today's viewer.
Rita Dove: An American Poet (2014)
A series of in-depth conversations with Poet Laureate Rita Dove—conducted and recorded by Eduardo Montes-Bradley between September 2012, and October 2013. The film explores the poet's life, exposing fundamental facts of Dove's childhood and formative years growing up in Akron, Ohio in the 1950s and during the turbulent 1960s, supplemented by selections from hundreds of still images and several hours of home movies from the Dove family's collection.
Old St. Patrick's Church: Chicago Renaissance Story (2013)
Mike Leonard tells the inside story of how the west Loop’s St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, known to residents as Old St. Pat's, transformed itself from an empty church in a declining neighborhood into a Chicago hub of worship, culture, social life, education, and service -- revitalizing a then-struggling West Loop.
Irish Chicago (2009)
The colorful stories of Irish-American immigrants and their descendants who lived the history and exemplify the repeated cycle of the outsider becoming the ultimate Chicago citizen-insider.