Dear Pyongyang is a documentary film by Zainichi Korean director Yang Yong-hi (Korean: 양영희, Hanja: 梁英姬) about her own family. It was shot in Osaka Japan (Yang's hometown) and Pyongyang, North Korea, In the 1970s, Yang's father, an ardent communist and leader of the pro-North movement in Japan, sent his three sons from Japan to North Korea under a repatriation campaign sponsored by ethnic activist organisation and de facto North Korean embassy Chongryon; as the only daughter, Yang herself remained in Japan. However, as the economic situation in the North deteriorated, the brothers became increasingly dependent for survival on the care packages sent by their parents. The film shows Yang's visits to her brothers in Pyongyang, as well as conversations with her father about his ideological faith and his regrets over breaking up his family.
ITO – A Diary of an Urban Priest (2010)
A biographical documentary following the life of a young Japanese priest and bar-owner.
Goodbye CP (1972)
Kazuo Hara follows the lives and activities of Yokota Hiroshi and Yokozuka Koichi, members of an activist group made up of people with cerebral palsy.
The Landfill (2012)
Trash becomes energy at a small New York landfill where people are thinking differently about garbage.
Egypt's Modern Pharaohs: Nasser (2015)
From Gamal Abdel Nasser to Anwar Sadat, to Hosni Mubarak, “The Pharaohs of Modern Egypt” follows the path of the successive regimes in power, and reveals their common goal to carefully lay the basis of a solid independence, but which, on the other hand, led to the revolution on Tahrir Square in 2011. President Anwar Sadat led the country down the diametrically opposite path. He forged an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood, the regime’s life-long enemy, and rerouted the country onto the road of capitalism. By ignoring increasing wealth gaps and insisting on peace with Israel at all political costs, the “pious” president opened up the Pandora’s Box of radical Islam, a decision that cost him his life, and which has since had repercussions on the entire world.
A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers (2015)
Follows three women in an all female, predominantly Muslim unit of police officers sent to post-earthquake Haiti as UN Peacekeepers for one year. The mission challenges these women while shattering commonly held stereotypes.
Miss Sharon Jones! (2015)
Two-time Academy Award® winner Barbara Kopple shines a powerful, inspiring and entertaining spotlight on contemporary soul queen Sharon Jones. As she prepares to release her much-anticipated new album, Sharon comes face to-face with the greatest challenge of her life: a grave cancer diagnosis. Follow this tour de force over the course of an eventful and remarkable year as she struggles to hold her band The Dap-Kings together while battling her way back to the stage with the unstoppable determination of a true soul survivor
Love, Marilyn (2013)
Using the book 'Fragments', which collects Marilyn Monroe's poems, notes and letters, and with participation from the Arthur Miller and Truman Capote estates who have contributed more material, each of the actresses will embody the legend at various stages in her life.
Free Angela and All Political Prisoners (2012)
FREE ANGELA is a feature-length documentary about Angela Davis and the high stakes crime, political movement, and trial that catapults the 26 year-old newly appointed philosophy professor at the University of California at Los Angeles into a seventies revolutionary political icon. Nearly forty years later, and for the first time, Angela Davis speaks frankly about the actions that branded her as a terrorist and simultaneously spurred a worldwide political movement for her freedom.
The Private Life of a Cat (1946)
An intimate study of the life of a domestic cat, taking place over a period of months as she gives birth to a litter of kittens and cares for them as they grow.
Discrimination (2023)
Since 2013, Japan has implemented the free high school policy. However, only 10 Chongryon Korean high schools are excluded from this policy. The reason is that there are suspicions that the grant for free education will be misused by Chochongryon and others. Five of these schools protested about this measure and filed a claim for damages against the government in 2013. After four years of hearings, the first trial decision was made on July 19, 2017, starting with the case of Hiroshima Chongryon Korean high school.
Lunch Break (2008)
Lunch Break features 42 workers as they take their midday break in a corridor stretching nearly the entire shipyard.
Goshogaoka (1998)
This non-narrative film depicts the routines of a girls' basketball team in a junior high school near Tokyo. Shot with a stationary camera, it consists of six ten-minute segments, some of which show the girls' routine exercises, others of which are choreographed.
Ebbe - The Movie: Mannen, Myten, Affären (2009)
A documentary dealing with the publisher Ebbe Carlsson's decision to start his own investigation on the murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme
P.S. Jerusalem (2015)
Returning to her hometown of Jerusalem with her young family after several years abroad, documentarian Danae Elon offers an intimate, ground’s-eye view of one of the most fiercely contested cities in the world.
For the Love of a Man (2015)
Tamil superstar Rajinikanth: Actor, Leader, Hero, God. Men from various generations alter their lives, sell their belongings, and place fandom above their families in devotion to an iconic South Indian superstars.
Canned Dreams (2012)
Canned Dreams shows the multi-branching network of the modern food industry. The Finnish consumer buys a can in the grocery store, but where from far away do the raw materials and packaging materials for the preserves come from - and through how many hands? The film not only traces the various stages of the production process, but gives a voice to the people who work as part of it.
Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1987)
This film recounts the murder of Vincent Chin, an automotive engineer mistaken as Japanese who was slain by an assembly line worker who blamed him for the competition by the Japanese auto makers that were threatening his job. It then recounts how that murderer escaped justice in the court system. Restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation, in association with the Museum of Chinese in America. Restoration funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, with additional support provided by Todd Phillips.
Naked States (2000)
A humorous and provocative examination of one artist's dynamic work and its relevance within the cultural biography of America, documenting one man's journey as he traveled each of the 50 states to ask Americans of all races, shapes and body sizes to take off their clothes and pose in public, before his camera all for the sake of art. Artist Spencer Tunick's subjects are not paid models, but ordinary citizens. The film exposes America's current attitudes towards nudity, sexuality, body image, and all the other baggage that comes up when we take off our clothes.
Matchmaking Mayor (2010)
A village mayor is trying to bring together local people in their thirties who are still single. 21st century social engineering in a situation documentary by Erika Hníková. Slowly but surely, the Slovak village of Zemplínske Hámre is dying out. But its mayor, a retired general, refuses to give up. In fighting the thirty-year-olds‘ solitude he has used a variety of weapons such as offering a financial incentives for every newborn child or encouraging childbearing via the local PA system. None of it has worked. However, the mayor has a new plan. He decides to organize an evening get-together for singles from all the neighboring villages. Will our heroes find their partners after all?
Tokyo Girls (2000)
Tokyo Girls is a candid journey into the world of four young Canadian women who work as well-paid hostesses in exclusive Japanese nightclubs. Lured by adventure and easy money, these modern-day geisha find themselves caught up in the mizu shobai - the complex "floating water world" of Tokyo clubs and bars. Drawn by fast money, some women become consumed by the lavish lifestyle and forget why they came. One hostess calls it "losing the plot." With a pulsating visual style, Tokyo Girls captures the raw energy of urban Japan and its fascination with the new. Shot in Canada, Osaka and Tokyo, this is a riveting inside look at the impact of the "economy geisha." Desired mainly for her looks, the hostess is rapidly replacing the cultural institution of geisha - women trained in the ancient art of traditional entertainment.