A glimpse of life as seen through young people at a Zimbabwean children's home.
Song from the Forest (2014)
25 years ago, Louis Sarno, an American, heard a song on the radio and followed its melody into the Central Africa Jungle and stayed. He than recorded over 1000 hours of original BaAka music. Now he is part of the BaAka community and raises his pygmy son, Samedi. Fulfilling an old promise, Louis takes Samedi to America. On this journey Louis realizes he is not part of this globalized world anymore but globalization has also arrived in the rainforest. The BaAka depend on Louis for their survival. Father and son return to the melodies of the jungle but the question remains: How much longer will the songs of the forest be heard?
Growing Girls (1949)
After several farmyard analogies featuring chicks and calves, the well-spoken narrator and director of the film, Winifred Holmes, considers the subject of girls and how they reach adulthood and readiness for the 'important job of motherhood.
The Death Knell (1964)
At the beginning of the 1960s, in Salisbury (now Harare), in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), the government of Ian Smith hanged three black revolutionaries who had nevertheless been pardoned by the Queen of England. René Vautier, with ZAPU (Zimbabwe African Party for Unity), denounces this killing. Expelled by the Rhodesian police (informed by the French secret services), the filmmaker shoots a film in Algeria in the form of an indictment against colonial savagery. The film was first banned in France, then authorized in 1965.
The End of the Game (1976)
An intimate view of the panorama of African wildlife, giving a sense of what it is really like to be there, and in a dramatic climax makes a poignant plea for conservation. Filmed in Zaire, Kenya and Tanzania, the film takes the viewer from deep inside an anthill, to the majestic giraffes suckling their young. African storms, dung beetle ritual dances, duels for supremacy, feeding time, and playtime all end as the animals disappear one by one while the sound of a rifle shatters the existing magic of life. Winner of the Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject, 1976.
The World According to Tippi (1997)
Tippi is no ordinary child. She believes that she has the gift of talking to animals and that they are like brothers to her. 'I speak to them with my mind, or through my eyes, my heart or my soul, and I see that they understand and answer me.' Tippi is the daughter of French filmmakers and wildlife photographers, Alain Degre and Sylvie Robert, who have captured her on film with some of Africa's most beautiful and dangerous animals. Tippi shares her thoughts and wisdom on Africa, its people and the animals she has come to know and love. Often her wisdom is beyond her years, and her innocence and obvious rapport with the animals is both fascinating and charming.
Looking for Modern Art: Rethinking Art History (2018)
Many twentieth century European artists, such as Paul Gauguin or Pablo Picasso, were influenced by art brought to Europe from African and Asian colonies. How to frame these Modernist works today when the idea of the primitive in art is problematic?
Lords of the Forest (1958)
Documentary about the inhabitants, both human and animal, of the Belgian Congo. Released in 1958.
Babylon (2012)
After the insurrection erupted in Libya in the spring of 2012, more than a million people flocked to neighboring Tunisia in search of a safe haven from the escalating violence. When a massive refugee camp was hastily constructed near the Ras Jdir border checkpoint in Tunisia, a trio of filmmakers carried their cameras in and began filming with no agenda. This on-the-fly chronicle of the camp's installation, operation, and dismantling captures a postmodern Babel complete with a multinational population of displaced folk, a regime of humanitarian aid workers, and international media that broadcasts its “image” to the world. Visually stunning and refreshingly undogmatic, Babylon reveals a rarely seen aspect of the Arab Spring.
Faceless Heroes (2012)
Brussels, Béguinage church. Migrants organize a hunger strike to obtain papers. A man dies. Tunisia, Libya. A border camp of Choucha refugees tell the horror of crossing the Sahara to the north. Liège. In a refugee center, a man narrates his Mediterranean crossing in a chamber of air. Three moments of a battle for survival.
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927)
A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.
Memory Books (2008)
In Uganda, AIDS-infected mothers have begun writing what they call Memory Books for their children. Aware of the illness, it is a way for the family to come to terms with the inevitable death that it faces. Hopelessness and desperation are confronted through the collaborative effort of remembering and recording, a process that inspires unexpected strength and even solace in the face of death.
Pirates: Threatening Global Trade (2016)
The French researcher Bertrand Monnet visits pirates in Nigeria and Somalia to learn how they make money from oil theft and kidnapping.