This is the story of Dona Virginia, an elderly woman who awaits the expropriation of her house. Year after year, the government threatens to destroy the place, her past and her memories.
Social & External
Joana Oliveira
The real estate industry has destabilized the natural surroundings of the city of Concón, on the Chilean coast, forcing the inhabitants and landscapes of the region to find new ways to adapt and survive. “Nidal” depicts the cohabitating of species and the accelerated transformation of the landscapes due to human occupation.
"Papua New Guinea: Anthropology on Trial" was a 1983 episode of the PBS science documentary series NOVA. It explored the field of anthropology, particularly in the context of Papua New Guinea, from the perspective of the people being studied.
This film is a portrait of unique cultural space for Spirits, Gods and People. While permanent theatres are commonly built in most cosmopolitan modern cities, Hong Kong preserves a unique theatrical architecture, a Chinese tradition that has lasted more than a century - Bamboo Theatre.
An experimental ethnographic documentary that criticizes the colonizer view of anthropology.
A young anthropologist reflects on her late grandmother's religious background.
Inspired by Steven Blush's book "American Hardcore: A tribal history" Paul Rachman's feature documentary debut is a chronicle of the underground hardcore punk years from 1979 to 1986. Interviews and rare live footage from artists such as Black Flag, Bad Brains, Minor Threat, SS Decontrol and the Dead Kennedys.
A manufactured memory.
In GLOBAL METAL, directors Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn set out to discover how the West's most maligned musical genre - heavy metal - has impacted the world's cultures beyond Europe and North America. The film follows metal fan and anthropologist Sam Dunn on a whirlwind journey through Asia, South America and the Middle East as he explores the underbelly of the world's emerging extreme music scenes; from Indonesian death metal to Chinese black metal to Iranian thrash metal. GLOBAL METAL reveals a worldwide community of metalheads who aren't just absorbing metal from the West - they're transforming it - creating a new form of cultural expression in societies dominated by conflict, corruption and mass-consumerism.
A Cincinnati public school fights to break the cycle of poverty in its Urban Appalachian neighborhood, where senior Raven Gribbins aims to become the first in her troubled family to graduate and go to college. When Principal Craig Hockenberry's job is threatened, it becomes clear it's a make-or-break year for both of them.
The film discusses the traits and originators of some of metal's many subgenres, including the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, power metal, Nu metal, glam metal, thrash metal, black metal, and death metal. Dunn uses a family-tree-type flowchart to document some of the most popular metal subgenres. The film also explores various aspects of heavy metal culture.
Thanassakis, a 13-year-old boy, is staying with his grandparents in the Greek village of Ano Ravenia, while his parents stay with his younger brother in Zurich, Switzerland. It was filmed during three periods: winter in the village, summer in the village (while his parents, as most migrants, come back for the holidays), and Christmas in Zurich when the grandfather and the young boy visit their family. Who is most important to the young boy - his father or grandfather?
The film delves into the work processes of an archaeological team from the Aranzadi Science Society at the San Adrián Tunnel site. Interspersing this observation with archival materials, the film explores the relationships between archaeology and museography, as well as the different ways in which these two practices produce the displacement of objects.
The cave paintings of Tifariti, a fundamental place for Wester Sahara, come to life before our very eyes to tell us, as though a fable, the story of a civilization that 10,000 years ago occupied a fertile valley where today all there is is desert. A magical tale that, through the cultural heritage of a stateless nation, tells us about our own experience of progress and civilization.
Commissioned by the journal Présence Africaine, this short documentary examines how African art is devalued and alienated through colonial and museum contexts. Beginning with the question of why African works are confined to ethnographic displays while Greek or Egyptian art is celebrated, the film became a landmark of anti-colonial cinema and was banned in France for eight years.
The Danube Delta in Romania - the 'Last European Sanctuary’ - is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. While major efforts are made to protect biodiversity, the plight of local communities is largely overlooked. Social scientists claim that the traumatic nature of the swamp bears heavy on the villagers' lives. But is Nature really to blame? Swamp Dialogues is based on an extensive field-research in the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve. Through a careful ‘argument montage’ built entirely on cinematic language the film represents an anthropological analysis formulated in image and sound.
Bikes vs Cars depicts a global crisis that we all deep down know we need to talk about: Climate, earth's resources, cities where the entire surface is consumed by the car. An ever-growing, dirty, noisy traffic chaos. The bike is a great tool for change, but the powerful interests who gain from the private car invest billions each year on lobbying and advertising to protect their business. In the film we meet activists and thinkers who are fighting for better cities, who refuse to stop riding despite the increasing number killed in traffic.
Rotterdam 2040 is a film about the city’s future, departing from the principle of Gyz La Rivière that you can’t look ahead without considering your past (something that hasn’t always been Rotterdam’s strongest feature). At high speed, La Rivière reconstructs the history of Rotterdam from the time before the bombings until now, and expands the developments to the year 2040 (100 years after the bombing and the 700th anniversary of the city). La Rivière made a specific choice to expose his personal vision, which is sometimes radical or a little absurd. So no experts and no talking heads, but an assault of old and new imagery, held together by La Rivière as the narrator of the film. Although Rotterdam 2040 deals with architecture and urban renewal, it is actually a film about people. The subjective experience of the city by its (future) occupants mainly determines the parade of architectural blunders and suggestions for the future. All tongue-in-cheek of course.
Bomb Hunters is an engrossing examination of the micro-economy that has emerged in Cambodia from untrained civilians harvesting unexploded bombs as scrap metal. The film explores the long-term consequences of war and genocide in an attempt to understand the social, cultural, and historical context and experiences of rural villagers who seek out and dismantle UXO (unexploded ordnance) for profit. Part of a global economy, these individuals clear UXO from their land in order to protect their families from harm and to earn enough money to survive. Bomb Hunters is an eye-opening account investigating the on-going residual, persistent effects of war experienced by post-conflict nations around the globe, and the complex realities of achieving "peace".
"The theme of the film HIDDEN CITIES is personal urban perceptions, which we call 'the city'. The city, as a living organism, reflecting social processes and interactions, economic relations, political conditions and private matters. In the city, human memories, desires and tragedies find expression in the form of designations and marks engraved in house walls and paving slabs. But what the city really is under this thick layer of signs, what it contains or conceals, is what we are researching in the HIDDEN CITIES project. The source material for the film are 9 sequential photo works created by Gusztáv Hámos between 1975 and 2010. Each of these 'city perceptions' depicts essential situations of urban experiences containing human and inhuman acts in a compact form. The cities in which the photo sequences have been made are Berlin, Budapest and New York – places with a traumatised past: Wars, dictatorships, terrorist catastrophes."