Documentary

Storms threaten to tarnish the Golden State as I wander through the rooms of my apartment, seeking a high in the lowering barometric pressure. Many mementos create a series of flashbacks to warm the cockles in our most secret places—some of those places being blatantly revealed in this cockle-warming picture.

Video in the Villages

From the Ikpeng Children to the World, Marangmotxíngmo Mïrang

Four Ikpeng children reply to a video-letter from the children of Sierra Maestra in Cuba, introducing their village, families, toys, celebrations, and ways of life with grace and lightheartedness. Curious to know about children from other cultures, they ask to continue the correspondence.

Direction and camera by Karané, Kumaré, and Natuyu Yuwipo Txicão; edited by Mari Corrê.

Vincent Carelli, Video in the Villages, Virginia Valadao

Free-for-all in Sararé

Over 6,000 gold prospectors invade the reserve of the Nambiquara of Sararé, and loggers raid the mahogany-rich forests, which are threatened by extinction. Pressure on the World Bank (with whom the government of Mato Grosso is negotiating a loan) could end prospecting, but the pillage of the forest continues.

In Portuguese with English subtitles.

Directed by Vincent Carelli, Maurizio Longobardi, and Virginia Valadão; edited by Tutu Nunes.

Annie Goldson, Chris Bratton

Framing the Panthers in Black and White

In the words of activist Dhoruba Bin Wahad, “Historical and social events are subject to almost instant censorship by those who have better access and control over the medium of communication. It is important that there exist people skilled in the use of the technological instruments of communication who will seek out the real truth behind the headlines and tell it for all to see, know, and hear.”

Shelly Silver

Former East/Former West

Former East/Former West was shot in Berlin three years after German reunification. Comprised largely of street interviews conducted in various parts of the city, the video documents Berliners' feelings about their national identity. For forty years, people in this divided city lived radically different lives—ideologically, economically, socially and politically. These differences were also reflected in their everyday routines, relationships and experiences, leading Silver to ponder what the two Germanys have in common, aside from language.

Susan Youssef

Forbidden to Wander

Forbidden to Wander chronicles the experiences of a 25-year-old Arab American Christian woman traveling on her own in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the summer of 2002. The film is a reflection on the complexity of Palestinian existence and the torturously disturbing “ordinariness” of living under constant curfew. The film’s title reflects this, as the Arabic words used to describe the imposed curfew “mane’ tajawwul” literally translate as “forbidden to wander”.

Richard Billingham

Fishtank

An alcoholic, emaciated father; a grossly obese, tattooed mother; a goofy, hormone-addled brother—all together in a claustrophobic council flat. Welcome to the Billinghams'. Richard Billingham wowed the art scene with his book Ray's A Laugh. Fishtank, his first film, charts the emotional territory of the flat and the family who play out their lives within its confines.

George Kuchar

The Fall of the House of Yasmin

A pileup of human refuse and super-human powers permeates this hour-long canvas of bits and pieces documenting the smash-up of a house of healing, as the physicians in charge short circuit amid the electronic wizardry beyond the Panasonic barrier. Made with my students.

TVTV

The Lord of the Universe

Sixteen-year-old guru Marahaj Ji attempts to levitate the Houston Astrodome in this 1973 DuPont award winning documentary. Follow the guru from his New York mansion to limousines in Houston and listen to his followers—celebrities and non-celebrities alike—extol his virtues. TVTV's creative use of graphics, live music, and wide-angle-lens shots to conveys the desperate efforts of these lost children to find a leader.

"If this guy is God, then this is the God the United States of America deserves." —Abbie Hoffman

Juan Downey

The Laughing Alligator

The personal odyssey recorded in The Laughing Alligator combines methods of anthropological research with diaristic essay, mixing objective and subjective vision. Recorded while Downey and his family were living among the Yanomami people of Venezuela, this compelling series of anecdotes tracks his search for an indegenous cultural identity.

Deborah Stratman

Kings of the Sky

An experimental documentary about resistance, balance and fame. Kings of the Sky follows tightrope artist Adil Hoxur as he and his troupe tour China’s Taklamakan desert amongst the Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim people seeking religious and political autonomy.

Video in the Villages

Kiarãsâ yõ Sâti: The Agouti's Peanut

The daily life of the Panará village during the peanut harvest, presented by a young teacher, a woman shaman and the village chief.

Direction and photography: Paturi and Komoi Panará

Editing: Leonardo Sette and Vincent Carelli

Production: Video in the Villages

Vincent Carelli, Video in the Villages

Jane Moraita (Our Celebrations)

The Waiãpi videomaker Kasiripinã decides to show white people the documentation he did on his people in Amapo. He presents and comments on three celebrations that represent episodes of the myth-cycle of the creation of the universe. The theme of the Tamoko celebration is war, and it presents the death of a cannibal monster. In the second celebration, Pikyry, the dancers act out the spawning of fish. The last is the Turé, the dance of the flutes, in which the Waiãpi reenact the death of the tapir in honor of the creator, Janejar.

Directed by Kasiripinã Waiãpi.

Julia Meltzer, David Thorne

It's not my memory of it: three recollected documents

It's not my memory of it is a documentary about secrecy, memory, and documents. Mobilizing specific historical records as memories which flash up in moments of danger, the video addresses the expansion and intensification of secrecy practices in the current climate of heightened security. A former CIA source recounts his disappearance through shredded classified documents that were painstakingly reassembled by radical fundamentalist students in Iran in 1979.

Diane Nerwen

In the Blood

In The Blood is an experimental documentary about American-Jewish attitudes towards Germans, and the role the Holocaust plays in shaping Jewish identity. This layered collage combines appropriated images, original footage, sampled sounds, and fragments of audio conversations, to examine perceptions and representations of Germany, cultural identity, collective memory, and history.

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