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New Releases - Documentary

New Releases - Documentary


DYING TO LIVE

By John Robbins and Lance Lipman

About twenty people die each day in the United States waiting for a life-saving transplant organ that never comes - because too few of us are donors. When an organ does become available doctors have only a few hours to get it from the donor to the recipient. Each minute is crucial as they work to take just one patient off the transplant list. Dying to Live captures a year in the lives of four people waiting to become sick enough to reach the top of the list.

Kevin seems like a typical suburban father until you learn that his life might be cut short due to a defective liver duct. Each time his duct fails he comes dangerously close to death but his doctors are able to stabilize his condition long enough that he's never eligible for a transplant. Katherine discovered her liver would eventually fail during a routine physical more than a decade ago, just before she and her husband Roy were married. Now she's caught in a medical limbo. Thirty-one-year-old Andrew was diagnosed with end-stage kidney failure two years ago and is reminded that his call might never come each time he receives dialysis. Myrna knows she's fortunate to have the support of her loving husband, sister and lifelong friends, as her prospect of receiving a new kidney seems more and more doubtful. Dying to Live follows their uncertain medical paths as they meet with doctors at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia waiting for organ transplants.

Interlaced with the stories of patients like Myrna, the filmmakers chronicle the often times complex decision of becoming an organ donor. Barbara Kilgore, a teaching nurse at Emory Adventist Hospital learns of Andrew's plight and though they have never met, agrees to donate her own kidney after learning she is a blood match.

Twenty-one-year-old Chase Christman suffered a fatal brain injury while at work and his family is determined to carry out his wish to be an organ donor. Katherine won't find out until weeks after recovery from surgery that her liver transplant was the result of Chase's tragic death when she's given the rare opportunity to meet with his family. During the meeting the Christman's find some relief in coping with Chase's death knowing Katherine, and the others who received an organ from Chase are healthy and alive today.

Their meeting is just one of the many emotional highlights in these interwoven stories of remarkable people. Their moments of joy and sadness may shake you, may make you laugh or make you cry, but you will never forget them. Doctors and other medical experts also share insightful advice and dispel common myths for anyone thinking of becoming an organ donor.

Review
  • "It's absolutely terrific. A great film! I'm sitting here wiping the tears from my eyes, deeply moved by it. Everything about it is absolutely state of the art." - Chuck Boller, Executive Director Hawaii International Film Festival

    Item no.: YD00520068
    Format: DVD
    Duration: 60 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2010
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    Price: USD 322.00

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    FACEBOOK'S ADORNO CHANGED MY LIFE

    By Georg Boch

    Theodor Adorno was an influential member of the Frankfurt School of social theory - a German-born intellectual who fled Nazi Germany for America, and whose work anticipates and informs much post-modern theory. In this revolutionary "participatory documentary," digital filmmaker Georg Boch, one of more than 200 people that belong to a Facebook group called "Adorno Changed My Life," sets out to learn how Adorno's work has touched the group's lives.

    For the film, Boch solicits videos and Skype conversations. Unlike the traditional documentary, this approach allows each of the participants to frame how they want to be perceived and to direct their own conversations.

    For art historian Travis English, who shamelessly multitasks on camera, reading Adorno for the first time was like "swallowing a stick of dynamite." Australian intellectual Ivan Krisjansen (who uses a portrait of Adorno as his Facebook profile photo) compares it to "climbing Mount Everest, standing on the peak and being able to see forever."

    Digital culture critic Dennis Redmond - who at times speaks in front of a shelf full of teddy bears - sees parallels between Adorno's work and the digital commons. Redmond encourages viewers to read random pages from Adorno to see how they seamlessly fit into a whole in the same way that fragments of digital culture mesh.

    It's also a metaphor for the film itself: far-flung, isolated members of an online group whose individual contributions are transformed into a cultural product. The film also makes no attempt to hide its digital roots. Rather than cleaning up time lags or sharpening focus, it celebrates the imperfections of digital communication.

    FACEBOOK'S "ADORNO CHANGED MY LIFE" resists the temptation to offer a potted guide to the philosopher's thought. Instead, it allows its participants to set the terms of the conversation, and to reveal their relationships to Adorno's work. Even if they feel, as does Moldavian emigrant Vitalie Bezdiga, that "Theodore Adorno is of no great help when it comes to jobs or employment."

    Item no.: ZA03100783
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 28 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2010
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    Price: USD 248.00

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    LOVE LIMITS

    By Thymaya Payne

    Warren Barrow and Cory Ann Rudy are in love. They enjoy outings to New York City, picnics, long phone conversations, and sing-a-longs. Cory, who gets upset if anybody else pushes Warren's wheelchair while she's around, hopes they will one day marry. Warren's still not sure about marriage but can't imagine life without Cory. Beautifully filmed, Love Limits is an exploration of Warren and Cory's individual stories and their life together.

    On the surface they seem like an odd couple. Warren can talk but can't walk. Cory can walk but can't talk. He is 83 years old, an African American from Brooklyn. She is 36 years old, white and from a farm in upstate New York. What Cory and Warren do share are similar disabilities: both have cerebral palsy and were diagnosed with "mild mental retardation" as children. They met at a day rehabilitation program 15 years ago, and while they still don't live together, they have had a lasting and deep relationship.

    Born in the 1920s, Warren was abandoned in a stark institution at age 5 and taken in by a missionary, raised among dozens of children and church members - part of a vibrant extended family. Cory is the oldest of five children - born to young parents whose doctor advised them to abandon her because she would ruin their lives. Instead, they turned to an intense developmental program called patterning, in which dozens of volunteers helped Cory's body learn skills - like walking - that wouldn't otherwise develop on their own. With the love of the people around them, both exceeded everyone's expectations and today live their lives to the fullest.

    With testimony from Cory's family and Warren's closest caregivers, Love Limits challenges common misconcieved attitudes towards people with disabilities. It is a moving portrayal of the powerful love between Cory and Warren: two people united in their commitment to each other and to living their lives with dignity and grace.

    Item no.: YF03950069
    Format: DVD (Closed Captioned)
    Duration: 41 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2010
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    Price: USD 322.00

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    NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT

    By Patricio Guzman

    For his new film master director Patricio Guzman, famed for his political documentaries (THE BATTLE OF CHILE, THE PINOCHET CASE), travels 10,000 feet above sea level to the driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert, where atop the mountains astronomers from all over the world gather to observe the stars. The sky is so translucent that it allows them to see right to the boundaries of the universe.

    The Atacama is also a place where the harsh heat of the sun keeps human remains intact: those of Pre-Columbian mummies; 19th century explorers and miners; and the remains of political prisoners, "disappeared" by the Chilean army after the military coup of September, 1973.

    So while astronomers examine the most distant and oldest galaxies, at the foot of the mountains, women, surviving relatives of the disappeared whose bodies were dumped here, search, even after twenty-five years, for the remains of their loved ones, to reclaim their families' histories.

    Melding the celestial quest of the astronomers and the earthly one of the women, NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT is a gorgeous, moving, and deeply personal odyssey.

    Reviews
  • "Stunningly beautiful. I don't know how you can put more into a film, or make one that's more deeply moving." - Stuart Klawans, The Nation

  • "An extraordinary film about the unknown and the unknowable." - Sight & Sound Magazine

  • "An amazing film! Nostalgia for the Light gave me goosebumps so many times I lost count." - Andy "Copernicus" Howell, Ain't It Cool News

    Awards
  • Winner Best Documentary, Prix ARTE, 2010 European Film Academy Awards
  • Winner Best Documentary, 2010 Abu Dhabi Film Festival

    Item no.: SW03400802
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 90 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2010
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    Price: USD 440.00

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    STATE OF MIND: HEALING TRAUMA

    By Djo Tunda Wa Munga

    In war torn countries people will not be able to be productive and development will fail until they overcome their trauma. Yet, Is it even possible for a country overwhelmed by the legacy of five million deaths to successfully heal and move on?

    That is the underlying question in Congolese documentary filmmaker Djo Munga's powerful film State of Mind, about the use of psychotherapy to talk about loss, forgiving, and finding new memories to overlay the traumatic older ones.

    Psychotherapist Dr. Albert Pesso is invited to Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, where many people suffer from years of post traumatic stress disorder. Dr. Pesso is there to train health practitioners in symbolic interaction, a form of relatively short-term, group-session based, psychotherapy.

    In the training sessions the health care workers themselves, many of whom are also survivors of horrendous violence, work through the therapeutic process with Dr. Pesso. State of Mind: Healing Trauma captures the sessions in a series of fly-on-the-wall scenes, and candid, hearthbreaking interviews with the participants put the effort in a larger context. A layered, engrossing and intriguing look at a national collective trauma and one ambitious initiative to try and heal wounds.

    Review
  • "Al Pesso, a Master therapist from the U.S. demonstrates how the language of trauma and recovery transcends language and culture, and that it is possible to install a sense of safety and protection in even the most traumatized individuals. A remarkable achievement." - Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Director, National Complex Trauma Treatment Network

    Item no.: YN03950032
    Format: DVD (Closed Captioned)
    Duration: 52 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2010
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    Price: USD 387.00

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    STROKE RECOVERY: TAKING BACK OUR LIVES

    By James Becket

    Stroke can happen to anyone at any age and at any time. And although it is the fourth leading killer in the United States; more often than not stroke victims survive. The problem is that they suffer a wide range of debilitating effects in the aftermath. The trauma of experiencing a stroke can have as a profound impact on your body, as on your emotional health, and rehabilitation is often difficult and confusing.

    Stroke Recovery: Taking Back Our Lives features the experiences and advice of stroke survivors, caregivers, family, friends, doctors, and other allied health professionals. Among the survivors who share candid details of their recovery are Wes Metoyer whose doctors called a "ticking time bomb," yet he refused to adapt a healthier lifestyle. Lisa Bibbey's daughter had a stroke when she was only an infant. Now a toddler, she struggles with cognitive disabilities. Diana Capman Dolan suffered a stroke in 1975 and today is an advocate for patients like herself who lacked any understanding of what recovery meant.

    Practical and inspiring, the message throughout the film is one of hope, with many of the film's subjects reiterating that improvement and recovery are ongoing processes.

    Stroke Recovery: Taking Back Our Lives is broken down into 19 sections covering topics like the challenge of rehab; the importance of a positive attitude in aiding recovery and beating depression; various types of family and professional support networks; the relevance of spirituality, and regaining an intimate relationship with your sexual partner. It is a comprehensive resource intended to aid stroke survivors and their caregivers.

    From learning how to stand and walk, to adaptive technologies, the video illuminates what stroke survivors can do for the best possible recovery. With the help of leading physicians and specialists working in the field of stroke, as well as long time survivors, the filmmakers look at every life area impacted by stroke and identify the very best approaches to restoring - or at least reinventing - your health and your life.

    Item no.: FL04040070
    Format: DVD
    Duration: 61 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2010
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    Price: USD 322.00

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    ALL RESTRICTIONS END

    By Reza Haeri

    In the early days of the Iranian revolution, anyone with press lines on his trousers would be dismissed from work. How can one say his prayers to Allah without breaking his trousers' press lines?" This and other reflections on Islam and clothing characterize the thought-provoking free-form documentary ALL RESTRICTIONS END.

    With clothing as the leitmotif, the filmmaker provides the history of Iran, the country of his birth, where beheadings and hangings are commonplace occurrences. It is an endless series of confrontations between groups that all want something different for their country. Clothing remains the point of departure in the stories about Iran, a land that has tottered for centuries between East and West, the present and the past, freedom and repression. In Baudelaire's words, fashion is the mirror of the times, and that makes it a great metaphor for what is going on in a country.

    The film is structured like a collage, interweaving archival footage from Iranian cinema, imagery from various stylistic epochs in the history of Persian painting, graphics from the period of the Islamic Revolution, and works provided by various artists.

    Item no.: BA03100561
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 35 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 348.00

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    BANKING THE UNBANKED

    By Sarah Vos

    Ever since microfinance entrepreneur Muhammad Yunus won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, microfinance projects have played a growing role in international development.

    For executives like Reliance Financial CEO Baboucarr Khan and COO Ismaila Faal, the field offers opportunities to raise people out of poverty - and to make money.

    Banking the Unbanked is a verite documentary that follows Khan, Faal and other members of the Gambia-based Reliance team as they try to build the bank into a viable West African financial institution. Their target clients: those who make under five dollars a day. Taxi drivers. Small shopkeepers. Seamstresses. Fishermen.

    Running the company weighs heavily on Khan. We see his frustration when construction on a new branch is not only sloppy but also behind schedule. And he is taken to task by the board of directors for an outburst against the Central Bank of Gambia - Reliance's regulator - after it issues a scathing report on some of the bank's practices. Meanwhile, members of the Reliance senior management team participate in an executive leadership program run by a Dutch university.

    As Reliance falters, microfinance consultant Craig Feinberg urges a harder line on defaulting creditors - and suggests the possibility of getting out of small loans altogether, concentrating instead on wire transfers and foreign exchange.

    Banking the Unbanked captures the tension and drama in the surprisingly cut-throat world of microfinance - a world where many small loans add up to a whole lot of money. Can promoting development by lending to those at the bottom of the economic ladder co-exist with the need to provide investors with attractive rates of return?

    Item no.: DY03400572
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 56 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 390.00

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    BEHIND THE RAINBOW

    Directed by Jihan el-Tahri
    By Steven Markovitz & Jihan El-Tahri


    Against the backdrop of South Africa's 2009 election, which saw Jacob Zuma become the country's third democratically elected president, BEHIND THE RAINBOW is a detailed exploration of the evolution of, and internal conflicts within, the ruling African National Congress (ANC), since it first came to power with Nelson Mandela's election in 1994.

    The film's focus is on the development over the years of the relationship between two of the ANC's most prominent leaders, Thabo Mbeki - who followed Mandela as president and served from 1999 to 2008 - and Jacob Zuma, who was one of the most important commanders of the ANC's armed struggle against the apartheid government. Exiled under apartheid, they were once brothers in arms (they shared a prison cell together at one point). Under Mandela's administration, they loyally labored to build a non-racial state. But in recent years their duel threatened to tear the ANC apart.

    BEHIND THE RAINBOW tells their story, one of friendship, comradeship, and eventual bitter personal conflict, with rich archival material and through in-depth interviews with both Mbeki and Zuma, as well as many of their current and former ANC colleagues, such as Terror Lekota (leader of the new opposition party COPE); Kgalema Motlanthe, Mac Maharaj and Ronnie Kasrils; members of South Africa's Communist Party; and many other important players in South African politics and observers of Mbeki and Zuma's stories.

    The ANC's transition from a liberation organization into South Africa's ruling party has not been an easy one. Harsh economic inequalities, xenophobic attacks, corruption scandals, strikes and township protests all contributed to Mbeki's fall. Zuma may have won his battle with Mbeki, but his government is now facing the same problems. In recounting South Africa's recent political history, BEHIND THE RAINBOW is the story of how Zuma, the ANC, and South Africa, got to this crucial conjuncture.

    Reviews
  • "A must-see documentary!" - The Times
  • "A powerful and insightful documentary" - The Star
  • "Intriguing, revealing must-see documentary... Brilliantly produced." - Sunday World

    Item no.: YM03100582
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 138 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 398.00

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    CONGO IN FOUR ACTS

    By Djo Tunda & Steven Markovitz

    Ladies in Waiting
    Directed by Dieudo Hamadi & Divita Wa Lusala

    In a run-down maternity hospital, a ward of women who recently had their babies wait to be allowed to leave. The problem? They cannot pay their hospital fees. A long-suffering manager must negotiate collateral with them so that they will return and pay in full: a celebration dress, a pair of earrings, a suitcase. The film eloquently exposes both the squalid hospital system and the endemic poverty of Congo without, thankfully, pointing fingers, leaving that instead to the viewer.

    Symphony Kinshasa
    Directed by Kiripi Katembo Siku

    Take a hard-hitting tour through Congo's capitol city and discover the consequences of graft, neglect and poverty, as Siku's film reveals Kinshasa's imploding infrastructure. Malaria is rife, fresh water is as rare as flood water is common, electricity cables lie bare and live in the street, garbage is everywhere and as a priest notes "living in the capital is like living in a village. The services are the same, non-existent." It's not pretty but it's revelatory.

    Zero Tolerance
    Directed by Dieudo Hamadi

    Rape as a weapon of war has had much press, most notably in the recent Congo wars. Less discussed is the legacy it has left behind; a desensitized acceptance of the abuse of women at the hands of criminals, opportunists and most worryingly, ordinary men. Hamadi's documentary film aims to get right to the heart of the matter by following the arrest of a group of youths who attack a woman returning from the shops. Hamadi's focus is a rural community, where political correctness holds no sway, and in doing so he attempts to show both the depth of the problem and the attempts by authorities to reset the national moral code. The film's unexpected triumph is its honesty- both in the depiction of poverty and the community's burgeoning anger at the endemic abuse.

    After the Mine
    Directed by Kiripi Katembo Siku

    Kipushi is a mining town, one of thousands keeping Congo's elite in extreme wealth. But for those who live in the shadow of its toxic fallout, it is a very different life, one where tainted water and contaminated soil are realities. Siku's film tells the very personal stories of those trapped in such a deadly environment.

    Reviews
  • "Hard-hitting, eye-opening expose." - Neil Young, The Hollywood Reporter

  • "Highly effective quartet of documentaries on the woes of central Africa state Democratic Republic of the Congo, it presents some harrowing material in bracingly direct fashion. - The Auteurs

  • "LADIES IN WAITING channels Frederick Wiseman as it chronicles the bureaucratic dysfunctions of a Kinshasa maternity ward. - Hot Docs

    Item no.: DW03210584
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 69 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 398.00

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    DISCO AND ATOMIC WAR

    Directed by Jaak Kilmi

    This witty, charming, and provocative film recounts how in the mid 1980's, the nation of Estonia still lay firmly in the grip of the Soviet Union, and the repressive authorities controlled virtually all aspects of Estonian life. The totalitarian government's power was derived in no small part from their ability to censor cultural life and keep Western culture on the other side of the border. Rock and Roll was but a rumor and the only television shows on the air were dreary propaganda. But one day everything changed. Just a few miles across the border in Finland, a huge new television antenna was built that broadcast western signals in all directions--including directly into the heart of the Talinn, the capital of Estonia.

    Filmmakers Jaak Kilmi and Kiur Aarma grew up in Talinn in the 80's, and in DISCO AND ATOMIC WAR they make use of wonderfully playful but credible recreations to set their true personal coming of age story against the backdrop of the rapid collapse of the Soviet government in Estonia. As illicit television antennas sprung up in Northern Estonia, rumors about the attempted murder of J.R. Ewing spread by word of mouth to the rural south, and the nation of Estonia was as gripped by the saga as the USA had ever been.

    Teenagers went to their school dances and imitated the disco moves they saw on television, clothing and hairstyles began to change radically, and things would never be the same. The government controlled media scrambled to create western-style soap operas and disco-saturated television programming that vaguely reinforced communist values, but it was far too little, and much too late. The genie was out of the bottle, Estonians were now in the grip of American television, and they began to dream that one day, they too would spend their days working in skyscrapers and their nights drinking fine whiskey by the pool, alongside their robot car.

    Reviews
  • "Disco is a funny, inventively made work of true-life science fiction about the futility of trying to keep brains safe from outside influence." - Spout.com

  • "The film is lively and fresh and possessed of that sort of droll Eastern European comedy that laughs hardest when life's ironies are at their cruelest. It's a delight." - Shawn Levy, The Oregonian

  • "A witty, insightful and thoroughly entertaining political thriller about how the Iron Curtain did battle with contraband Western-tinged airwaves from Finland." - NOW Magazine

    Award
  • Winner of the Best Documentary prize at the Warsaw International Film Festival

    Item no.: SC03400590
    Format: DVD (Color, Black and White)
    Duration: 80 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 398.00

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    EARTH KEEPERS

    Directed by Sylvie Van Brabant

    EARTH KEEPERS takes viewers to the four corners of the earth with environmental activist Mikael Rioux. The angry young man who staged a sit-in suspended over the Trois-Pistoles River in Canada to save it from being dammed has grown into a young father concerned about the world he will leave to his son.

    Mikael meets a man who will become his mentor: eighty-year-old Christian de Laet, a pioneer in the Canadian environmental movement, who suggests that Mikael undertake a global quest to meet key visionaries behind innovative projects with promise for the future of our planet. Mikael discovers seven exceptional men and women who, in addition to their scientific and academic qualifications, each have more than 20 years' experience in putting their theories into practice, finding concrete solutions to environmental and social problems.

    Mikael first talks with Canadian ecological designer John Todd, hailed by MIT as one of the top 35 inventors of the 20th century. In Sweden, he meets Karl-Henrik Robert and discovers The Natural Step (TSN), a framework developed to help organizations incorporate the cycles of nature into their management practices. In the United States, he encounters Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Green Belt Movement. He also seeks out India's Ashok Khosla, president and co-founder with Christian de Laet of Development Alternatives, the largest alternative development NGO in the world; Nancy Jack Todd, co-founder of the avant-garde New Alchemists movement; Marilyn Mehlmann, the driving force behind the Global Action Plan; and the humanist economist Peter Koenig.

    Inspired by these visionaries and by his mentor, Mikael returns home with a sense of urgency but also of confidence. He too has become someone who will pass on innovative ideas and clear-eyed hope to future generations.

    Awards
  • Environmental Award, 2010 Reykjavik International Film Festival
  • Best Documentary, 2009 Festival du film de Sept-Iles (Quebec)
  • Best Canadian Long Form Film, 2009 Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival

    Item no.: LR03100591
    Format: DVD (Color, Closed Captioned)
    Duration: 43 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 298.00

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    FOOD DESIGN

    By Martin Hablesreiter and Sonja Stummerer

    The sound of sausage: When a bite produces a distinct crunch, they taste particularly good. Fish sticks, on the other hand, don't make such great noises, but they can be arranged nicely in the pan. And is it merely a coincidence that bologna fits perfectly onto a slice of bread, and that when combined, they make up a popular snack?

    Designers create clothes, furniture, cars and all kinds of useful items. So why not food? Food designers work on things to eat, giving them a certain style and function. They not only make sure that food and drink fill our stomachs, but also that the eating process is practical and appeals to all the senses - so that we're hungry for more.

    FOOD DESIGN takes a look at the secret chambers of a major manufacturer of food, where designers and scientists are defining your favorite mouthful of tomorrow. It shows how form, color, smell, consistency, the sounds made during eating, manufacturing technique, history and stories are all aspects of food and eating that both influence food design, and are created by it.

    Reviews
  • "FOOD DESIGN is a beautifully filmed look at the complex process of food product design, in which the appeal of foods to all the senses is considered and manipulated, using sophisticated science and psychological insights." - J. Peter Clark, Food Technology Magazine

  • "The enjoyment of eating should never get short shrift - and it doesn't in the film FOOD DESIGN." - Katharina Ziegelbauer, nutritionist, Jing.at

  • "FOOD DESIGN reflects an important component of our contemporary culture. This documentary about our food also examines man's occasionally strange relationship to his world, to nature and to himself." - Schlattenblick

    Item no.: KH03100598
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 52 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 390.00

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    GLASSY-EYED

    Bill Utermohlen (1933-2007), an American painter living in London, had the misfortune to come of age as a figurative artist in an era when conceptual and abstract art ruled the day. But in 1995, Utermohlen was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. The diagnosis would change his life - and transform his art.

    Almost immediately, he began a series of paintings called "The Conversation Pieces." The brightly colored works, reminiscent of Matisse, are set at home, featuring his wife, friends and colleagues in conversation. Notably absent - or present, but distant from the other figures - is Utermohlen himself, already isolated by his disease.

    That distance would become more pronounced in Utermohlen's last and greatest body of work: a series of increasingly dark and grim self-portraits. Although he covered all the mirrors in his home, not wanting to see the man he was becoming, Utermohlen continued to create powerful paintings of himself. He would continue to paint them even after losing much of his mobility and his ability to write. (One heartbreaking sequence in the film shows pages from Utermohlen's notebook in which he struggles to write his name, and finally concludes "I cnot wright.")

    Glassy-Eyed features extensive interviews with the painter's wife, art historian Patricia Utermohlen, and innovative, playful sequences capturing the process of artistic creation.

    Utermohlen's final body of work is of interest both for its artistic merit and also for the deep insights it offers into the experience of Alzheimer's. The self-portraits represent a "veritable clinical journal" like no other.

    Item no.: GW00520012
    Format: DVD
    Duration: 26 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 322.00

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    GRAND PARIS: THE PRESIDENT AND THE ARCHITECT

    By Bregtje van der Haak

    Paris was the first truly modern large city. But it has remained largely unchanged since the 1860s.

    Now, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has a vision to turn Paris into a model super-metropolis for the 21st century - a post-Kyoto sustainable city of 12 million that will break down the distinction between downtown and suburb, and that will drive France's economic growth. He calls it "Grand Paris" and he is determined that it will be the crown jewel of his legacy.

    To realize his vision, Sarkozy's government engages 10 star architects, including France's Djamel Klouche and Roland Castro, Mike Davies from the UK, and Winy Maas, from Holland. Their mission: to spend a year rethinking Paris.

    GRAND PARIS offers a compelling and sometimes suspenseful chronicle of the process, as the architects try to distill months of research and discussion into workable plans. It takes us inside some of the world's top architectural firms, as they compete for an opportunity to reshape one of the world's greatest cities.

    The film focuses particularly on Winy Maas, whose designs include the Netherlands' pavilion at the 2000 World's Fair, and master plans for an eco-city in Spain and for the Dutch town of Almere.

    The challenges he and the other architects face are immense. How can industrial production and the knowledge economy be integrated? Should the city have one center, or be multi-polar? What kinds of transportation hubs are needed? How can residents of city and suburbs - separated physically, economically and by social status - be brought together in solidarity?

    Maas begins with aerial and walking tours of the city, and with interviews with people living in the region. The result is a catalog of the seemingly intractable problems that have plagued Paris for well over a century. They include the stark separation between the posh neighborhoods of the city proper and the sprawling suburbs that ring the downtown, a lack of effective public transit, an extreme housing shortage, and neighborhoods that combine old village centres with bland towers of low-cost housing units. According to fellow architect Patrick Celeste, the city is "a mosaic of obstacles."

    In addition to the demands of the Grand Paris project, Maas and the other architects in the film waver between being impressed with Sarkozy's vision, and worrying that they are simply being used for political purposes. For French architects the question is a particularly burning one. Are they being courted to truly bring about effective change in the city? Or to burnish the reputation of a leader whose politics many dislike?

    Despite the challenges, the Grand Paris architects are imbued with a sense of optimism and possibility. But when the world's economy comes near collapse, the planners must face the possibility that growth can no longer be taken for granted, and that the public may have lost the taste for large-scale projects.

    Will Paris be a bold model for future urban development? Or will the problems of the last 150 years drag on for decades to come?

    GRAND PARIS can be viewed in conjunction with Paris, Ring Road, an exploration of the changes wrought by the Boulevard Peripherique circling the city; and Paris, 19th century, on the dramatic overhaul of the city led by Baron Haussmann in the 1860s. Together, a triology of films on the dynamic evolution of an iconic global city.

    Review
  • "An inspiring reminder that architects - and even some politicians - remain willing to think big... Recommended." - Video Librarian

    Item no.: KE03400607
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 50 minutes
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    Copyright: 2009
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    INVISIBLE FRAME, THE

    By Cynthia Beatt

    "It's a fearful heart that builds a wall and it is a fearless heart that can live without it," observes Tilda Swinton in THE INVISIBLE FRAME.

    In 1988 director Cynthia Beatt and the young Tilda Swinton embarked on a filmic journey (CYCLING THE FRAME) along the Berlin Wall into little-known territory. Over 20 years later, Beatt and Swinton reteamed to retrace the entire 160 km line of the Wall that once isolated Berlin. THE INVISIBLE FRAME depicts this poetic passage through varied landscapes, this time on both sides of the former Wall.

    Complemented by recitations of works by writers Robert Louis Stevenson, William Butler Yeats and Anna Akhmatova and a soundscape by musician Simon Fisher Turner who collaborated with director Derek Jarman and Tilda Swinton in the 1980's, THE INVISIBLE FRAME brings a meditative and philosophical approach to tracing a Wall which once divided people, families and a nation and now lingers as an invisible "ghost wall."

    Review
  • "Playful, essayistic film, which leaves a deep and lasting impression in one's mind." - Anke Westphal, Berliner Zeitung

    Item no.: KK03400618
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 60 minutes
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    Copyright: 2009
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    JAPAN, THE EMPEROR AND THE ARMY

    By Kenichi Watanabe

    JAPAN, THE EMPEROR AND THE ARMY examines how Japan's demilitarization in the months following the WWII continues to resonate today - in Japanese politics, national identity and cultural influence on the international stage.

    This historically insightful documentary follows the transitional aftermath of WWII, when Japan demilitarized in order to regain international confidence and thus adopted Article 9 in its new constitution, famously decreeing that land, sea and air military forces will never be maintained- essentially renouncing war forever. Previously, Emperor Hirohito as sovern head of state was commander of the army and had full authority to wage war.

    General MacArthur as head of U.S. forces occupying post-war Japan, sought to separate the emperor from the military as war was traditionally waged in Japan on behalf of the emperor, not the nation, with kamikaze missions being seen as the ultimate way of honoring your deity-like commander. Hirohito remained as an imperial symbol of the pre-war Japan in post-war, becoming the first emperor to become a mere "mortal."

    However today, Japan's "Self-Defense Force" is one of the 5 largest militaries in the world. Topics that were once taboo - amending Article 9, maintaining the primacy of the emperor, honoring Japan's military past - are now openly discussed by politicians at the highest levels.

    Featuring interviews with Japanese and Western historians, as well as activist lawyers, WWII veterans and politicians, JAPAN, THE EMPEROR AND THE ARMY provides much-needed context for the resurgence in Japanese nationalism, its roots in the United States' management of its post-war occupation, the challenges and limitations of Japan's pacifist constitution and the country's evolving role in the military-industrial complex.

    Item no.: VA03100631
    Format: DVD (Color, Black and White)
    Duration: 90 minutes
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    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 398.00

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    K.O.R.

    By Joanna Grudzinska

    In June 1976, Poland's Communist government announced dramatic increases in food prices. The resulting protests set in motion a resurgence in activism and opposition that would eventually lead to the downfall of the regime.

    In Ursus, just outside of Warsaw, outraged workers blocked train traffic. In Radom, they burned down the local headquarters of the Communist Party. The protests were spontaneous. But almost immediately, a group of intellectuals and workers banded together to form K.O.R. - the Workers Defense Committee. Active from 1976 to 1981, it clandestinely produced uncensored newspapers, provided financial and legal aid to fired workers, and tirelessly advocated for truly independent unions that could defend workers' rights.

    This documentary accompanies Henryk Wujec and Jan Lity?ski - two key K.O.R. activists - as they meet with old comrades, scour archival materials and retrace the history of this influential movement.

    Joanna Szczesna recalls putting together the underground Information Bulletin - surreptitiously hand-printed by volunteers - with a determination to tell only the truth. Auto plant worker Kobylka Wieslaw recalls being arrested for hooliganism after the protests, and how the experience changed his life: "In 1976 I became immune to Communism. I stopped being afraid."

    Directed by Joanna Grudzinska, whose activist parents were forced into exile in 1981, K.O.R. captures the vibrant idealism and energy that informed Poland's dissidents in the late 1970s. The documentary traces how the links forged between workers and intellectuals were consolidated in the shipyards of Gdansk in 1980, with the founding of the Solidarnosc (Solidarity) union and the leadership of Lech Walesa.

    Until now, few in the West have been familiar with the pivotal role played by dissidents in the turbulent years leading up to the founding of Solidarity. K.O.R provides an insider's look at these critical years and the people who would set the stage for the end of Communist rule.

    Item no.: HD03210635
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 56 minutes
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    Copyright: 2009
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    KORAN, THE: THE ORIGINS OF THE BOOK

    By Bruno Ulmer

    This enlightening documentary explores the origins of the Koran, which according to Muslim tradition, has remained static and unchanged since its revelation to the prophet Mohammed between 610 and 632 CE in Mecca and Medina. However, recent discoveries of Koranic manuscripts analyzed by scientists, dating from around 680 - the oldest in the world - indicate that the Koran would appear to have a more complicated history. During the first century of Islam, different concurrent versions of the holy book of Islam are believed to have existed and a number of different readings are possible due to the rudimentary nature of the writing in its early stages.

    European scientists and Islamic scholars are now trying to trace the history of the Koran. From the mosque of Kairouan in Tunisia to that of the Umayyads in Damascus and Al- Azhar in Cairo , the film invites us on a fascinating journey into the heart of the origins of the book and Late Antiquity. THE KORAN: THE ORIGINS OF THE BOOK explores where Muslim tradition and scientific research converge.

    Review
  • "Admirable...Brilliant...As much for the beauty of the images as for its care of clarity." - Telerama

    Item no.: ZC03400649
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 52 minutes
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    Copyright: 2009
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    LADIES IN WAITING

    By Dieudo Hamadi & Divita Wa Lusala

    Taking in the wives of the unemployed, of unpaid government employees, the Kitambo maternity clinic in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo has to cope with its patients' lack of money. And negotiations are tough between the administration and the women. As long as the bill remains unsettled they are kept at the clinic, which only increases the cost of their stay. And here everything has a price, even a birth certificate. The women's protests against their poor accommodations or their claims that their husbands' pay is overdue can change nothing. The female administrator won't budge an inch. If you've no money, you stay put. "Hold me hostage instead of my wife" offers one man. A long suffering manager, herself at the mercy of the system, must negotiate collateral with them: a celebration dress, a pair of earrings, a suitcase, so they will return and pay in full.

    This an intimate, all-too-human reminder of the ways economic forces play out in even the best-intentioned healthcare institutions in poor countries affecting not only the institutions, but health care workers and patients alike.

    Review
  • "Hard-hitting, eye-opening expose." - Neil Young, The Hollywood Reporter

    Item no.: KC00520016
    Format: DVD
    Duration: 24 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 322.00

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    OPEN SKY

    By Ines Compan

    In rural northwest Argentina, the indigenous Kolla's land and quality of life is threatened after the government permits a Canadian company, Standard Silver to open an ambitious open-sky silver mine in Mina Pirquitas.

    The residents, mostly poor llama, goat and chinchilla farmers with little political clout, become understandably inflamed that the government would allow this usufruct without offering any sort of compensation for long-term environmental damage and share of the profits of the non-renewable resources. The residents feel that they are being bamboozled with promises of mining jobs that will enable them to stay in the area, yet the government ministers turns a deaf ear when reminders are made of long ago requests for a local clinic, school and improvements to drinking water quality.

    A great community dialogue and discussion is established to educate and band together the locals who must fight against a powerful corporation and a government who rules by dividing and conquering and creating conflicts amidst the indigenous populace

    Item no.: RU03400657
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 94 minutes
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    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 398.00

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    PETROPOLIS: AERIAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE ALBERTA TAR SANDS

    By Peter Mettler

    "It's environmental Armageddon, it's an oil spill on land" says Kate Colarulli of the Sierra Club regarding the Alberta tar sands, the world's largest industrial, capital and energy project.

    The unspoiled boreal forests of northern Canada compressed for 200 million years have created the world's second largest oil reserve, roughly the size of England. The tar sands, a mixture of sand and a heavy crude oil called bitumen are mined in open pits after being forced to the surface by injecting superheated water into the ground.

    With Canada being the largest foreign supplier of crude oil to the U.S. and production possibly tripling in coming years, the controversial mining of the tar sands already releases as much carbon dioxide per day into the environment as all the cars in Canada, making the extraction of crude from oil sands far worse for the environment than conventional oil production.

    This massive industrialized mining effort has far-reaching impacts on the land, air, water, and climate although amazingly no comprehensive assessment of the megaproject's environmental, economic, or social impact has been done.

    Director Peter Mettler's (MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES) film shot primarily from a helicopter offered an unparalleled view of this extraordinary spectacle, whose scope can only be understood from far above. In its melding of hypnotic imagery with a pulsing modernist score, PETROPOLIS: AERIAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE ALBERTA TAR SANDS features a timely look at a dehumanized world where petroleum's power is supreme.

    Reviews
  • "Strikingly beautiful and presented in such confident, assured rhythms that you're almost hypnotized by the flow of images - until you realize you're watching grand-scale systematic destruction." - Norman Wilner, NOW Magazine
  • "A gorgeous, affecting and deeply cinematic eco-documentary...something of a movie miracle." - Kevin Maher, The Times
  • "Finds both horror and strange beauty in man's capacity to force nature to bend to his skewed vision." - Peter Howell, Toronto Star

    Awards
  • 2010 Genie Nomination, Best Short Documentary

    Item no.: BE03400666
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 43 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 298.00

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    PRESUMED GUILTY

    Directed by Roberto Hernandez & Geoffrey Smith

    In December 2005 Tono Zuniga was picked up off the street in Mexico City, Mexico, and sentenced to 20 years for murder based on the testimony of a single, shaky eyewitness. PRESUMED GUILTY tells the heart-wrenching story of a man who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    A friend of Tono's contacted two young lawyers, Roberto Hernandez and Layda Negrete, who gained prominence in Mexico when they helped bring about the release of another innocent man from prison. As Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas (CIDE) legal researchers, they tracked an alarming history of corruption in the Mexican justice system (93% of inmates never see an arrest warrant, and 93% of defendants never see a judge).

    Looking into Tono's case, Roberto and Layda managed to get a retrial - on camera - and enlisted the help of filmmaker Geoffrey Smith (THE ENGLISH SURGEON) to chronicle the saga. Shot over three years with unprecedented access to the Mexican courts and prisons, this dramatic story is a searing indictment of a justice system that presumes guilt.

    Reviews
  • "PRESUMED GUILTY is a terrific film - gripping, shocking and quite illuminating." - Charles D. Weisselberg, Shannon C. Turner Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law

  • "A rare - and chilling - glimpse of Mexico's dysfunctional legal system." - David Luhnow, Wall Street Journal

  • "Showing to the world in vivid detail the deep flaws in the system, undermining the most basic ideals of justice, this film has the potential to blow the lid on the Mexican criminal justice systems. - Jack Glaser, Associate Professor at Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley

    Awards
  • Humanitas Award, 2010 International Documentary Association, Los Angeles
  • Audience Award, 2010 Verzio Film Festival, Budapest
  • Audience Award, 2010 Sarajevo Film Festival
  • Feature Documentary Award, 2010 One World Media, London
  • Best Documentary Award, Best Audience Award, 2010 DocumentaMadrid
  • Best Feature Documentary Award, 2010 East End Film Festival, London
  • Audience Award for Best International Feature, 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival
  • Golden Gate Best Bay Area Documentary, 2010 San Francisco International Film Festival
  • Best Documentary Award, 2010 Guadalajara International Film Festival, Mexico
  • Amnesty International Award, 2009 Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival
  • Best Documentary Award, 2009 Morelia International Film Festival, Mexico
  • Maysles Brothers Documentary Award, 2009 Belfast Film Festival

    Item no.: MM03100803
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 88 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 398.00

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    RABBIT A LA BERLIN

    By Bartek Konopka and Piotr Roslowski

    RABBIT A LA BERLIN is the 2010 Academy Award-nominated story of thousands of wild rabbits which lived in the Death Zone of the Berlin Wall. This is the first film showing the story of the Wall and the reunification of Germany seen from such an unusual perspective - from the rabbits' point of view.

    As if the green belt between the two walls was designed for those animals - full of untouched grass, the predators stayed behind the wall and the guards made sure no one disturbed the rabbits. They had been living there for 28 years, enclosed but safe. With the fall of the Wall in 1989, the rabbits had to look for another place to live.

    Reviews
    RABBIT A LA BERLIN is an allegorical, self-described "nature documentary about socialism" which brings together the history of Eastern Europe as seen from the rabbits' unique perspective.

  • "Teasing and shrewd, a floppy-eared fable about the uneasy trade-offs between liberty and security. This cheeky parable plays like a totalitarian WATERSHIP DOWN." - Jeannette Catsoulis, The New York Times

    "If Werner Herzog remade WATERSHIP DOWN, this would be his template...a lovely modern mini-myth, sarcastic and Beatrix Potter-y in turn." - Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice

  • "The film is funny, witty, perverse, and yet seems perfectly balanced. Konopka plays the viewers' emotions with a skill of a virtuoso." - Marta Brzezinska, Filmweb

    Awards
  • Best Conflict and Resolution Film, 2009 Hamptons International Film Festival
  • Best Mid-Length Documentary, 2009 Hot Docs Film Festival
  • Grand Prix, Golden Hobby-Horse and Best Producer, 2009 Krakow Film Festival

    Item no.: RH03100668
    Format: DVD (Color, Black and White)
    Duration: 39 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 375.00

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    STOLEN LAND

    By Margarita Martinez and Miguel Salazar

    For the Nasa indigenous community, a tightly knit and fiercely proud people, in southern Colombia, the land is their "Mother Earth." However, since the European conquest, the Nasa have been repeatedly displaced from their land. Now they are caught in a crossfire between the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas and the Colombian Army.

    STOLEN LAND tells the history of the Nasa's resistance movement, with Dec. 16, 1991 being a symbolic day for the Nasa when 20 of them died claiming their land rights at Hacienda El Nilo Plantation. The Colombian state admitted police complicity in the Nilo massacre before an international court in 1995 and prior to that pledged 39,000 acres of land to the Nasa over the next 3 years.

    The film shows that in present day they have received only one-third of the land, making it nearly impossible for their growing community to continue with their traditional agrarian way of life. After 15 years of waiting for their land, the Nasa block the Panamerican highway, demanding compliance with the Nilo agreement.

    Their charismatic leader is Lucho Acosta, an imposing tactician descended from Indian warriors who hopes to "liberate Mother Earth." He knows from experience that violence only breeds more violence but facing insurmountable odds, Lucho's beliefs are tested to their very core as the government attacks with tanks, helicopters, guns and tear gas.

    STOLEN LAND illustrates the decades-long battle over land, unfortunately commonplace among indigenous populations, which continues in a nation where less than 1% of the population owns well over half the land.

    Review
  • "Directors Margarita Martinez and Miguel Salazar document the Nasa's use of peaceful civil resistance as they send a message to the government and guerrilla forces." - Epoch Times

    Item no.: PS03210692
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 73 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 398.00

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    SURROUNDED BY WAVES

    By Jean-Christophe Ribot

    As wireless technology keeps expanding the debate surrounding the health impacts of electromagnetic waves keeps growing. Filmed in France, Israel, Sweden, and the United States, the new documentary Surrounded by Waves uses an elegant blend of interviews, archives, experiments and 3D animation to investigate what is known, and unknown, about the potential risks.

    Around the world scientists are exploring areas as cognitive troubles, sleep disturbances, risks of neurodegenerative diseases, brain tumors, cardiac rhythm abnormalities, disturbances of the immune system, and even decreases in fertility. In Surrounded by Waves we meet a number of experts in the field, including Dr. Andrew Marino of Louisiana State University's Health Services Center; Joe Wiart, a physicist employed at Orange Labs in France; and Professor Rony Seger, a biologist at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. In Sweden, Olle Johansson, professor of neuroscience at The Karolinska Institute studies electro hypersensitivity, officially recognized in Sweden as a disability

    From the fields produced by electrical appliances to Wi-Fi, our daily environment exposes us to all sorts of radiation, the ramifications of which we are still discovering. And as we wait for an accurate evaluation, Surrounded by Waves provides both a subtle observation of society's growing distrust of its industries, and the crucial role of science in the debate.

    Item no.: WW00520034
    Format: DVD (Closed Captioned)
    Duration: 52 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 507.00

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    TAGGED

    By Shawney Cohen & Mike Gallay

    They're in your credit cards, access cards and keyless car entry. They're even in your clothes, your passport and maybe your pet. But are implanted microchips in your best interest? The ubiquitous RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chip is touted as a tool with invaluable medical applications by its supporters and denounced as the death knell for personal privacy by its critics. TAGGED introduces us to the debate raging between the two camps and to Mark Stepanek, a young member of the tech-obsessed fringe keen to embrace RFID as a new way of life.

    Mark looks forward to getting an RFID implant so that he can throw away his door key and open his apartment door with merely a wave of his hand. But despite the assurances of advocates like Verichip CEO Scott Silverman, RFID Toys author Amal Graafstra and personal recommendations from several satisfied customers, a host of naysayers oppose the practice of implanting RFID chips in people.

    Leading critics interviewed in TAGGED include Bruce Schneier of Wired Magazine, consumer advocate Katherine Albrecht (author of Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Purchase and Watch Your Every Move), author Peter de Jager, and University of Alberta professor Kevin Haggerty, a specialist on surveillance technology, who discuss the philosophical, political and medical issues surrounding this controversial issue.

    TAGGED is playful, smart and engaging, stealthily tapping into a widespread sense of unease raised by this technological development. Wisely, it lets the audience be the judge. Is it "hip to be chipped," as a proposed Verichip marketing slogan claims, or could a wave of the hand unlock not just the door to your home but a Pandora's box of privacy and civil liberty concerns?

    Review
  • "This good short film uses one young man's quest to get a computer chip implanted in his body as the narrative structure to explore issues about technology, privacy, power, and personhood." - Anthropology Review Database

    Item no.: PC03400694
    Format: DVD-R (Color)
    Duration: 28 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 248.00

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    THREE SONGS ABOUT MOTHERLAND

    By Marina Goldovskaya

    THREE SONGS ABOUT MOTHERLAND depicts a dramatic collision between the past, the present, and the future in contemporary Russia by focusing on three different cities in this vast land.

    In the far eastern city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, a still-living symbol of Soviet industrialization in the 1930s, older Russian citizens speak about their youth, when they felt part of something bigger than themselves: building "a city of communist dreams" in the middle of nowhere. Some cling to the promise of those glory days while others, express regret and disappointment at its ultimate failure.

    Then, the cosmopolitan city of Moscow bids farewell to Anna Politkovskaya, the fearless journalist and human rights activist who was assassinated for her political activity amid the chaotic power struggles of the post-Soviet nation, fighting to her death for a young Russian democracy.

    Finally, residents of Khanty-Mansijsk, one of the main centers of Siberia's budding oil industry, speak about their beloved fairy tale-like town, where the communist dream has been swept away by new aspirations for a prosperous future.

    And what are they, today's aspirations? What is behind the fairy tale? Will the new "capitalist dream" come true, or will it turn out to be another illusion, another myth? In the words of the great Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev, "We are not destined to foretell."

    During the course of the film, three songs performed by contemporary singer Elena Kamburova serve as a leitmotif which unites these three separate stories into one cohesive whole: a frank and vibrant picture of Russia today.

    Review
  • "THREE SONGS ABOUT MOTHERLAND offers three interesting portraits of contemporary Russia." - Anthology Review Database

    Item no.: NA03210697
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 39 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 298.00

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    VIEWS ON VERMEER

    By Hans Pool and Koos de Wilt

    Johannes Vermeer died nearly 350 years ago, but his work continues to evoke inspiration and passion.

    Shot largely in New York (home a third of the world's Vermeers) Views on Vermeer also travels to Holland, France, London and Washington - introducing us to artists, writers and photographers whose lives and work have been touched by the painter from Delft.

    Vermeer has long been admired for the sense of peacefulness that infuse his work. Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf says what he has learned about portraiture from Vermeer is that "nothing really happens." One woman reads a letter. Another pours milk. Both their actions are captured in a moment of stillness. "A life is being lived in those paintings - a small moment." says photographer Joel Meyerowitz. "That small moment is where Vermeer and photography meet."

    The film highlights artists whose work is directly inspired by Vermeer, and others for whom the connection to the old master is less direct - yet no less vital.

    London-based painter Tom Hunter's work depicts friends and neighbors facing eviction from their homes in compositions drawn from Vermeer. Meanwhile, photographers such as Meyerowitz and Philip-Lorca diCorcia draw on Vermeer more indirectly. diCorcia's "Hustlers" series features male prostitutes posed in tableaus whose lighting and compositions are reminiscent of Vermeer's. And as in Vermeer's work, diCorcia's images "reveal themselves slowly."

    One of the more striking sequences in the film juxtaposes the work of Girl with a Pearl Earring novelist Tracy Chevalier with that of Steve McCurry - the photographer who shot the famous Afghan girl photo that appeared on the cover of National Geographic. For Chevalier, the Vermeer painting on which she based the book was not simply a portrait; it captured a moment in a relationship. McCurry compares the Afghan girl - seeing a western male for the first time - to the girl with the pearl earring. Each demonstrates a moment when "the mundane becomes magical."

    Despite the peacefulness of his work, Vermeer lived in a world wracked by violence. Writer Lawrence Weschler (Vermeer in Bosnia) notes that the sense of calm in a painting of Vermeer's hometown - where a recent explosion had killed hundreds - is akin to a portrait of post-9/11 Manhattan. The sense of peacefulness filling the work is not simply aesthetic. It is a political statement wrenched from a world at war.

    Many of those featured in the film point to the lack of verisimilitude in much of Vermeer's work. Bricks may not really look the way Vermeer paints them. Certain reflections and highlights may be physically impossible. Yet his work captures something fundamental about reality - something beyond the purely physical. We are surrounded by inexpensive digital equipment that offers the illusion of instantly photographing or filming reality. The work of Vermeer and the artists he has influenced is an invitation to the opposite approach. As artist Chuck Close says, "Vermeer painted the situation of bricks, rather than individual bricks."

    Featuring interviews with painters Tom Hunter, Chuck Close, and Jonathan Janson; photographers Erwin Olaf, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Joel Meyerowitz and Steve McCurry; writers Tracy Chevalier, Lawrence Weschler, and Alain de Botton; architect Philip Steadman; curators Walter Liedtke, and Arthur Wheelock; art historian Geoffrey Batchen, and art dealer Otto Naumann.

    Reviews
  • "VIEWS ON VERMEER is a delightful, impressionistic meditation on the many ways the elusive and allusive Vermeer continues to inform, inspire and provoke the contemporary imagination." - The Globe and Mail

  • "Required viewing for any Vermeer fan." - NOW Magazine

  • "One of the very best [films ever made about art]." - The Star

    Item no.: NA03400699
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 52 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2009
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    Price: USD 390.00

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    FINAL FITTING

    By Reza Haeri

    FINAL FITTING follows Mr. Arabpour, the master tailor and craftsman, and the proprietor of the most famous tailor shop in Qom (Iran's most important religious center). A spry octogenarian, for the last several decades he has been the official tailor to the most important religious leaders of the country, starting with the late Ayatollah Khomeini to the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, as well as for the former president, Mohammad Khatami. His international clientele include such prominent figures as Imam Musa Sadr of Lebanon.

    He speaks to us of the different styles and the many variations on the traditional aba and ammameh (the turban and the robe). Mr. Arabpour shows us how he cuts and creates the garments and how he adapts them for different men with different needs. The newer styles, more sculpted, more tailored, with defined seams and pockets, are designed for a new kind of Ayatollah: the more reform-minded and democratic' ones of whom Khatami is the supreme example.

    FINAL FITTING showcases the changing cultural styles of Iran and its clerical elite through its portrait of one man and his time-honored craft.

    Review
  • "The beauty of FINAL FITTING lies in the intersection of the tailor's wit and Haeri's careful editing. A study of the interplay of modesty and vanity, the humanity at the core of theocracy." - The Daily Star

    Award
  • Winner Grand Prix Short Film, 2008 Iran International Documentary Film Festival

    Item no.: VJ03400597
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 31 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2008
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    Price: USD 348.00

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    FOR THE BEST AND FOR THE ONION!

    By Elhadj Magori Sani

    "I am singing about onion farming, bringing both suffering and joy." So sings an onion farmer as he works his field Galmi, in Niger. Beside him stands Yaro, a fellow farmer who knows all too well the hope and sorrow his livelihood can bring.

    Agriculture is key to the local economy, with Galmi onions prized throughout West Africa. Shot over the course of one growing season, FOR THE BEST AND FOR THE ONION! is a verite documentary that captures the rhythms of life in Galmi, and how the vagaries of market price and harvest can affect the most intimate personal decisions.

    Yaro's daughter Salamatou is betrothed to Adamou. The couple hope to marry soon, but after each harvest - much to his future son-in-law's frustration - Yaro postpones the wedding yet again. He says he wants his daughter to be married with dignity, and that means having enough money to pay for all the expenses tradition demands.

    As the growing season progresses, Yaro is under increasing pressure to finally set a date for the wedding. Meanwhile, the market price of onions begins a rapid downward slide and the engaged couple come up with a solution to speed their marriage.

    Filmed in director Elhadj Magori Sani's home community, FOR THE BEST AND FOR THE ONION! offers a rare level of intimacy and immediacy that can only come from the eye of an insider.

    Awards
  • Best Short Documentary, 2010 Pan African Film & Arts Festival (Los Angeles)
  • Best Documentary Feature, 2009 African Movie Academy Awards
  • Best Foreign Film Award, 2009 Terra di Tutti Film Festival (Italy)

    Item no.: CA03210601
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 52 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2008
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    Price: USD 390.00

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    SHADI

    By Maryam Khakipour

    Moved by the plight of the "Joy Makers" world-renowned French stage director, Ariane Mnouchkine invites the acting troupe to perform with her Parisian avant-garde improvisational stage ensemble, Theatre du Soleil.

    The documentary follows young comedic actress Shadi as she battles for her domineering husband's permission to travel outside Iran for the first time, and later finds herself caught between the differing artistic visions of her Iranian director and Mnouchkine while performing in Paris.

    Item no.: PC03210671
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 58 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2008
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    Price: USD 398.00

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    THIS WAY UP

    By Georgi Lazarevski

    Just east of Jerusalem, the construction on the wall of separation continues a few meters from a senior citizen's home. Its unavoidable and spectacular progression gradually isolates the residents from the world of the living, as both visitors and staff face more obstacles with each passing day.

    A haunting soundtrack of bells and chimes accompanies elderly patients sleeping in wheelchairs, and silhouetted staff members walking down long hallways with glistening floors. In the gardens of Our Lady of Pains, certain individuals continue to protest the barrier wall construction due to feelings of rejection, anger or nostalgic longing for their lost freedom. One man shouts his political views at the television news broadcast in the common room while two women war with each other over songs. Another man savours the sensual momentary pleasures of cigarettes, coffee, and fruit, as he silently strolls through the home, the garden, and the surrounding area.

    While presenting the painful sense of despair that rises in the home, THIS WAY UP also captures a sense of levity and hope in its use of rich colours and portrayals of simple pleasures.

    Reviews
  • "THIS WAY UP is a good film...For those teaching courses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the film can provide an artistic portrait of Palestinian lives that is humanizing of the Palestinian condition." - Anthropology Review Database

  • "Poignant and profound." - Slant Magazine

  • "A superb documentary about the effects of politics on everyday lives." - Cynthia Fuchs, Pop Matters

    Awards
  • Grand Prix Documentary, 2009 Tetouan Mediterranean Film Festival (Morocco)
  • Don Quixote Award, 2008 Krakow Film Festival (Poland)
  • 2008 SILVERDOC: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival (Silver Spring, MD.)

    Item no.: ZP03100695
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 61 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2008
    StdBkNo.:
    Price: USD 348.00

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    STOLEN ART

    By Simon Backes

    In New York City in 1978, an unknown Czech artist by the name of Pavel Novak held an exhibit at WX Gallery entitled "Stolen Art," which featured paintings by Rembrandt, Courbet, Van Gogh and other great masters, all reproduced with astonishing accuracy by Novak. Following the claim by a private collector that one painting, Courbet's "The Calm Sea" was actually an original stolen from his home, the FBI shut down the exhibit and Novak disappeared without a trace.

    In investigating the scandal created by this outlaw artist, filmmaker Simon Backes learns that few today are aware of the event while those who are refuse to speak about it. His search takes him worldwide-from New York to Prague, Leiden, Paris, St. Petersburg, St. Moritz and Rome-as he visits leading museums and interviews art experts, curators, collectors, journalists, and critics, including Karel Michalik, a colleague of Novak's, who wrote a provocative essay for the exhibit's program.

    In the course of its investigation-which includes Super 8mm footage of the 1978 exhibit (with Andy Warhol, among others, in attendance) and journalist Barbara Lorey's tape-recorded phone interview with Novak-the film discusses his philosophy of the "reappropriation" and "redistribution" of great art, how authentic art can be distinguished from reproductions, the relationship between artists, critics and collectors, the role of memory in art appreciation, and the role of art forgers.

    In trying to determine whether Novak was a brilliant art forger or a remarkable thief, however, the mystery merely thickens and the question becomes not so much who created what, but who created whom?

    Reviews
  • "Fascinating... the film goes out of its way to be accessible to art newbies and explains many interesting concepts of art appreciation and interpretation in the midst of a Usual Suspects-like mystery that also plays like a comedy of errors that is international copyright law." - Erin Donovan, linktv.org

  • "An investigation with the allure of a philosophical thriller... brimming with intelligence and erudition." - Philippe Simon, Cinergie, revue du Cinema Belge

  • "Is true art illegal? Do paintings lose their beauty once they are privately hoarded and can no longer be appreciated collectively? The questions raised are as intriguing as the answers." - Angie Driscoll, Hot Docs Festival Program

    Item no.: HH03100688
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 56 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2007
    StdBkNo.:
    Price: USD 348.00

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    ART SAFARI

    By Ben Lewis

    In ART SAFARI, Art Geek Ben Lewis travels the world in search of Great Contemporary Art - and art that might be great. A playful series of eight films that are both analytical adventures and adventurous analyses.

    Stopping at nothing to probe the minds of the world's most interesting, imaginative and insane artists, Ben navigates bravely through the art world's phalanxes of dealers, collectors and critics - and in the process discovers extraordinary works of art.

    Ben Lewis directs, presents and works as sound recordist and occasional artist's assistant. The results are arts home movies - close, informal and laidback encounters with artists unlike anything else you've seen.

    Ben scaled skyscrapers, brought sculptures to life, burgled houses, and absorbed copious amounts of French art theory in a determined effort to understand contemporary art. Through the series, he carries an exhibition by one artist around in his jacket pocket, is instructed by another to tell her what to do, rows with a third on camera and is finally tattooed alongside a pig in China, as a work of art naturally.

    Disc One:
  • Maurizio Cattelan
  • Gregor Schneider
  • Matthew Barney
  • Relational Art

    Disc Two:
  • Wim Delvoye
  • Santiago Sierra
  • Sophie Calle
  • Takashi Murakami

    Reviews
  • "A highly stimulating and rewarding collection." - Doug Pratt, The DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter
  • "Part serious look at the contemporary art scene, part expose of the pretensions that fuel it!" - THE GUARDIAN
  • "If your understanding of contemporary art begins with NO and ends with IDEA, then ART SAFARI is a good place to start." - EMILY DUNN, THE AGE

    Item no.: NA03210570
    Format: 2 DVDs (Color)
    Duration: 224 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2005
    StdBkNo.:
    Price: USD 298.00

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    PARIS RING

    By Richard Copans

    PARIS RING serves as a study of the far-reaching effects of a major, urban project. The Peripherique - the ring road that surrounds the city - offers a stark demarcation between urban environments. On one side lies the elegant city of Paris. On the other is the endless sprawl of contemporary suburbs.

    Design work on the road began in 1954, and it opened to traffic 19 years later. Its route mirrors the walls that once ringed Paris, and that were torn down after the First World War made it clear they were no longer effective. A no-man's land sprung up near the walls - home to a working-class and transient population that offended the aesthetic sensibilities of the bourgeoisie, and that was eventually displaced by the road.

    The construction of the Peripherique - 35 kilometres long, with up to eight lanes of traffic and carrying more than a million cars a day - is arguably the most significant project carried out in Paris since Baron Haussmann transformed the city into a modern metropolis in the 1860s.

    But where Haussmann's Paris balanced utility with aesthetics, the Peripherique is purely an engineering triumph.

    For some, the Peripherique is a blight, a stark separation between city and suburb. For others it represents an economic lifeline without which the city could not survive.

    With an unusual combination of spoken and sung commentary, this documentary travels the Peripherique, offering a series of brief cases studies on the changes it has brought to the neighborhoods it borders. A funeral home is separated from the cemetery that once lay just across the road, but now can only be accessed by a circuitous route. A park appears bucolic, until we change point-of-view and see it squeezed between two looming ramps. Quiet streets are assailed by a constant stream of traffic noise.

    The film pays particular attention to the transitional spaces between ring road and surrounding areas, and to those who inhabit them: a photographer fascinated by the aesthetics of an exit ramp; a man who "lives like a king" in a trailer below an elevated portion of the road; a developer building a hotel located between the Peripherique, a highway and a railway track; and the construction workers, maintenance staff, homeless people and graffiti artists whose lives are marked by interactions with the ring road.

    Their stories are a reminder that even the most utilitarian urban spaces develop their own particular ecology.

    The documentary also serves as a valuable companion piece to Paris 19th Century, The Invention of a Modern City, which offers an architectural examination of the legacy of Haussmann's re-development of the city.

    Item no.: PD03100659
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 54 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2004
    StdBkNo.:
    Price: USD 398.00

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    SIAH BAZI: THE JOY MAKERS

    By Maryan Khakipour

    Siah Bazi theater troupes similar to Commedia dell'arte, traditionally performed at weddings and parties, led by men and women in full harlequin garb, making impromptu skits peppered with subtle commentary on current events and politics.

    When Tehran's troupe faces the closing of their 400-year-old theater due to changing cultural shifts, the performers face uncertain futures as truck drivers and tea-servers.

    SIAH BAZI: THE JOY MAKERS offers a look at how folkloric entertainment is challenged by modern political and economic changes in Tehran.

    Item no.: PT03400677
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 45 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2004
    StdBkNo.:
    Price: USD 398.00

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    LOSS

    By Nurith Aviv

    "Mourning is regularly the reaction to the loss of a loved person, or an abstraction which has taken the place of one, such as fatherland, freedom, an ideal, etc." - Sigmund Freud

    Director Nurith Aviv quotes Freud's simple definition of mourning and loss as it relates to the first post-war generation of Germans and the historical experience of Jews. With the backdrop of a muted and autumnal Berlin, influential German Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt and prolific actor Hanns Zischler (MUNICH) among others ruminate about the extinguishing of German Jewish life and culture and the lasting intellectual, moral and spiritual void that loss has meant to their fatherland.

    Aviv, a noted cinematographer whose ancestors came from Berlin, has created an elegiac portrait of a homeland that can never exculpate itself from the ghosts of the Holocaust.

    Reviews
  • "A briskly straightforward work, highly intelligent and ultimately quite moving." - George Robinson, The Jewish Week
  • "Anchored by a fascinating clip from a 1964 interview with an agitated, cigarette-waving Hannah Arendt, the film is an eloquent reminder of the ineluctable link between language and history." - Jeannette Catsoulis, The New York Times
  • "A gem...an exceptionally intelligent film." - Catherine Humblot, Le Monde

    Item no.: FH03100651
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 30 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2002
    StdBkNo.:
    Price: USD 248.00

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    ELSEWHERE

    Directed, Photographed by Nikolaus Geyrhalter
    Edited by Wolfgang Widerhofer

    From Nikolaus Geyrhalter, the director of OUR DAILY BREAD, an epic journey to twelve remote and rarely glimpsed locales and communities around the world.

    Geyerhalter films expansive vistas of desert, snow, jungle, ice, and rainforest, travels with a scooter-riding Finnish reindeer herdsman, visits the home of a Namibian couple with relational problems, ventures out to sea with a Sardinian fisherman. In observational and striking visual portraits, impressions of modernization's influence on traditional societies emerge.

    An homage to humanity, ELSEWHERE is a nuanced portrait of life - fragile and resilient - at the start of the 21st century.

    Reviews
  • "ELSEWHERE is an astoundingly unique, landmark film, and a not-to-be missed opportunity to see places few of us will ever visit ourselves." - Doc Films
  • "Nikolaus Geyrhalter is certainly not the first documentarian to make life on the planet's margins the core of his body of work, but he might yet be one of the best." - Benjamin Mercer, The L Magazine
  • "Shockingly beautiful!" -Rob Nelson, Village Voice

    Award
  • IDFA Special Jury Award-winning documentary

    Item no.: JB03210592
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 240 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 2001
    StdBkNo.:
    Price: USD 398.00

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    PARIS, 19TH CENTURY: THE INVENTION OF THE MODERN CITY

    By Stan Neumann
    Based on the work of Francois Loyer


    The look and feel of Paris can be traced to planner Baron Haussmann's overhaul of the city in the 1860s. The city had been essentially unchanged for centuries, and increased congestion made change a necessity. Haussmann oversaw a "renovation" that would turn Paris into the first large, modern city: one marked by iconic wide boulevards and distinctive streetscapes.

    But modern Paris continues to co-exist with elements of the more anarchic medieval city, as well as with areas that still betray their suburban roots.

    This leisurely paced documentary follows noted architectural historian Francois Loyer - an expert on 19th-century Paris, on a tour of the city. We travel through streets and stairways and out onto rooftops, as Parisians go about their daily business and intimate affairs.

    The film reveals how Paris has been shaped by its particular interplay between public and private space, and between order and disorder. Haussmann did not see the need to completely destroy chaotic old neighborhoods. Instead, he created a flexible system - one in which boulevards reflected a graceful new look, while old neighborhoods like Saint-Severin, characterized by narrow streets and tangled low housing, remain to this day as fragments of the old city. Similarly, bourgeois apartments present an elegant facade to the public, while the functionality and disorder that come with day-to-day life are relegated to indoor courtyards.

    That same flexibility has also allowed Paris to maintain its integrity as the types of structures within the city have changed. A 17th-century arc de triomphe that once towered over its neighborhood is now overshadowed by apartment buildings. Regulations allowing increases in height above the cornice line, only if they are set back from the lower storeys - have resulted in buildings that have grown by 10 metres over a century without affecting the integrity of the famed Parisian streetscapes.

    For well over a century, Paris has managed to balance these elements. But over the last few decades, as people retreat from public space into their own interior environments, that careful balance is now threatened.

    Reviews
  • "A fascinating documentary on the urban history of Paris." - Forum Chantier
  • "Stan Neumann's film is extraordinary!" - Nouvel Observateur

    Item no.: KS03210662
    Format: DVD (Black and White)
    Duration: 49 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 1991
    StdBkNo.:
    Price: USD 398.00

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    HOTEL TERMINUS: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF KLAUS BARBIE

    By Marcel Ophuls

    "Making this film was like an intense fight for the survival of memory itself." - Marcel Ophuls

    A brilliant and epic Academy Award-winning examination of the Nazi SS officer Klaus Barbie, the infamous "Butcher of Lyon", HOTEL TERMINUS: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF KLAUS BARBIE weaves together forty years of footage and interviews culled from over 120 hours of discussion with former Nazis, American intelligence officers, South American government officials, victims of Nazi atrocities and witnesses. Barbie, while Gestapo chief in Lyon, tortured and murdered resistance fighters, including Jean Moulin, Jewish men, women and children, and had thousands deported to death camps.

    After the war he was protected by and worked with the U.S. Army and American intelligence officers, and then allowed to hide in Bolivia, where he lived peacefully for 30 years as a business man under the moniker Klaus Altmann. Only in 1987 was he brought to trial in a French courtroom in Lyon for crimes against humanity thanks to the efforts of Serge and Beate Klarsfeld.

    Review
  • "A film of transcendent greatness, probity and resonances you'll never forget." - Jay Carr, The Boston Globe

    Item no.: TR03210615
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 267 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 1988
    StdBkNo.:
    Price: USD 398.00

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    MIDDLETOWN

    By Peter Davis

    Inspired by the studies of Robert and Helen Lynd in 1929 and 1935, this classic six-part series by Academy Award and Emmy winner Peter Davis (HEARTS AND MINDS) explores both the continuity and the change embodied in the people and institutions of one Midwestern community: Muncie, Indiana.

    The Campaign - Directed by Tom Cohen - A mayoral race in middle America.

    Focusing on a mayoral race in Muncie, Indiana, THE CAMPAIGN follows closely the personalities, strategies, and pressures of an American political contest. In particular, it examines the sharply contrasting styles and backgrounds of the Democratic and Republican candidates.

    The Big Game - Directed by E. J. Vaughn - The role of competitive sports, in this case basketball, in the community, for the coaches, and, most of all, for the players themselves.

    As Muncie Central and Anderson High prepare to meet for the annual basketball game, a game charged with the spirit of long-established rivalry, THE BIG GAME examines what this competition, and the sport itself, means to the community, the coaches, and most of all to the players themselves.

    Community of Praise - Directed by Richard Leacock and Marisa Silver - Examines faith working in the lives of a fundamentalist family.

    COMMUNITY OF PRAISE examines faith at work in the lives of a family. Their fundamentalist beliefs shape their encounters with the emergencies and the ordinary problems of daily life.

    Family Business - Directed by Tom Cohen - A prototypical American entrepreneur struggles to make his pizza business go.

    Howie Snyder is an archetype: a retired Marine colonel in his mid 40s, he is a prototypical American entrepreneur struggling to make his business go.

    Howie's Shakey's Pizza franchise in Muncie, Indiana employs his whole family: wife, nine children, and Howie himself. He's the representative of the American Dream: the chance to invest long hours and hard work in exchange for financial security for oneself and family. To watch Howie Snyder as he dickers for better treatment by the Shakey's chain, as he seeks additional financing to stave off looming bankruptcy, and as he sits morosely counting an evening's disappointing receipts is to watch America at work. And to see Howie's family rally around him in the hour of his greatest need is a heartwarming experience.

    FAMILY BUSINESS will appeal to business groups as well as small business owners. Franchising organizations will find it valuable as a case study. Schools will find it appealing as a study of a family in challenge. And everyone will find the drama of daily life compelling.

    Second Time Around - Directed by Peter Davis and John Lindley - The complexities of contemporary American marriage.

    Focusing on the wedding arrangements of David and Elaine, each of whom is a divorcee, SECOND TIME AROUND presents the complexities of contemporary marriage in the United States.

    Seventeen - Directed by Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreines - High school seniors hurtling toward maturity experience joy, despair, and an aggravated sense of urgency.

    In their final year at Muncie's Southside High School, a group of seniors hurtles toward maturity with a combination of joy, despair, and an aggravated sense of urgency. They are also learning a great deal about life, both in and out of school, and not what school officials think they are teaching.

    Item no.: JN03210652
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 457 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 1982
    StdBkNo.:
    Price: USD 398.00

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    HENRY MILLER

    Henry Miller's literary works rely heavily on the autobiographical and the confessional. So it should come as no surprise that the 77-year-old writer offers an intimate and revealing look at his life and work during this wide-ranging conversation, which originally aired on Quebec television in 1969.

    Interviewed by the perceptive Fernand Seguin (who repeatedly lights his guest's cigarettes), Miller speaks frankly about the suicidal despair that led him to write Tropic of Cancer, his "disgust" with readers who bought the Tropic novels for their pornographic value, and his years of poverty - begging from friends, strangers, and even the mailman.

    For a man whose work helped change the definition of obscenity, Miller is remarkably phlegmatic on the subject, saying that the question "doesn't interest me in the least." Instead, he prefers to judge writing purely on its aesthetic merits.

    Asked about people he admires, Miller points to clowns, stand-up comics and "hobos." But he also discusses the writers he admires, particularly Blaise Cendrars, Jean Giono, Celine, and British adventure writer Rider Haggard (a low-brow choice that dismayed British critics).

    Miller speaks in enthusiastic but accented French, embracing contradiction throughout the interview. He believes America is on the brink of destruction, but enjoys his heated swimming pool and other material comforts. He is a hero in the fight against censorship who thinks society has become too permissive.

    Seated on a stage, in front of a screen projecting images that offer their own commentary on the conversation, Miller appears relaxed, comfortable with himself, and open to the possibilities of the future. The purpose of life, he says, is to become our true selves over time.

    Clearly, he is a man who has changed since he wrote Tropic of Cancer because, as he puts it, "The only thing left was to write a book about my utter failure and the world falling to pieces around me... to set down my despair on paper."

    Item no.: ZA03100610
    Format: DVD (Black and White)
    Duration: 58 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 1969
    StdBkNo.:
    Price: USD 375.00

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    JACK KEROUAC

    Hosted by Fernand Seguin

    Largely overlooked in popular and critical assessments of Jack Kerouac's work is how intimately it is connected to his French-Canadian background and his childhood in Lowell, Massachusetts.

    Kerouac grew up among Canadian ex-pats, learning English only at age six. And in this conversation with Fernand Seguin, which first aired on Quebec's premiere talk show Le sel de la semaine, in 1967, the 45-year-old Kerouac speaks in the down-home French of his youth, highlighting the importance of his roots.

    Also part of the charm of Le sel de la semaine: JACK KEROUAC is the era it evokes: one in which talk-show guests and audience smoke, men wear suits, women have beehive hairdos, and a quiet jazz combo is de rigueur.

    Over the course of a half hour, he discusses the origin of the word "beat," and its links to jazz, poverty and spirituality, as well as the famed spontaneous writing technique he developed for On the Road, and his views on contemporary youth.

    But the theme the conversation returns to most is childhood and family. During one segment, Kerouac watches as film footage from Lowell unspools. We see contemporaries and former neighbors who recall his intellectual and athletic abilities, and who clearly take pride in his success.

    During the program Kerouac seems at times troubled and restless, occasionally searching for words. But he is also charming - cracking jokes, singing a snippet of an old folk song, and saying he recently moved back to Lowell because, "I know all the cops there." This DVD provides a rare opportunity to meet an informal and unguarded Kerouac.

    Reviews
  • "Fascinating ... viewers get a rare glimpse of Kerouac speaking the language he grew up learning. The interview is very evocative of the time. Highly Recommended!" - Tom Ipri, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Educational Media Reviews Online

    Item no.: KJ03210801
    Format: DVD (Color)
    Duration: 30 minutes
    Audience:
    Copyright: 1967
    StdBkNo.:
    Price: USD 248.00

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