In 1999, 11-year-old Nisha Platzer lost her older brother, Josh, to suicide. Twenty years later, her search for a specialized medical treatment leads her to the door of someone who was once exceptionally close to Josh. And so it is that she finally has the chance to truly know her brother through his chosen family. Captured over five years in which synchronicities continually manifested, Platzer’s documentation of these encounters gently asserts that both grieving and healing are meant to be communal experiences.
A young adult's first-hand account of "accidentally becoming human again" after, and with, trauma induced depression. Lo-fi, vulnerable, and uniquely youthful, "The Afterlife" is a melancholic affirmation of life after death.
The Afterlife
0
When Michelle Wong's brother, Philip, committed suicide at the age of 36, she felt that she had to find out why. Her film, Pieces of a Dream, is her attempt to understand her brother's death and to deal with his loss.
Pieces of a Dream: A Story of Gambling
2003
0
In 2011, Maine State Prison launched a pioneering reform program to scale back its use of solitary confinement. Bafta and Emmy-winning film-maker Dan Edge and his co-director Lauren Mucciolo were given unprecedented access to the solitary unit - and filmed there for more than three years. The result is an extraordinary and harrowing portrait of life in solitary - and a unique document of a radical and risky experiment to reform a prison. The US is the world leader in solitary confinement. More than 80,000 American prisoners live in isolation, some have been there for years, even decades. Solitary is proven to cause mental illness, it is expensive, and it is condemned by many as torture. And yet for decades, it has been one of the central planks of the American criminal justice system.
Last Days of Solitary
2017
0
Describing herself as a 'street queen,' Johnson was a legendary fixture in New York City’s gay ghetto and a tireless voice for LGBT pride since the days of Stonewall, who along with fellow trans icon Sylvia Rivera, founded Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), a trans activist group based in the heart of NYC’s Greenwich Village. Her death in 1992 was declared a suicide by the NYPD, but friends never accepted that version of events. Structured as a whodunit, with activist Victoria Cruz cast as detective and audience surrogate, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson celebrates the lasting political legacy of Johnson, while seeking to finally solve the mystery of her unexplained death.
The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson
2017
7
When the 2004 tsunami hit the coast of Sri Lanka, 65-year-old Anton Ambrose's wife and daughter were killed. "In five minutes," he says, "I lost everything." A year later, Anton returns to Sri Lanka. With him is his nephew, award-winning filmmaker Rohan Fernando. A Tamil, Anton moved to California in the 1970s and became a very successful gynecologist. His daughter, Orlantha, made the opposite journey, returning to Sri Lanka where she ran a non-profit group that gave underprivileged children free violin lessons. Blood and Water is the story of one man's search for meaning in the face of overwhelming loss, but it is also filled with improbable characters, unintentional comedy and situational ironies.
Blood and Water
2007
0
In just sixty years, South Korea went from being one of the poorest countries on the Asian continent to having the 12th largest economy in the entire world. Every year, it is measured that Korean students have some of the highest test scores and a higher rate of acceptance into Ivy League schools compared to all other nations. But on the flip side, South Korea also has one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world, the highest gender pay gap of all developed countries, and the highest plastic surgery rate per capita. Always expected to receive top scores and constantly bombarded by media and messages that seem to demand nothing short of visual “perfection,” how do these individuals come to accept and learn to love themselves as they are?
Permission to Exist
2020
0
A ritual of grids, reflections and chasms; a complete state of entropy; a space that devours itself; a vertigo that destroys the gravity of the Earth; a trap that captures us inside the voids of the screen of light: «That blank arena wherein converge at once the hundred spaces» (Hollis Frampton).
Grid
2021
6
Jean-Luc Godard is synonymous with cinema. With the release of Breathless in 1960, he established himself overnight as a cinematic rebel and symbol for the era's progressive and anti-war youth. Sixty-two years and 140 films later, Godard is among the most renowned artists of all time, taught in every film school yet still shrouded in mystery. One of the founders of the French New Wave, political agitator, revolutionary misanthrope, film theorist and critic, the list of his descriptors goes on and on. Godard Cinema offers an opportunity for film lovers to look back at his career and the subjects and themes that obsessed him, while paying tribute to the ineffable essence of the most revered French director of all time.
Godard, seul le cinéma
2023
6
A feature documentary about Kansas City, as its people tell us how they got through the pandemic and look back at what they lost.
The City of Dried Fountains
0
The Bridge is a controversial documentary that shows people jumping to their death from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco - the world's most popular suicide destination. Interviews with the victims' loved ones describe their lives and mental health.
The Bridge
2006
6
A group of young architects, confined to a forest in Barcelona during the COVID crisis, explore the problems generated by the ambition of wanting to be completely self-sufficient.
Valldaura: A Quarantine Cabin
2022
6
The story of a real life upcoming national champion of Table tennis, Connor Green. Talking about his journey and his family along the way.
Red Black Green
2023
0
Traces the life and mental illness of New York artist and photographer Ruth Litoff, and her sister's struggle to come to terms with her tragic suicide.
32 Pills: My Sister's Suicide
2017
8
In 1999, Innu community members who, 40 years previously, had been forcibly relocated from their remote northern region of Labrador to established settlements in the province, return to Hebron to reminisce and reckon with the destructive impact the relocation had on their traditional ways of life and Indigenous identity. This film serves as a companion piece to Carol Brice Bennett’s book "IkKaumajannik Piusivinnik – Reconciling With Memories," and stands as the only known audio-visual document of the reunion of a resettled community in Newfoundland & Labrador.
Forever in Our Hearts: Memories of the Hebron Relocation
2001
0
James Andersen: Over 50 Years of Taking Pictures is a culmination of photos, films that are brought to life with Andersen's own words. The James Andersen collection documents over 50 years of community life in and around Makkovik, Labrador. The stories that accompany "Uncle Jim's" work explain why for over 50 years he has never been without a camera as he documented daily rituals and life. Andersen does not shy away from telling these stories but shares them with conviction and with a voice that honours each event's importance; the church being rebuilt, fish being caught, and stories of sickness and death are each told with the same reverence.
James Andersen: Over 50 Years of Taking Pictures
2006
0
In Papua New Guinea, pig tusks and shell money are currencies which can buy most things. Henry Tokubak’s dream is to create the first bank where traditional money counts as legal tender.
Pig Tusks and Paper Money
1999
0
In the midst of the chaos of México City, a group of eight bachelor millennials who call themselves ´The Hermits´, open the doors to their tiny apartments in the historic Ermita Building, in the yet-to-be gentrified neighborhood of Tacubaya, and share their life experiences in a time when precarity changes the way in which we love, feel and relate to each other. As we explore the homes of these eight neighbors, we also witness their personalities intersect in a Whatsapp chat, a virtual space that functions as a supporting system that helps them face the adversities that living alone in this city brings.
Ermitaños
2019
2
Traces the lives of the Hartings, a blind Montreal family of three who make their living singing in the city's subway stations. The Hartings lost their only sighted child Hassan in a tragic drowning accident, and have since turned to the teachings of Russian mystic Grigori Grabovoi, hoping to resurrect their son. Resurrecting Hassan is an exploration of this family's legacy of grief, tragedy and abuse; the film will follow them on their path to redemption.
Resurrecting Hassan
2017
6
A couple from North Preston, Nova Scotia plan an elaborate wedding with dozens of bridesmaids.
I Made a Vow
2003
0
After turning his life around, Sensei EJ creates Warriors Karate Academy in the basement of Greater Glory Ministries in Columbus, Ohio. A summer school is created and the school quickly grows outside of the church and becomes involved in the community.
EJs Warriors: The Documentary
0