Filmed on location at La Plata, Castro’s former guerrilla headquarters- the first time any foreign film crew had been permitted there – the documentary examines the origins of Castro’s revolution, and its ultimate successes and failures. It places U.S.-Cuban relations within the context of history, dating back to the Spanish-American War in 1898. The documentary goes on to paint a canvas of everyday Cuban life. It contrasts the successes of Cuba – medical care, education and housing – with the often repressive political measures implemented by the Castro government. We hear from Cuban artists, State Department officials, exiled writers, and Fidel Castro himself.
Category: Documentary
This travelogue tells the story of Turkey from 200BC, including the attack by the Greeks, Romans, the origination of the first seven religions, the Crusades, the creation of the Turkish State and the modern tourist industry.
In this bold documentary Marie Mandy asks the question: how do women directors film love, desire, and, especially, sexuality? In rare interviews with many of the leading women directors working in the world today, FILMING DESIRE directly engages the sexual politics of cinematographic choice.
A requiem for a Russian peasant woman, Maria Semionovna Voinova. The film is in two chapters. The first chapter consists of an impression of Maria Semionovna, scenes of the colours of summer time: hay–making, bathing in a river, work in the flax fields and a holiday in the Crimea. The second chapter, set nine years later, is in black and white and deals with how Maria Semionovna’s life ended. The mood is one of a sad and elegiac narration.
Beginning with the arrival by canoe of a TV and VCR in their village, The Spirit of TV documents the emotions and thoughts of the Waiãpi as they first encounter their own TV images and those of others. They view a tape from their chief’s first trip to Brasilia to speak to the government, news broadcasts, and videos on other Brazilian native peoples. The tape translates the opinions of individual Waiãpi on the power of images, the diversity of native peoples, and native peoples’ common struggles with federal agents, goldminers, trappers and loggers.
If we split the Spanish word “cadáveres” (corpses) in three parts, we obtain another three different words: “Cada-ver-es”, that can be roughly translated in English as “Every-sight-is”. This experimental documentary follows the life and work of Juan Espada, the man in charge at the morgue of the Medicine Faculty in València, Spain, and deals with our visual taboos, the ones that we evade to watch: madness, solitude, death,… and several more that get portraited during its shocking footage. Shot on 16mm with a budget so low that the filmmaker had to sell his camera to finish post-production.
The World is Watching is a political documentary about the ethical dilemmas of news gathering in the electronic age. Focusing on international journalists in Nicaragua during the negotiations of the Arias Peace Plan in November 1987, the film follows an ABC News crew in the field and their interaction with editors in New York, offering a rare look at how news is reported, shaped, and broadcast.