Faced with a documentary film that included an interview with a young girl forced into prostitution, Michael Kranz asked himself the apparently banal question of “what can be done?” He travelled to Bangladesh and began to search for the girl. A film that is both self-critical and critical of society about the desire to at least do something and not to simply and passively give in to the injustices in this world.
The scrappy 18-year-old daughter of a small-town prostitute storms the bastion of the rich and powerful in this drama set in the elite world of horse trials and show jumping. Sheer talent and an unbreakable bond with a temperamental thoroughbred may not be enough for Chara, who aspires to rise from stable hand to champion.. I
A young mother and her twin sons move into a rural house that's marked for death.
A documentary film depicting five intimate portraits of migrants who fled their country of origin to seek refuge in France and find a space of freedom where they can fully experience their sexuality and their sexual identity: Giovanna, woman transgender of Colombian origin, Roman, Russian transgender man, Cate, Ugandan lesbian mother, Yi Chen, young Chinese gay man…
20 years after a horrific accident during a small town school play, students at the school resurrect the failed show in a misguided attempt to honor the anniversary of the tragedy - but soon discover that some things are better left alone.
The children are invited by a Brazilian music star to one of his shows. But the trip turns into a nightmare when the villains Gonzales and Gonzalito, recently released from prison, decide to kidnap Maria Joaquina.
Russia, January 25, 1725. "Give it all...". The emperor's weakening hand was able to write in his will only these two short incomprehensible words that kept Russia in a bloody struggle for the crown for a century.
The Making-of James Cameron's Avatar. It shows interesting parts of the work on the set.
is a creative documentary-fiction film and a film that might expand your sense of reality. It is the story about a man who enters the virtual world Second Life to pursue his personal dreams and ambitions. His journey into cyberspace becomes a magic learning experience, which gradually opens the gates to a much larger reality.
Three friends who live in Resende, in the interior of Rio de Janeiro, and plan a trip in Babette's Beetle convertible to celebrate their 15 years of friendship and attend the closing show of the tour of a great pop star, who studied with them as a teenager. and today he is the most famous young singer in Brazil.
Set in the Cold War era of the 1950's, Relations between the United States and Russia are tense. Senator Joseph McCarthy has many Americans convinced that the Communists have infiltrated society. Paranoia runs rampant, as decent Americans lose their jobs on suspicion alone. Floyd Woods served as one of the FBl's top Special Agents until he was accused of having Communist sympathies. Floyd lost his job despite lack of evidence to support these claims. He now works as a small time insurance investigator, who's flown into the small town of Sherrill, NY to investigate a life insurance claim, only to find himself distracted by the locals' odd behavior.
Set in a world where love is deemed illegal and can be eradicated with a special procedure. With 95 days to go until her scheduled treatment, Lena Holoway does the unthinkable, she falls in love.
Lu has a perfect life. Or so she pretends to have. She meets the handsome, short-tempered Argentinian, Diego, who is on a visit to Mexico, and she is confident to get him head over heels in love with her. In order to win a wager with her friends, her life will take a turn when she does the impossible to win him over, including taking a trip to Argentina to look for him.
When Scott and Kate Johansen’s daughter gets into the college of her dreams it’s cause for celebration. That is, until Scott and Kate learn that the scholarship they were counting on didn’t come through, and they’re now on the hook for tuition they can’t begin to afford. With the help of their friend and neighbor Frank also in need of a major payday they decide to open an illegal casino in his suburban house, risking everything together on a Vegas-style bacchanal where money flows, inhibitions are checked at the door, and all bets are off.
A student grieving the loss of her parents joins an extracurricular club and becomes entangled in a romance with a classmate who has secrets.
In today's climate debate, there is only one factor that cannot be calculated in climate models - humans. How can we nevertheless understand our role in the climate system and manage the crisis? Climate change is a complex global problem. Increasingly extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and more difficult living conditions - including for us humans - are already the order of the day. Global society has never faced such a complex challenge. For young people in particular, the frightening climate scenarios will be a reality in the future. For the global south, it is already today. To overcome this crisis, different perspectives are needed. "THE UNPREDICTABLE FACTOR" goes back to the origins of the German environmental movement, accompanies today's activists in the Rhineland in their fight against the coal industry and gives a voice to scientists from climate research, ethnology and psychology.
Documentary depicting the lives of child prostitutes in the red light district of Songachi, Calcutta. Director Zana Briski went to photograph the prostitutes when she met and became friends with their children. Briski began giving photography lessons to the children and became aware that their photography might be a way for them to lead better lives.
A film about the first benefit rock concert when major musicians performed to raise relief funds for the poor of Bangladesh. The Concert for Bangladesh was a pair of benefit concerts organised by former Beatles guitarist George Harrison and Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar. The shows were held at 2:30 and 8:00 pm on Sunday, 1 August 1971, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, to raise international awareness of, and fund relief for refugees from East Pakistan, following the Bangladesh Liberation War-related genocide.
The film documents modern slave trade through a number of African countries, under dictatorship rule. The filming was conducted both in public places, and sometimes with the use of hidden cameras, for high impact scenes of nudity, sex, and violence - and a few surprises, as slaves made out of peregrins to Asia, and slave traders paid in traveller checks.
In Bangkok, Thailand, women punch a clock and wait for clients in a brightly lit glass box; in the red-light district of Faridpur, Bangladesh, a madam haggles over the price of a teenage girl; and in the border town of Reynosa, Mexico, crack-addicted women pray to a deity named Lady Death.
A journalistic investigation, built not on rumors and assumptions, but on direct evidence, revealing the true mechanisms of podium coronations. Hidden camera footage of negotiations with the owners of the largest national beauty contests and an attempt to answer the question of why these people are not yet in prison. Famous people on the jury are not a guarantee of fair judging. Irrefutable evidence of the corruption of the so-called “stars” who elect the next Miss and Mrs. The collection and subsequent theft of funds for charity is a side business of the owners of fraudulent shows. What actually awaits the titled Misses after purchasing the prize? And what do children's beauty pageants turn out to be like for young participants?
Since the fall of the Iron Curtain an estimated four million children have found themselves living on the streets in the former countries of the Soviet Union. In the streets of Moscow alone there are over 30,000 surviving in this manner at the present time. The makers of the documentary film concentrated on a community of homeless children living hand to mouth in the Moscow train station Leningradsky. Eight-year-old Sasha, eleven-year-old Kristina, thirteen-year-old Misha and ten-year-old Andrej all dream of living in a communal home. They spend winter nights trying to stay warm by huddling together on hot water pipes and most of their days are spent begging. Andrej has found himself here because of disagreements with his family. Kristina was driven into this way of life by the hatred of her stepmother and twelve-year-old Roma by the regular beatings he received from his constantly drunk father. "When it is worst, we try to make money for food by prostitution," admits ...
Japan’s obsession with cutesy culture has taken a dark turn, with schoolgirls now offering themselves for “walking dates” with adult men. Last year the US State Department, in its annual report on human trafficking, flagged so-called joshi-kosei osanpo dates (Japanese for “high school walking”) as fronts for commercial sex run by sophisticated criminal networks.
This is a film which challenges our notions of child labor. It peeks into a world where the concept of childhood as we know it has no meaning, where children support their parents, and where work is just another part of growing up. This is Dhaka, Bangladesh. Following several children over a period of six years, A KIND OF CHILDHOOD is an attempt to focus on the realities of child labor, with real children, their struggles and dreams.
Lukas Moodysson's acclaimed film Lilja 4-ever, seen by 100,000's of moviegoers is based on a real life story. The film's Lily was in fact called Danguole Rasalaites and came from Lithuania to Sweden when she was 16 years old. She was stripped of her passport and held captive in an apartment in Malmö where she was forced into prostitution.
Off the coast of Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal is a tiny 'brothel island' populated by women forced to sell their bodies to men who arrive by the boatload. Each of the women came to inhabit the 100m long and 10m wide piece of land for different reasons, whether through a sister, the need for money, or in search of love and affection, but for all of them it is a life tougher than they could have imagined. Deepening their troubles is the island's existence at the frontline of climate change, and with the increase of cyclones, floods and soil erosion the prospect of losing their homes, and the island itself, is closer than ever. Beautifully shot and subverting expectation, Bad Weather is a documentary that carves out a message of hope in extreme adversity.
Three working-class teenage girls in a port city in Bangladesh escape daily hardships and stifling family lives by riding waves on their surfboards and grabbing hold of the fleeting and thrilling sense of freedom that brings.
A documentary following an Estonian fashion designer Reet Aus on a global tour to explore the origin process and the environmental footprints of today's fast paced fashion industry. On the road the mission takes an unexpected turn towards trying to introduce her "upcycling" inspired product line to some of the major fashion retailers to increase awareness of the massive resource waste built into the current product lifecycle.
The wildlife and cultures of southern Asia have been shaped by one of the greatest phenomena on Earth: the mighty monsoon winds that sweep across this vast region, turning drought into deluge. All life – human and animal – is dominated by this rampaging weather system. From the northern shores of Australia to the highest peaks of the Himalayas and the wind-blown deserts of northern India to the lush equatorial forests of Borneo, this series makes an exhilarating journey through the lands of the monsoon. Along the way, it offers a taste of the variety and colour of the different regions’ most extraordinary wildlife and cultures and the way they cope with the tumultuous weather. This is the story of a relationship between humans and nature that has grown across thousands of years – all living in the shadow of the monsoon.
An epic investigation into countless murders in Mexico. Presented in chapters, the film unfolds methodically through unsettling testimonials, sketching a portrait of an entire country transformed into a gigantic mass grave thanks to a climate of impunity established by both criminal gangs and state authorities.
Daulatdia is an entire village in Bangladesh dedicated to prostitution. Every day, 1,600 trafficked, enslaved and abandoned women and girls sell themselves for £2 a time. In the midst of the trade live 300 children, many born in the village. Some will be groomed to be the future of the business like their mothers and grandmothers. With education programmes and support provided by Save The Children, a few may find their way out.
When French writer Marguerite Duras (1914-96) published her novel The Sea Wall in 1950, she came very close to winning the prestigious Prix Goncourt. Meanwhile, in Indochina, France was suffering its first military defeats in its war against the Việt Minh, the rebel movement for independence.
Documentary about the politician Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
March 25th 1971, a horrific 'Genocide' was unleashed on the unarmed civilians of East Pakistan. This was done by their own Pakistani Army. An estimated 3 million people were killed, 10 million people were displaced to India as refugees and 400,000 women and girls were raped by the Pakistani soldiers. But Pakistan was not alone in perpetrating this violence. The then-American president and the National Security Advisor were supporting the Pakistani dictator. The cold war triggered this geopolitical escalation. Finally, India pressurized by the 10 million refugees within its borders, went to war with Pakistan. and joining forces with the local rebels, the Mukti Bahini, helped liberate Bangladesh. Cradled in the blood of innocents, a new nation was born in the closing days of 1971. "Bay of Blood", brings this 50-odd-year-old story to life.
Using film footage shot by the Genevese film director, Fernand Reymond, in Bangladesh in 1972, this documentary film describes the cyclone prevention programme drawn up by the governmental authorities and the League of Red Cross Societies. It particularly depicts the cyclone warning system set up to protect the population. (League Film Library Catalogue Supplement No. 2, p. 39)