Video Blues

Florida, Man(en)

Florida, Man is a "mostly real" faux documentary exploring filmmaker Evan Jordan's haunted past and future possibilities - shot on location in his hometown and featuring a roster of extended family, friends, and other colorful characters from the American South.

504(fr)

Man of War: A Journey With My Grandfather(en)

A young filmmaker accompanies his grandfather– a veteran of the Vietnam War– to Fairbanks, to dedicate his unit flag to a new generation of helicopter pilots.

Lenin kam nur bis Lüdenscheid - Meine kleine deutsche Revolution(de)

The free, almost naive view from the perspective of a child puts the "68ers" in a new, illuminating light in the anniversary year 2008. The film is a provocative reckoning with the ideological upbringing that seemed so progressive and yet was suffocated by the children's desire to finally grow up. With an ironic eye and a feuilletonistic style, author Richard David Precht and Cologne documentary film director André Schäfer trace a childhood in the West German provinces - and place the major events of those years in completely different, smaller and very private contexts.

Up the Yangtze(zh)

At the edge of the Yangtze River, not far from the Three Gorges Dam, young men and women take up employment on a cruise ship, where they confront rising waters and a radically changing China.

Marilyn, Her Final Secret(fr)

Thanks to DNA, this documentary establishes the identity of Marilyn's biological father, thus revealing her new paternal family, 60 years after the icon's death.

BORIS(en)

Boris was a Ukrainian-Canadian mountaineer whose love for mountains was deeply spiritual. Now, his family must face their first expedition without him as they take his ashes to Patagonia – a place he considered Heaven on Earth. A contrast of laughter and tears, BORIS is a story about finding meaning after loss, and the power of nature to heal and unite us.

Coming and Going(en)

Abroad at the time of her death, a grandson returns to revisit the house of his late grandmother, now occupied by another family. A reflection on the love for a home where one grew up and yet made by a grandmother missing another life, in another house, in another country.

Lost in the Bewilderness(en)

Lost in the Bewilderness is a feature-length documentary about the filmmaker’s cousin Lucas, kidnapped at age five from his native Greece, and found on the eve of his 16th birthday in the US. This story of international parental abduction, filmed for over twenty years, chronicles Lucas’s journey of growth and self-discovery, and culminates with Lucas becoming a father himself. Lost in the Bewilderness is not only a detective story but also a lyrical meditation on childhood, lost and found, and an exploration of how the themes of ancient Greek myth and tragedy, with the family at their center, are still very much alive in the modern world.

Maria and the Lost Movie(ca)

The pianist Miguel Ángel Lozano embarks on a personal and artistic journey with the purpose of reconstructing the life of his grandmother, Maria Forteza (1910-60), singer and pioneer of Spanish sound films.

Man on the Bus(en)

Can a secret change who you are? Mysterious events unfold and reveal how Martha, a Polish holocaust survivor, managed to lead a double life in Australia. The vivacious Jewish artist and doting mother, died without ever revealing her secret. The film follows Martha’s daughter Eve, over a decade, as she unlocks the mystery behind the streets named Eve and Martha. Clues are found in old recordings and Martha’s home movies revealing a mystery man gazing into the lens. Eve’s investigation leads her to the Sobieski castle in the Ukraine, the site of a massacre where her grandmother died, and the Eichmann trial as she explores her parents’ holocaust survival and her father’s heroic escape from a concentration camp. When a ‘doppelgänger’ contacts Eve, her life is forever altered, as she uncovers lies, tracks down her mother’s young lover and reveals the family secret that led her to rewrite her entire life.

The Beaches of Agnès(fr)

Filmmaking icon Agnès Varda, the award-winning director regarded by many as the grandmother of the French new wave, turns the camera on herself with this unique autobiographical documentary. Composed of film excerpts and elaborate dramatic re-creations, Varda's self-portrait recounts the highs and lows of her professional career, the many friendships that affected her life and her longtime marriage to cinematic giant Jacques Demy.

Reason for Seeing: Correspondence I(es)

When she realizes that her grandmother, the woman who raised her, is losing her sight, the director decides to explore the bond that unites them through the episodes of non-vision that these three generations share, the memories of the past, the misunderstandings and the new memories they seek to have in common.

Aranzazú, a memory of ruins(es)

The celebration of a city is held every year and nostalgia is the main guest. Around the city there is nothing but ruins and in the distance, four men walk the streets of a city that was once great.

Stone Street(en)

Stone Street documents the life and experiences of a Trinidadian diaspora family and their enduring connection to the long standing family home in Port of Spain. Through the intersecting journeys of this extended and extensive family, the filmmaker explores themes of home, belonging and identity in a life defined by the fragmentary nature of a migratory Caribbean culture. This experimental documentary combines a lyrical first person voice with a family archive of home made audio visual artifacts, interviews and events. As the documentary explores the fragmentary nature of Caribbean identity, it simultaneously celebrates the fragments of domestic memorializing found in home movies, videos and photographs. Stone Street uses these various forms to evoke the experience of a complex and diverse Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora identity.

Position Among the Stars(id)

Through the eyes of grandmother Rumidjah, a poor old Christian woman living in the slums of Jakarta, we see the economical changing society of Indonesia and the influence of globalization reflected in the life of her juvenile granddaughter Tari and her sons Bakti and Dwi.

Der dritte Bruder(de)

Prince Consorts: In the Shadow of the Crown(de)

No profession, no say, no freedom of expression. Life as a prince consort is not exactly pleasure taxing. No constitution ascribes any function to the husband of a queen. Nowhere does it say what he must or must not do. A life in the shadow of the crown. Can that go well?

Meeting David Wilson(en)

African American filmmaker David A. Wilson decided to look into his family's history during the slave era. The result is this documentary, which provides a unique perspective on the long shadow cast by slavery in America. Wilson travels to North Carolina to visit the plantation where his ancestors once toiled and to meet its current owner -- a white man named David Wilson, whose slave-owning ancestors originally occupied the property.

The Smuggler and Her Charges(fr)

A captivating and personal detective story that uncovers the truth behind the childhood of Michaël Prazan's father, who escaped from Nazi-occupied France in 1942 thanks to the efforts of a female smuggler with mysterious motivations.