Four stories set between the 60s and the 70s in Italy. Four personal female adventures crossing the path of Italian history, the struggle for women rights, the liberation of the body, in a country without memory.
Social & External
In 1971, graduate student Gloria Orenstein received a call from Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington that sparked a lifelong journey into art, ecofeminism and shamanism. This short film uses art, animation and storytelling to celebrate this wild adventure. Now more than 40 years later, award-winning Dr. Gloria Feman Orenstein is a feminist art critic and pioneer scholar of women in Surrealism and ecofeminism in the arts. Her delightful tale brings alive an often unseen history of women in the arts.
William Friedkin attends an exorcism with Father Gabriele Amorth, as he treats an Italian woman named Cristina for the ninth time. Prior to filming, Cristina had purportedly been experiencing behavioural changes and “fits” that could not be explained by psychiatry, and which became worse during Christian holidays.
Directed by the Archbishop of Concepción, Monsignor Fernando Chomali, the documentary ‘Miércoles 15.30, memorias de una ausencia’ addresses the stories of loss, pain, and the search for justice of the Association of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees of Concepción. The Association, created under the auspices of the Archbishopric of Concepción and the Human Rights Pastoral during the dictatorship, has been working and meeting for more than 40 years to find their relatives.
2003 documentary film produced by Oliver Stone for the HBO series America Undercover about the conflict in occupied Palestine. He speaks with Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, former prime ministers of Israel, Yasser Arafat, late president of the Palestinian National Authority, and various Palestinian activists resisting the oppression of the zionist regime.
Considered one of Canada's most important women artists of the second half of the 20th century, Joyce Wieland's art embodies the essence of her homeland, feminism, and ecology. Artist on Fire: Joyce Wieland captures the vibrant spirit of this painter, collagist, quilt maker, and filmmaker. In the early '70s, Wieland was involved in filmmaking, producing movies with a political message. In her 30-year career, she worked in a variety of mediums, including cloth, pastels, colored pencil, oils, bronze, and watercolor. Her works and her influence are examined in this detailed video portrait.
Examines the 40-year evolution of gender inequality and discrimination in the workplace since the 1980 release of the comedy film “9 to 5” starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Dabney Coleman.
Every summer on Palermo's Mondello beach, over 1,000 cabins are built in preparation of the Ferragosto holiday. Centered around a family who goes into debt, three women holding onto the feeling of youth, and a politician seeking votes -- a vanity fair of beachgoers hiding behind the memory of a social status that the economic crisis of recent years has compromised.
Once upon a time, the Venezuelan village of Congo Mirador was prosperous, alive with fisherman and poets. Now it is decaying and disintegrating—a small but prophetic reflection of Venezuela itself.
Amanda Knox served four years in an Italian prison for the murder of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in Perugia in 2007, always insisting on her innocence. In 2011, she was acquitted on the basis of DNA evidence but prosecutors successfully appealed and her acquittal was struck down. In 2014 she was again found guilty in absentia after a retrial and sentenced to 28 years and six months in jail. The saga came to and end when Italy's highest court overturned the convictions of Ms Knox and her former boyfriend, Italian student Raffaele Sollecito in March 2015. Known burglar Rudy Guede was arrested a short time later following the discovery of his bloodstained fingerprints on Kercher's possessions. He was later found guilty of murder in a fast-track trial and is currently (as of 2019) serving a 16-year prison sentence.
In the wilderness of the Bucharest Delta, nine children and their parents lived in perfect harmony with nature for 20 years – until they are chased out and forced to adapt to life in the big city.
Focuses on sexual equality in the Black community.
The year 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of one on the most important events in Western civilization: the birth of an idea that continues to shape the life of every American today. In 1517, power was in the hands of the few, thought was controlled by the chosen, and common people lived lives without hope. On October 31 of that year, a penniless monk named Martin Luther sparked the revolution that would change everything. He had no army. In fact, he preached nonviolence so powerfully that — 400 years later — Michael King would change his name to Martin Luther King to show solidarity with the original movement. This movement, the Protestant Reformation, changed Western culture at its core, sparking the drive toward individualism, freedom of religion, women's rights, separation of church and state, and even free public education. Without the Reformation, there would have been no pilgrims, no Puritans, and no America in the way we know it.
Janette Bertrand, 96, is at the time of the balance sheets. Where are the women, where is the fight for gender equality? An hour of History with a capital H and Love with a capital A, to not forget anything and, above all, never stop moving forward.
After the World War I, Mussolini's perspective on life is severely altered; once a willful socialist reformer, now obsessed with the idea of power, he founds the National Fascist Party in 1921 and assumes political power in 1922, becoming the Duce, dictator of Italy. His success encourages Hitler to take power in Germany in 1933, opening the dark road to World War II. (Originally released as a two-part miniseries. Includes colorized archival footage.)
After opening a chest of memories, a girl narrates events from chilean dictatorship and the murder of Nadia Fuentes Concha through the figure of bread, which is present in chilean everyday life.
As the peaceful and determined Hirak movement gathers momentum and hopes for profound political change sweep across Algeria, women are combining femininity and feminism in the past, present, and future.
Exploring the concept of the Ecology of Emotions, this musical film portrays an inner journey through the secret garden of creativity put into frame by the nature of Iceland. Hidden Eden is a metaphor for our inner secret garden of creativity. This project bloomed during an art residency in Iceland, sparked by conversations around our shared philosophies on voice and emotional connection. The nature of Iceland inspired us to make the connection on how the landscape reflects the emotional states of creativity and how it helps manage the homeostasis of our inner emotional landscapes. This exchange between emotion and the landscape opens a space for healing. Creativity provides us with the tools to access a garden of our authentic being, nourishing and balancing us. Allowing ourselves to explore the spectrum of our emotions through the lens of our relationship with the Earth invites others to do the same. The creative process can affect our well being and is a key to human evolution.
“It ain’t easy…being green” is the favorite expression of Stormé DeLarverie, a woman whose life flouted prescriptions of gender and race. During the 1950s and '60s she toured the black theater circuit as a mistress of ceremonies and the sole male impersonator of the legendary Jewel Box Revue, America’s first integrated female impersonation show and forerunner of La Cage aux Folles.
Film which travels inside the singular world of one of Italy's most famous fashion designers, Valentino Garavani, documenting the colourful and dramatic closing act of his celebrated career and capturing the end of an era in global fashion. However, at the heart of the film is a love story - the unique relationship between Valentino and his business partner and companion of 50 years, Giancarlo Giammetti. Capturing intimate moments in the lives of two of Italy's richest and most famous men, the film lifts the curtain on the final act of a nearly 50-year reign at the top of the glamorous and fiercely competitive world of fashion. (Storyville)
In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.
Naples, Trajan's district. Initially it was intended for the inhabitants of the shantytowns on the seafront of Naples, who were homeless after the war. But it soon became a kind of ghetto. Alessandro and Pietro are two teenagers who film with an iPhone to tell their difficult neighborhood, their daily life, the friendship that binds them.
In the early-morning hours of July 23, 2007, in Cheshire, Conn., ex-convicts Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky broke into the family home of William Petit, his wife, Jennifer, and their daughters, Michaela, 11, and Hayley, 17. Dr. Petit was beaten and tied to a pole in the basement. The three women were bound in their bedrooms while the men ransacked the house. The brutal ordeal continued throughout the morning, ending with rape, arson and a horrific triple homicide.
After the India of Varanasi’s boatmen, the American desert of the dropouts, and the Mexico of the killers of drugtrade, Gianfranco Rosi has decided to tell the tale of a part of his own country, roaming and filming for over two years in a minivan on Rome’s giant ring road—the Grande Raccordo Anulare, or GRA—to discover the invisible worlds and possible futures harbored in this area of constant turmoil. Elusive characters and fleeting apparitions emerge from the background of the winding zone: a nobleman from the Piemonte region and his college student daughter sharing a one-room efficiency in a modern apartment building along the GRA.
The life of a dying young man at the short age of only forty-one after playing the lead in Il postino. He was a brilliant stage actor before becoming an astonishing film director.
A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice– whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.
14-year-old Laura Dekker sets out on a two-year voyage in pursuit of her dream to become the youngest person ever to sail around the world alone.
The life of Mr. Spock, as well as that of Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played him for almost fifty years, written and directed by his son: Adam.
Dick Proenneke retired at age 50 in 1967 and decided to build his own cabin in the wilderness at the base of the Aleutian Peninsula, in what is now Lake Clark National Park. Using color footage he shot himself, Proenneke traces how he came to this remote area, selected a homestead site and built his log cabin completely by himself. The documentary covers his first year in-country, showing his day-to-day activities and the passing of the seasons as he sought to scratch out a living alone in the wilderness.
Using the book 'Fragments', which collects Marilyn Monroe's poems, notes and letters, and with participation from the Arthur Miller and Truman Capote estates who have contributed more material, each of the actresses will embody the legend at various stages in her life.
This character-driven film considers the evolving sex trafficking landscape as seen by the main players: the exploited, the pimps, the johns that fuel the business, and the cops who fight to stop it.
A nostalgic journey with Aldo, Giovanni, and Giacomo, retracing thirty years of friendship and success in the world of Italian comedy, including personal memories and unforgettable moments that made them icons of laughter.
A documentary about the life and films of director John Ford.
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
Various MGM stars from yesterday present their favorite musical moments from the studio's 50 year history.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg now 84, and still inspired by the lawyers who defended free speech during the Red Scare, Ginsburg refuses to relinquish her passionate duty, steadily fighting for equal rights for all citizens under the law. Through intimate interviews and unprecedented access to Ginsburg’s life outside the court, RBG tells the electric story of Ginsburg’s consuming love affairs with both the Constitution and her beloved husband Marty—and of a life’s work that led her to become an icon of justice in the highest court in the land.
Martin Scorsese's documentary intertwines footage from The Band's incredible farewell tour with probing backstage interviews and featured performances by Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, and other rock legends.
A documentary examining the decade of the 1970s as a turning point in American cinema. Some of today's best filmmakers interview the influential directors of that time.
Pier Paolo Pasolini sets out to interview Italians about sex, apparently their least favorite thing to talk about in public: he asks children if they know where babies come from; asks old and young women if they support gender equality; asks both sexes if a woman's virginity still matters, what do they think of homosexuality, if divorce should be legal, or if they support the recent abolition of brothels. He interviews blue-collar workers, intellectuals, college students, rural farmers, the bourgeoisie, and every other kind of people, painting a vivid portrait of a rapidly-industrializing Italy, hanging between modernity and tradition — toward both of which Pasolini shows equal distrust.