A collection of stories from the Sex Worker Freedom Festival that took place in Kolkata 2012.
Social & External
The people behind it
Portrait of an actress in constant evolution who, through risk-taking and side steps, has emancipated herself from the overly polished image forged by the Star Wars trilogy to become a talented and committed artist, a recognized ambassador for the feminist cause.
In the documentary, Melanie Spitta accompanies survivors and their children to Auschwitz. The film powerfully illustrates how the horrors of the concentration camps have shaped the survivors and their descendants across decades and generations—and why the victims’ trust in the Gadjé remains broken to this day.
This film recounts the murder of Vincent Chin, an automotive engineer mistaken as Japanese who was slain by an assembly line worker who blamed him for the competition by the Japanese auto makers that were threatening his job. It then recounts how that murderer escaped justice in the court system. Restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation, in association with the Museum of Chinese in America. Restoration funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, with additional support provided by Todd Phillips.
A humorous and provocative examination of one artist's dynamic work and its relevance within the cultural biography of America, documenting one man's journey as he traveled each of the 50 states to ask Americans of all races, shapes and body sizes to take off their clothes and pose in public, before his camera all for the sake of art. Artist Spencer Tunick's subjects are not paid models, but ordinary citizens. The film exposes America's current attitudes towards nudity, sexuality, body image, and all the other baggage that comes up when we take off our clothes.
Based on the memoir of Nicaraguan writer and revolutionary Omar Cabezas, this documentary traces his journey from student activist to guerrilla fighter during the Sandinista revolution.
Documentary about the Radium Dial Company and the aftereffects experienced by its workers from repeated exposure to radioactive paint.
Kaminah and Kusdalini, met as Indonesian political detainees in 1965, when both were on the cusp of adulthood. After being rejected by her hometown, Kaminah went to live with Kusdalini. Since then, they have been inseparable, living together in Surakarta, Central Java. Now, in their 70s, they survive on the kindness of their neighbours, and the crackers that they sell. Growing old hand in hand, You and I charts a delicate moment in time when the pair are faced with the heartbreaking realities of growing old.
“Sardar Gurcharan Singh was the father of studio pottery in India. "Daddyji" as most called him lovingly was very close to my father. I often tagged along to visit his home studio where pottery wheels were lined up under the big neem trees in his old brick house. My father wanted me to make a film on Daddyji, who was then 95. He was afraid that Daddyji's wonderful story would be left untold. He not only introduced studio pottery in India but due to his longevity, mentored many potters. So despite not knowing anything about films, I made the documentary, Imprint in Clay with a classmate of mine, which was mostly funded by my father.”
The story of one woman's mission to defeat cancer and help others do the same.
As Hollywood biographies go, Judy Garland's story is one of the saddest success stories you'll ever hear. The sanitized studio version of her life presented a smiling kid with the big voice, who, alongside Mickey Rooney, just wanted to put on a show. But drugs, overwork, even psychological abuse at the hands of the studio is now part of the Garland legend. But despite the number of Garland books and documentaries, one account has always been missing -- Garland herself never managed to write a memoir. She did make several attempts at an autobiography, often recording stories on a tape recorder. Judy Garland: By Myself (2004), finally fills in the blanks - using Judy's personal recordings to tell the story in her own words.
A Montreal girl takes a disastrous trip inside the porn industry.
Sarah Kanney races motocross, hiding a port wine birthmark under her helmet. Jayne Waithera's mother abandoned her over a genetic condition that makes her a pariah. Enter Rick Guidotti, a top fashion photographer, who will transform the way both women see themselves, irrefutably turning the convention of fashion photography on its head.
Like many Japanese Americans released from WWII internment camps, the young Omori sisters did their best to erase the memories and scars of life under confinement. Fifty years later acclaimed filmmaker Emiko Omori asks her older sister and other detainees to reflect on the personal and political consequences of internment. From the exuberant recollections of a typical teenager, to the simmering rage of citizens forced to sign loyalty oaths, Omori renders a poetic and illuminating picture of a deeply troubling chapter in American history.
Born on Cambodian New Year in a Thai refugee camp, Socheata never knew how she got there. After her birth, the family left the past behind and became American. Her parents hid the story of surviving the Khmer Rouge genocide. In NEW YEAR BABY, she journeys to Cambodia and discovers the truth about her family. She uncovers their painful secrets kept in shame which also reveal great heroism.
A portrait of a dedicated filmmaker who is a charming yet elusive figure in thrall to cinema and the constant perfection of his craft.
An intimate portrait of a Chinese-European couple in New Zealand, and their journey to get a blessing for marriage from traditional Chinese parents. The story that led to the film, My Wedding and Other Secrets.
This heartbreaking documentary depicts the extreme poverty of an African-American family and their Mississippi Delta school district. LaLee's Kin takes us deep into the Mississippi Delta and the intertwined lives of LaLee Wallace, a great-grandmother struggling to hold her world together in the face of dire poverty, and Reggie Barnes, superintendent of the embattled West Tallahatchie School System. The film explores the painful legacy of slavery and sharecropping in the Delta.
The film is a portrayal of Zanele Muholi, a lesbian photographer working in the South African GLBT community. This thin, combative person is already a world-wide famous artist. They define themselves as a "visual activist" in order to highlight their commitment to politics, to communicating ideas and to art. Their work includes: provocative nudes (like a female Mapplethorpe); young Zulu couples, dressed in traditional costumes, embracing each other; a homeless socially excluded lesbian couple; a dignified portrait of Victor Mukasa, the gay human rights leader from Uganda; wonderful shots of Zanele with their white partner. Beautiful and poetic pictures which are "militant" in nature since they condemn homophobia, poverty, and the public and private conflicts of a country divided between tradition and modernity.
An apocalyptic sound of roaring machines incessantly intrudes into the habitats of man and nature. Barren landscapes and deserted villages linger in hypnotic restlessness. A self-destructive system meets resistance.
A documentary concerning the detention of Muslim-Americans in the wake of 9/11.
A first-ever look at the realities of the professional “amateur” porn world and the steady stream of 18-to-19-year old girls entering into it.
Unprecedented access to Muhammad Ali's personal archive of "audio journals" as well as interviews and testimonials from his inner circle of family and friends are used to tell the legend's life story.
Get up close and personal with 16 of the most successful women in the adult film industry as they shed their clothes for an intimate photo shoot with director Deborah Anderson. As questions are asked, personal stories about their lives are revealed, from why they chose the business of sex to how they got into it in the first place. These porn stars have always been discreet about their private lives in the past, yet Anderson has a way of opening up a dialog allowing them to share more than just their naked skin on screen. Their true inner vulnerability is touching, yet the characters they have created are confident and intoxicating. Once you hear their stories, you'll never look at them in the same way again.
A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.
Documentary sequel that offers a close-up look into the personal lives of the legendary porn stars who've survived the test of time and influenced popular culture. Blends rare interviews with erotic clips and additional appearances by Whoopi Goldberg, Steven Soderbergh and a host of adult stars, directors and trendsetters.
The world's greatest pin-up model and cult icon, Bettie Page, recounts the true story of how her free expression overcame government witch-hunts to help launch America's sexual revolution. When she saw the film The Notorious Bettie Page, produced by HBO in 2006, the main person concerned reacted unequivocally: “Lies! Lies!” In a long interview recorded shortly before her death, the woman who entered the collective unconscious as the ultimate pin-up gave her version of events to director Mark Mori. In a gravelly voice, Bettie Page tells her own story and lifts the veil on areas often hidden by images that have made so many men and women fantasize since the 1950s: her abused childhood, an eclipse that lasted forty years, her mental illness. Through testimonies and unpublished archives, this documentary brings back to life a body and a face endlessly declined before our eyes, just as Bettie wanted: “I would like people to remember me as I was in the photos.”
The evolution of adult cinema through the most influential films in history, a journey that begins in the 1970s and ends nowadays. An in-depth analysis of the success of the most prestigious erotic films, their impact on industry and society, and their influence on cinema and contemporary culture.
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.
The life of internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin is told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis.
As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.
Alex Gibney explores the charged issue of pedophilia in the Catholic Church, following a trail from the first known protest against clerical sexual abuse in the United States and all way to the Vatican.
In an intimate and joyful story of love in the face of loss, celebrated poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley find strength—and unexpected hilarity—in what might be their final year together.
Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.
In 1977, a book of photographs captured an awakening - women shedding the cultural restrictions of their childhoods and embracing their full humanity. This documentary revisits those photos, those women and those times and takes aim at our culture today that alarmingly shows the need for continued change.
When a feminist filmmaker sets out to document the mysterious and polarizing world of the Men’s Rights Movement, she begins to question her own beliefs. Chronicling Cassie Jaye’s journey exploring an alternate perspective on gender equality, power and privilege.
The definitive documentary on the history of nudity in feature films from the early silent days to the present, studying the changes in morality that led to the use of nudity in films while emphasizing the political, sociological and artistic changes that shaped that history. Skin will also study the gender inequality in presenting nude images in motion pictures and will follow the revolution that has created nude gender equality in feature films today.
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.
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.
Global superstar Jennifer Lopez reflects on her multifaceted career and the pressure of life in the spotlight in this intimate documentary.
This special explores the return of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker to the screen, as well as Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen to their classic roles. Director Deborah Chow leads the cast and crew as they create new heroes and villains that live alongside new incarnations of beloved Star Wars characters, and an epic story that dramatically bridges the saga films.