Social & External
For ten years, Raymond Depardon has followed the lives of farmer living in the mountain ranges. He allows us to enter their farms with astounding naturalness. This moving film speaks, with great serenity, of our roots and of the future of the people who work on the land. This the last part of Depardon's triptych "Profils paysans" about what it is like to be a farmer today in an isolated highland area in France. "La vie moderne" examines what has become of the persons he has followed for ten years, while featuring younger people who try to farm or raise cattle or poultry, come hell or high water.
In barely a century, French peasants have seen their world profoundly turned upside down. While they once made up the vast majority of the country, today they are only a tiny minority and are faced with an immense challenge: to continue to feed France. From the figure of the simple tenant farmer described by Emile Guillaumin at the beginning of the 20th century to the heavy toll paid by peasants during the Great War, from the beginnings of mechanization in the inter-war period to the ambivalent figure of the peasant under the Occupation, From the unbridled race to industrialization in post-war France to the realization that it is now necessary to rethink the agricultural model and invent the agriculture of tomorrow, the film looks back at the long march of French peasants.
This short documentary illustrates rural French Canadian life in the early 1940s. The film follows Alexis Tremblay and his family through the busy autumn days as they bring in the harvest and help with bread baking and soap making. Winter sees the children revelling in outdoor sports while the women are busy with their weaving, and, with the coming of spring young and old alike repair to the fields once more to plough the earth in preparation for another season of varied crops. One of the first NFB films to be produced, directed, written and shot by women.
Two women discuss the roles and problems of women, education, and shopping on Fogo Island.
By attempting to travel 2,960 km from southern Quebec to its northernmost point, by bike and skis, in the middle of winter, adventurers Samuel Lalande-Markon and Simon-Pierre Goneau want to reinvest the territory and reflect on the identity and collective relationship that Quebecers have with it. Their journey begins at kilometer marker 720, an obelisk-shaped monument located on the border with the United States, and ends at Cape Anaulirvik, north of Ivujivik, the northernmost point of the Ungava Peninsula. Over the course of a 91-day expedition, they set out to meet the country in all its immensity, splendor and impetuosity, a country that suddenly reveals itself to be less abstract, less distant, more real.
A poetic journey through the paths and places of old Castile that were traveled and visited by the melancholic knight Don Quixote of La Mancha and his judicious squire Sancho Panza, the immortal characters of Miguel de Cervantes, which offers a candid depiction of rural life in Spain in the early 1930s and illustrates the first sentence of the first article of the Spanish Constitution of 1931, which proclaims that Spain is a democratic republic of workers of all kind.
The follow-up film to “Barstow, California” takes us to the mountains of Miyama, a remote forest and tourist area north of Kyoto. Uwe Walter, a shakuhachi player from Germany, lives there with his wife Mitsuyo for 30 years. Together with the villagers he prepares the annual Gion Festival. On the eve of the festival, the village representatives tell him that his self-built studio is to be demolished. This brings back memories for him of earlier times and his first steps as a Nō actor. In the manner of a fresco, the film interweaves rural depictions of everyday life with the story of its German protagonist. In the village community with its togetherness of generations, Uwe shares life with his neighbours, with farmers, hunters, woodsmen, poultry farmers and anglers, tills his kitchen garden, and like other tradition-conscious villagers, he also grows his rice. The film shows them in a harsh mountain landscape between the rainy season and the first snow.
This documentary film follows farmers and activists fighting together to stop the Indiana Enterprise Center, a mega-sized industrial park planned west of South Bend, Indiana
The first of a documentary serie about rural France.
Set in the mountains of northeast Italy, this film may be considered an observational documentary about rural life. Although this is undeniably the case, at the same time Under the cold stars can hardly be considered a documentary: the microcosm on which it focuses appears to be a reflection of a broader reality and perhaps a way to deal with the themes of man’s existence and his relationship with animals, nature and, most importantly, with time. As written by Franco Piavoli "it is a film which essentially relies on images and sound, where words themselves are sound and the music of life, of the relentless flow of time."
After eighteen years of operating the favourite lunch counter in Manitoba's Interlake region, Ellen and Martin Kihn have retired. A poignant look at the last day, The Kihns, their friends and their customers, demanding rural life and the place the disappearing institution of the country cafe plays in these people's lives. A tribute to the cafes found in small towns.
Oases are more than fairytale places in the desert sand. Amidst the stony heights of the Andes, the endless expanse of the Pacific, or the hectic concrete sausages of Mumbai, islands of life flourish. In breathtaking shots, the documentary explores the phenomenon of oases – and the magical places in the Saharan sand are of course included.
A strange story from Somerset, England about a filmmaking farmer and the inspiring legacy of his long-lost home movies.
In Canada, the village of Val Gagné is facing a rural exodus. Life seems to be dissolving, the future is uncertain. But these Franco-Ontarian villagers are surprised by a wind of renewal. A wind that will give them hope.
Filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown following the death of his infant niece and the subsequent arrest of his brother-in-law as the culprit. Using the audio-visual approaches of essay film, first-person cinema vérité, staged actions, and decades of home movies, Madsen navigates a town steeped in opioid addiction, economic depression, and religious fervor, while using the act of filmmaking to rebuild familial bonds and reimagine justice. Posing empathy as a tool for creating a more just world, North By Current does not seek to investigate a crime, but creates a relentless portrait of an enduring pastoral family, poised to reframe and reimagine narratives about incarceration, addiction, trans embodiment, and ruralness.
In July 2020, Rob Bliss, a young, white filmmaker, posted a video of what happened when he held up a ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign in Harrison, Arkansas, 'the most racist town in America'. It went viral, attracting 12 million views. What Bliss did next was remarkable. Over 1500 miles, two months and 25 miles a day, he set out to walk through the American South, wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt, and a sign that invited people to ‘come walk with me’. His goal was simple: to take the conversation Floyd’s murder had sparked about racism in American society into the places where it was most needed, yet most silent.
A musical portrait of Texas blues songster Mance Lipscomb.
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.
A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.
A detailing of the rise to prominence and global sporting superstardom of six supremely talented young Manchester United football players (David Beckham, Nicky Butt, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Phil and Gary Neville). The film covers the period 1992-1999, culminating in Manchester United's European Cup triumph.
The epic tale of the development of the American West from the 1830s through the Civil War to the end of the century, as seen through the eyes of one pioneer family.
Sheds light on an alternative approach to farming called “regenerative agriculture” that could balance our climate, replenish our vast water supplies, and feed the world.
Director Agnès Varda and photographer/muralist JR journey through rural France and form an unlikely friendship.
BBC Arena's documentary on the Dames of British Theatre and film featuring Maggie Smith, Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench and Joan Plowright on screen together for the first time as they reminisce over a long summer weekend in a house Joan once shared with Sir Laurence Olivier.
During the last forty years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed the major events of our recent history: international conflicts, starvations and exodus… He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of the wild fauna and flora, of grandiose landscapes: a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet's beauty. Salgado's life and work are revealed to us by his son, Juliano, who went with him during his last journeys, and by Wim Wenders, a photographer himself.
Stars of "The Walking Dead," Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira, walk down memory lane and visit iconic locations where pivotal moments between their characters, Rick and Michonne, were filmed.
Varda focuses her eye on gleaners: those who scour already-reaped fields for the odd potato or turnip. Her investigation leads from forgotten corners of the French countryside to off-hours at the green markets of Paris, following those who insist on finding a use for that which society has cast off, whether out of necessity or activism.
A non-narrated documentary following the lovesome lives of four infants from birth to their first birthday. The babies featured are two from rural areas: Ponijao from Opuwo, Namibia, and Bayar from Bayanchandmani, Mongolia, as well as two from urban areas: Mari from Tokyo, Japan, and Hattie from San Francisco, USA.
A glimpse into the raw and simple power of nature through encounters with farm animals: the eponymous Gunda, a mother pig; two cows, and a one-legged chicken.
Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.
A documentary that explores the downloading revolution; the kids that created it, the bands and the businesses that were affected by it, and its impact on the world at large.
After railroad agents forcibly evict the James family from their family farm, Jesse and Frank turn to banditry for revenge.
An intimate portrait of the small shops and shopkeepers of the Rue Daguerre in Paris, a picturesque street that has been the filmmaker’s home for more than 50 years.
In the heart of the tranquil Vosges forests, where lynxes, bears and deer roam freely, Vincent Munier accompanies his father on his expeditions. He not only seeks to capture the visual wonders of this forest kingdom, but also aims to make its sounds audible. Every whisper of the forest is a reminder of the knowledge of nature that his father once imbued in him – knowledge that Vincent now passes on to his own son. Vincent Munier combines breathtaking footage of nature and its sounds to create a fairytale-like cinematic experience that slows time down.
Going beyond the occasional news clip from Burma, the acclaimed filmmaker, Anders Østergaard, brings us close to the video journalists who deliver the footage. Though risking torture and life in jail, courageous young citizens of Burma live the essence of journalism as they insist on keeping up the flow of news from their closed country.
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.
