The Mona Lisa Curse is a Grierson award-winning polemic documentary by art critic Robert Hughes that examines how the world's most famous painting came to influence the art world. With his trademark style, Hughes explores how museums, the production of art and the way we experience it have radically changed in the last 50 years, telling the story of the rise of contemporary art and looking back over a life spent talking and writing about the art he loves, and loathes. In these postmodern days it has been said that there is no more passé a vocation than that of the professional art critic. Perceived as the gate keeper for opinions regarding art and culture, the art critic has supposedly been rendered obsolete by an ever expanding pluralism in the art world, where all practices and disciplines are purported to be equal and valid. Robert Hughes, however, is one art critic who has delivered a message that must not be ignored.
A personal journey in search of two grandfathers: Remo, a self taught Ecuadorian doctor who wants to discover immortality, and Juan, communist militant who was assassinated during the Chilean military dictatorship in 1973. A granddaughter who grows between exile and a magical universe. Two stories, a close one and a buried one. Two dreams reflected in two landscapes: one with leafy mountains; the other, arid and deserted.
Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.
Beckermann's parents met in Vienna after the Holocaust. Tracing the migratory paths of her family before World War II, Beckerman returns to the European Jewish communities which inspired her childhood stories.
An intimate portrait of the nuns of Kala Rongo, a rare and exceptional Buddhist Monastery exclusively for women situated in Nangchen, in remote and rural northeastern Tibet. These nuns are receiving religious and educational training previously unavailable to women, and playing an unprecedented role in preserving their rich cultural heritage even as they slowly reshape it. They graciously allow the camera a never-before-seen glimpse into their vibrant spiritual community and insight into their extraordinary lives. Some shy, some outspoken, all are committed to the often difficult life they have chosen, away from the yak farms and herding families of their birth. It is the story of their spiritual community, one that couldn't have existed 20 years ago but is thriving today.
An examination of the infamous thirty-year-old cold case of Iowa paperboy Johnny Gosch, the first missing child to appear on a milk carton. The film focuses on Johnny’s mother, Noreen Gosch, and her relentless quest to find the truth about what happened to her son. Along the way there have been mysterious sightings, bizarre revelations, and a confrontation with a person who claims to have helped abduct Johnny.
The strange story of John McAfee, who went from millionaire software mogul to yogi, Kurtz-like jungle recluse to potential murderer, and most recently a prospective presidential candidate for the American Libertarian Party.
In a time when girls were forbidden to study religious scriptures, a Jewish girl masquerades as a boy to enter religious training and unexpectedly finds love along the way.
The world couldn't keep its eyes off two athletes at the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer - Nancy Kerrigan, the elegant brunette from the Northeast, and Tonya Harding, the feisty blonde engulfed in scandal. Just weeks before the Olympics on Jan. 6, 1994 at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Kerrigan was stunningly clubbed on the right knee by an unknown assailant and left wailing, "Why, why, why?" As the bizarre "why" mystery unraveled, it was revealed that Harding's ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, had plotted the attack with his misfit friends to literally eliminate Kerrigan from the competition. Now two decades later, THE PRICE OF GOLD takes a fresh look through Harding's turbulent career and life at the spectacle that elevated the popularity of professional figure skating and has Harding still facing questions over what she knew and when she knew it.
Tarachime is a documentary film which observes 'life' through childbirth. Kawase Naomi, a film director working under the theme of family, life and death, presents the bond of life through her own childbirth experience. "First, I was planning to film from the day I conceived a child and to the moment I gave birth. But I realized, while filming, that this is not the story of "one life." In the end, the film sublimed to a higher stage on which we can witness the knot tying one life with another."
Marc Aurel-Straße in Vienna: The last surviving Jewish textile merchant in the former textile district, the Iranian hotel proprietor and the Café Salzgries and its regulars. Between the summer of 1999 and spring 2000, Ruth Beckermann undertook a series of small journeys on and around her own doorstep and investigated her local area with the help of a film crew. This documentary film also gives an insight into the political changes when a far right Party joined the Government coalition in Austria.
Four female cons who have formed a band in prison get a chance to play at a police ball outside the walls. They take the chance to escape. Being on the run from the law they even make it to sell their music and become famous outlaws.
The image of a mysterious, solitary filmmaker - a cineaste maudit - who flees from both the media and the public, is unrelentingly bound to the figure of Leos Carax, in France. Elsewhere, the real focus is on his films and he is considered to be an icon of world cinema. Mr.X dives into the poetic and visionary world of an artist who was already a cult figure from his very first film. Punctuated by interviews and unseen footage, this documentary is most of all a fine-tuned exploration of the poetic and visionary world of Leos Carax, alias "Mr.X".
Calling Mr Smith: a 10-minute anti-war film denouncing the destruction of Polish national culture under the Nazis.
In their debut documentary Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor take as their point of departure the compelling 18th Century figure, Ambrose O'Higgins, and attempt to retrace his remarkable journey from Ireland to Chile.
A film-within-the-film scenario involving a cameraman who's given a week to photograph the aerial highlights of Holland for a travelogue.
In Seoul in the Republic of Korea, a young couple stands accused of neglect when "Internet addiction" in an online fantasy game costs the life of their infant daughter. Love Child documents the 2010 trial and subsequent ruling that set a global precedent in a world where virtual is the new reality.
A filmmaker makes a film about a young woman who baths in a public fountain, casting herself in the role.
A Cockney lad trains to be a messenger boy.