Social & External
The people behind it
Destroying your own artwork. For many artists it is unmentionable, but Loes Heebink from Kolderveen irreparably destroyed her artwork "Fluisteraars" herself and came up with the idea for a documentary of the same name, directed by Saskia Jeulink.
They come from all walks of life and have lived for almost a century. They have lived through the upheavals of history. They are funny, moving and rebellious. They surprise and amaze us. Yet we rarely hear their voices. This film is an invitation to travel across France and meet them: the Old People.
Félix, a young, melancholic and secretive shepherd, leads a surprisingly timeless life. He lives alone and works along his father to raise the family herd. From autumn to spring, he looks after his animals, feeds them and keeps them in the dense forests of holm oaks of French Pre-Alps. In the summer, he travels on foot for more than two hundred kilometres, leaving his father to lead the herd to the mountains pastures, in the High Alps Ubaye valley. There, he lives far from everything for many long months, in a mineral and inaccessible world where an invisible being prowls: the wolf. Against the tide of his time, Félix has chosen a profession that isolates him and keeps him out of the world.
Just after midnight on 10 March 1945, the US launched an air-based attack on eastern Tokyo; continuing until morning, the raid left more than 100,000 people dead and a quarter of the city eradicated. Unlike their loved ones, Hiroshi Hoshino, Michiko Kiyooka and Minoru Tsukiyama managed to emerge from the bombings. Now in their twilight years, they wish for nothing more than recognition and reparations for those who, like them, had been indelibly harmed by the war – but the Japanese government and even their fellow citizens seem disinclined to acknowledge the past.
With an empathetic and intimate lens, veteran filmmaker Denys Desjardins captures his elderly mother's experience of neglect in Quebec's healthcare system and his sister's fight to secure her an acceptable long-term care solution.
"It takes courage to accept growing old. It's the response to the cruelty of passing time that I wanted to film." (Xavier Liébard) A group of elderly people decided to live their journey through middle age to the fullest. United in the same small group for over fifteen years, they chose to share their vitality through song with others, those whom old age has excluded from the social, familial, and human experience. Against all odds, "The Joyful Companions" are active and committed to maintaining the social connections that bind them to life. But what strategies, tricks, and struggles they must invent to live old age with hope... Xavier Liébard Director, Writer
The director's mother is 90 years old—and is beginning to forget herself. Not only herself, but everything else as well. She has dementia. Only her faith and her tireless knitting of exclusively blue socks keep her alive. The director, whose relationship with his mother has been very tense throughout his life, approaches the dissolution of his mother's ego in this experimental and essayistic film with the support of Didier Eribon, Simone de Beauvoir, Norbert Elias, Jean Améry, and others. In addition to this very personal story, he also tells a universal story about the process of aging, about repression, but also about rebellion in dealing with and interacting with aging people.
A Short film by Christophe Bisson
One of society’s last taboos is elderly desire, which remains strong for many: half of older adults remain sexual. Advances in medicine and lifestyle mean people in their 70s, 80s, or 90s can still explore and enjoy intimacy. Yet society often ignores this—aged bodies are deemed unattractive, and sexual desire beyond tenderness is stigmatized, sometimes leading to mistreatment in care homes where couples are separated. The documentary Vieillir et jouir sans entraves confronts this taboo. Featuring celebrities and real-life couples—including Francine and Marc (60 years together) and gay couple Jean-Marc and Alain (34 years together)—it explores aging bodies, love, sexuality, and the challenges of libido and illness. The film highlights initiatives supporting sexual expression for older adults, including LGBT-friendly housing and sex-positive care, urging society to rethink its view of aging intimacy.
I traveled to South Africa to find a white family living on a desolate farm. I wanted to film how they faced the new days of equality after the fall of Apartheid. But I soon lost my way both on the endless roads and in my way. Instead, the film became a story about two very different women who both experienced a tragic loss in the midst of a white community not too fond of the future.
Dona Maria, a woman in her seventies, is alone at home with her thoughts. Abandoned by everyone—and by the life she once nurtured with such labor and passion—she now lives off her memories, her only companions, of a time when everyone was happy and she, besides being a renowned painter, was a whole, fulfilled woman.
In the not-so-distant future stands a castle where life can be eternally extended, provided that the residents take their pills. At age 88, Madeleine sees herself as the princess of the castle where she'll live "till her dying breath"... until the day that she is forced to leave. Disturbing tale of an endearing woman at the dawn of losing her bearings in a system where every elderly person have to find a place to live.
Follow a cold water swimming group based in Sussex as they discuss the benefits of cold water swimming.
“…this documentary capturing important aspects of Thoreau’s life and writings is highly recommended.” Video Librarian, May 2018 Made over the course of 13 years, Henry David Thoreau: Surveyor of the Soul tells the story of Thoreau in his time and the story of the impact Thoreau’s writings and lifestyle have in our time. Surveyor of the Soul has interviews and commentary by: Laura Dassow Walls (author, Henry David Thoreau: A Life), Bill McKibben, Howard Zinn, Richard Primack, Megan Marshall, Rep. John Lewis, Robert Bly, Wai Chee Dimock, Spencer Crew, Darren Ranco (Penobscot), Rochelle Johnson, and more. “If you are not yet a Thoreau enthusiast, this beautiful, engrossing documentary just might turn you into one. If you already are, it will remind you of the many reasons why.” Lucille Stott, Appalachia, Winter/Spring 2019
Madrid, Spain, March 2020. As the merciless disease that plagues the world spreads through the increasingly deserted streets of the city, people barricades themselves in their homes and move on with their lives…
Located ten miles off the coast of mainland New England, the Oceanic Hotel is the grand, yet far-from-modern home to the thousands of guests who brave the choppy seas to visit during the warmer spring and summer months. Off-season, the hotel and the 43-acre Star Island on which it sits is home to one woman - its winter caretaker who braves the colder, darker months of inclement weather by embracing the solitude and finding inspiration, and life, in what would otherwise be considered the 'bones' of winter.
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.
This candid New York love story explores the chaotic 40-year marriage of famed boxing painter Ushio Shinohara and his wife, Noriko. Anxious to shed her role as her overbearing husband's assistant, Noriko finds an identity of her own.
Musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother and her beloved dog.
From the heights of her modeling fame to her tragic death, this documentary reveals Anna Nicole Smith through the eyes of the people closest to her.
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.
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.
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
While in San Francisco for the promotion of her last film in October 1967, Agnès Varda, tipped by her friend Tom Luddy, gets to know a relative she had never heard of before, Jean Varda, nicknamed "Yanco". This hitherto unknown uncle lives on a boat in Sausalito, is a painter, has adopted a hippie lifestyle and loves life. The meeting is a very happy one.
A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.
The life and career of an actor, artist, and icon. His own journey through his own camera.
A documentary about the life and films of director John Ford.
Brilliant, long in-the-works story of the life and art of the world's greatest comedian and the cinema's first genius, Charlie Chaplin. Produced, written and directed by renowned film critic Richard Schickel.
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.
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.
A backstage and on-stage look at Justin Bieber during his rise to super stardom.
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.
The life and career of one of comedy's most inimitable modern voices, Mr. Gilbert Gottfried.
Martin Scorsese spends an evening with larger-than-life raconteur Steven Prince—a former drug addict, road manager for Neil Diamond, and actor—as he recounts stories from his colorful life.
Performance artist Marina Abramovic prepares for a major retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Follow the evolution of the 'Halloween' movies over the past twenty-five years. It examines why the films are so popular and revisits many of the original locations used in the films - seeing the effects on the local community. For the first time, cast, crew, critics and fans join together in the ultimate 'Halloween' retrospective.
