Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
COMMUNITY: In the shadows of Las Vegas, real people, in an unreal situation, face an uncertain future. [Director Turner Ross, Bill Ross IV]
Sing Me A Song
SPIRITUALITY: In the few years since TV and internet were introduced to Bhutan, daily rituals like candle lighting and recitation of prayer now compete with the lure of smartphones. [Director Thomas Balmès]
Lucid dreaming: animated documentary at Thessaloniki
THESSALONIKI: Three films from the 2020 Thessaloniki Documentary Festival prove the multi-dimensional power of animation in non-fiction storytelling.
Back to 2069
IDENTITY: Never mind how hard you try, you can never escape the world [Director Elise Florenty, Marcel Türkowsky]
Ethnographic fictions: A portrait of Laura Huertas Millán
THESSALONIKI: Challenging the authoritative colonial views about exoticism, ethnography, and anthropology, filmmaker and artist Laura Huertas Millán is transforming filmmaking itself as their traditionally expressive form.
Berlin stinks
BERLINALE: There really was something behind the films at the Berlinale this year.
The coming technological decade
EDITORIAL: Will increased control or monitoring in this decade eventually leave more to algorithms that carry out actions based on so-called "actionable intelligence"?
Zelig Film School essay: What is a Documentary?
VIEWS: Three Zelig Film School students agreed to write a small essay when asked which three words come to your mind when you hear DOCUMENTARY
Docs and de-powering
FESTIVALS: Can documentaries be a part of de-powering – «destitution» – most needed in today’s power-driven societies?
To ask questions that are intellectually stimulating and emotionally engaging
INTERVIEW«My background was from journalism, I had to learn film language», says Benjamin Ree on his The Painter and the Thief.
Four measures against the use-and-throw culture
CONSUMPTION: Keucheyan does not want authoritarian Marxism where the bureaucracy decides what its citizens need.
Filmatic rebellion
CINEMA: Morgan Adamson's Enduring Images brings new life to the 1960s revolutionary film and reminds us of the need to fight the prevailing forms of representation.
Man is like a flower
TECHNOLOGY: We live in MODERN TIMES where artificial intelligence evolves on its own and can become our rescue, not our death.
Saying something substantial about others
PHOTOGRAPHY: World renowned photographer Fred Baldwin has published his memoirs at the age of 90. Is this a peculiar insight into a person who, through everything and everyone he meets, first and foremost sees himself?
There Will Be No More Night
CONFLICT: Eléonore Weber's chilling compilation of military footage reveals the casual killing by men in flying machines who risk nothing in the pursuit of state-sanctioned murder. [Director Eléonore Weber]
The Earth Is Blue as an Orange
CONFLICT: Through their collective artistic project, a single mother and her four children cope with life inside a war zone. [Director Iryna Tsilyk]
Colombia in My Arms
CONFLICT: A sensitive and balanced glimpse into the consequences of Colombia's much-heralded 2016 peace accord [Director Jenni Kivistö, Jussi Rastas]
The Ebb Tide
ECOLOGY: Director Renu Savant gives us the opportunity to see the ancestral, small-fishing methods of the men of Mirya on the west coast of India. [Director Renu Savant]
The Great Green Wall
CLIMATE CHANGE: Malian musician Inna Modja takes an epic journey down Africa's ambitious Great Green Wall project where 8,000km wall of trees is to stretch across the entire continent. [Director Jared P Scott]
The Book of the Sea
CLIMATE: Enriched with animated segments depicting the legends and culture of the Inuit and Chukchi people, The Book of the Sea reveals a side of Russia rarely seen. [Director Aleksei Vakhrushev]
The Sea of Shadows
ECOLOGY: The making of this film is itself an integral part of a drama involving the Chinese mafia, Mexican fishermen pushed into crime, fearless activists, frightened policemen and a rare species of mini whales. [Director Richard Ladkani]
Welcome to Chechnya
CONTROL: A group of activists risk unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ programme raging in the Russian republic of Chechnya. [Director David France]
Marshawn Lynch: A History
AMERICA: Through the eloquence of silence, echo, and mimicry as key tools of defiance, American football star Marshawn Lynch weaves his legacy. [Director David Shields]
Solidarity
CONTROL: The determination of a community that comes together in the name of justice. [Director Lucy Parker]
Dollar Heroes
NORTH KOREA: Why do UN sanctions fail to eradicate North Korea’s exploitative operations? [Director Carl Gierstorfer, Sebastian Weis]
