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Cutting the movement
Negotiating the terrain between politics and art, dance documentaries are unique works. MELANIE SEVCENKO examines four exciting – and individual – successes.
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Nation standing at a crossroads
Two Icelandic films from the producers at Ground Control Productions show us Iceland past and present and look at the impetus to protest in the face of capitalist ecology. But does the desperation run deep enough to say yes to any investment deal, asks Melanie Sevcenko
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Ex-police officer predict the massive Wall Street crash
The entirety of the Collapse narrative is director Chris Smith’s attempt to probe the possibility of industrial downfall flounders in his subject’s uncertain authority.
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WIELAND SPECK: Ahead of the zeitgeist
Wieland Speck is sculpting a dauntless collection of progressive worldviews, of both fact and fiction, which unites artistic vision with commercial interest.
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A Pre-war Comedy
The creators of 2004’s fake hypermarket, Czech Dream, return with a second feature documentary, moving away from their country’s consumerist tendencies and to its knack of being occupied by military forces. Along their journey, the filmmakers are confronted with various presidents, pieces of false information, wartime pop tunes and a wild boar named Jonas.
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Film about male saunas
Against tremendous odds, dozens of naked men and countless beers and tears, Finnish filmmakers Joonas Berghäll and Mika Hotakainen created an ode to their country’s men and its most soulful ritual.
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Soft power
A documentary from the time when American films portrayed Soviet commissionaires changing sides to betray communist ideals, and Soviet television showed CIA agents gunning down innocent comrades.
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The history of socialism in 39 minutes
With Rabbits à la Berlin the Polish filmmakers have managed to create something as unusual as an innocent yet challenging fable about the masses of the old East Germany: a collective forced to adapt to the uneasiness of a free world.
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The Red Chapel
Brügger and his travel companions deliver a ballsy theatrical spectacle in a regime of terror. In the opening scene of his latest documentary, "The Red Chapel", director Mads Brügger lies in bed in his North Korean hotel, dressed in robe and slippers and buried in a book by the Dear Leader, Dictator Kim Jung II.