La Sierra is a barrio in Medellin, Colombia - the cocaine capital of the world. Here, lives are defined by drugs, guns and violence. A state of perpetual urban warfare exists, with paramilitary gangs, leftist guerrillas and the US-sponsored Colombian military battling continually for power and control.
This award-winning film portrays three of La Sierra's inhabitants: 22-year-old paramilitary leader Edison, a self-professed killer and father of six children by six women; gang soldier Jesus, ready for death at any moment; and Cielo, only 17 and already a mother with a boyfriend in prison.
Entering a world where few journalists dare to venture, La Sierra reveals not only startling moments of violence and its aftermath, but also those of tenderness and faith which give the community hope for survival.
Intrigued by the legendary Mexican military leader Pancho Villa's little-known relationship with Hollywood, filmmaker and sleuth Gregorio Rocha goes on a search for lost footage that Villa commissioned from the American Mutual Film Company in 1914, allowing cameramen to follow him into war. The footage includes some of the first battle scenes captured in "moving pictures." Rocha documents his encounters as he scours the film vaults and back rooms of institutions across North America and Europe for the seven reels of film that immortalized Villa. His research unveils a legacy of fictional and documentary depictions of Villa dating from the silent film era, revealing a world unsure whether to venerate or to fear this imposing figure and the forces of popular revolution that he embodied.
Universally accepted as a true icon of the 20th century, Muhammad Ali’s phenomenal achievements spanned sport, politics and religion. One man – photographer William Klein had comprehensive access to the events that shaped Ali’s legend. In 1964, the young gregarious Cassius Clay successfully defeated the seemingly invincible Heavyweight Champion of the World Sonny Liston – the manner of Clay’s victory and his amazing persona made him an instant superstar. Through this incredible period, and Clay’s subsequent rematches with Liston, William Klein enjoyed unrivalled access top Clay’s camp – witnessing at first hand Cassius Clay becoming Muhammad Ali and angering the American people with his allegiance to Islam. Forward to Zaire 1974, and the return of Muhammad Ali to the world stage to face another invincible champion George Foreman. As Ali reclaimed the crown for a second time, Klein was ever present, capturing the full story at close quarter.
In the year 2000 the Mexican film director, Francesco Taboada Tabone, began his search for the last of the soldiers to have fought beside General Emiliano Zapata in the 1910 Revolution.
Meet the Japanese Mafia's latest son: a 20 year old named Naoki, part of a surging, decade-long wave of juvenile delinquency in Japan. As Naoki rejects school, jobs and family, his desperate mother decides to take one last chance to save him--by handing him over to the Mafia for one year and letting him choose his own path.
September Tapes is best described as Blair Witch in Afghanistan. Instead of hunting a witch in the woods, a small documentary film crew brave the dangers of Afghanistan in search of Osama Bin Laden. Much like The Blair Witch Project, the idea behind this film is that eight tapes were found in a cavern in the Afghanistan mountains and they were put together to create this fictional documentary
Death In Gaza is an Emmy-award winning 2004 documentary film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, opening in the West Bank but then moving to Gaza and eventually settling in Rafah where the film spends most of its time. It concentrates on 3 children, Ahmed (age 12), Mohammed (age 12) and Najla (age 16).
Gather all materials known film about the events of October 2, 1968, identifies the military leaders that led to the killing and displays key documents to highlight the mechanisms used by the repressive forces and the government against the student movement.
El Caracazo o Sacudón fue una serie de fuertes protestas y disturbios durante el gobierno de Carlos Andrés Pérez, que comenzó el día 27 de febrero y terminó el día 28 de febrero de 1989 en la ciudad de Caracas, e iniciados realmente en la ciudad de Guarenas, cercana a Caracas. El nombre proviene de Caracas, la ciudad donde acontecieron parte de los hechos, recordando a otro hecho ocurrido en Colombia el 9 de abril de 1948; el Bogotazo. La masacre ocurrió el día 28 de febrero cuando fuerzas de seguridad de la Policía Metropolitana (PM) y Fuerzas Armadas del Ejército y de la Guardia Nacional (GN) salieron a las calles a controlar la situación.
The movie is set in 1942 when the United States begins an espionage program in South America due to the potential thread of Nazis submarines in the Caribbean. Venezuela though not officially at war against the Axis powers had been supplying oil to the allies during the Second World War. Frank Moore (Herrera), an Hispanic American spy, travels to a small town in the Caribbean coastal area of Venezuela where he meets Venezzia (Rodriguez), the wife of a Venezuelan commander Enrique Salvatierra (Romero), and they both begin a romantic relationship which will make them forget the reality of a world at war.
A character-driven, political-thriller documentary that explores the volatile events that defined Alberto Fujimoris decade-long reign of Peru: His meteoric rise from son of poor Japanese immigrants to the presidency; his fateful relationship with the shadowy and Machiavellian Vladimiro Montesinos; his self-coup that dissolved overnight both Congress and the Judiciary.
A former guerrilla is reluctantly drawn into the vengeance scheme of one of his victims.
In 1981, Susan Meiselas published "Nicaragua, June 1978 to July 1979," 70 photographs she took documenting the Sandanista revolution. Ten years later, Meiselas returns looking for the people who appear in the photographs: where are they now, what do they remember, what do they think of their country and of the revolution? She finds a woman who buried her husband when she was 14; she talks to those who fought the Guarda Nacional - some are disillusioned, some still have the fervor of revolution; she talks to mothers about their sons; she finds a Guarda member who became a Contra. And she offers her own reflections on time and history and on the moment and meaning of a photograph.
A telephone operator from Mexico City tries to support a family and her passion for popular dance.
A body is discovered impaled on a stake near a scenic lake near Bogota. A journalist try to find what happened. With a friend, they set about to find the cause of the crime and uncover an intricate real estate fraud involving corrupt politicians, emerald hunters, nudists...
Documentary on Jean Dominique, Haitian radio personality and human rights activist.
TAITA BOVES chronicles a thirst for revenge that devastated a country. It tells the true story of Jose Tomás Boves, a cruel man who became a legend during the Venezuelan War of Independence, the most violent in the Americas. He went from seafarer to pirate, horse smuggler to prosperous merchant, prisoner to military chief. Spanish by birth, he spearheaded a grass roots troop of slaves, mulattoes, Indians and mestizos that crushed Simón Bolívar and his patriot army. Respectfully referred to as "Taita" by them, he fought for the underprivileged and the poorest of the poor, and curtailed three centuries of order in this colonial region. This film is about his passions and power, his loves and misadventures, and a bloody saga that rocked Venezuela.
A series of short films examining the world's overlooked problems and the people who suffer from them.
A handsome young man is released from jail and goes to "El Pez que Fuma", a bordello in the outskirts of Caracas. La Garza, its middle-aged owner, hires the young man as handy man, but soon he takes the place of the administrator, who is also La Garza's lover.
"Trouble the Water" takes you inside Hurricane Katrina in a way never before seen on screen. The film opens the day before the storm makes landfall--just blocks away from the French Quarter but far from the New Orleans that most tourists knew. Kimberly Rivers Roberts, an aspiring rap artist, is turning her new video camera on herself and her Ninth Ward neighbors trapped in the city. Weaving an insider's view of Katrina with a mix of verité and in-your-face filmmaking, it is a redemptive tale of self-described street hustlers who become heroes--two unforgettable people who survive the storm and then seize a chance for a new beginning.
