My Name Is Not Ali (2011)

The ostensible subject of this film is the growing, drying, peeling and packaging of persimmons in the tiny Japanese village of Kaminoyama. The inhabitants explain that it is the perfect combination of earth, wind and rain that makes their village’s persimmons superior to those grown anywhere else, including the village just a few miles away. The film’s larger subject, however, is the disappearance of Japan’s traditional culture, the end of a centuries-old way of life.

A landmark work of symbolistic imagery. The words that the filmmakers speak offscreen are imaginary conversation with Cézanne quoted from a critique by Joachim Gasquet. An exchange of memories spanning over 250 years interweaves everything from the philosophy of Empedocles to excerpts from the film Madame Bovary, to extant paintings by Cézanne, to the buildings of the artists’ village at Mont Sainte-Victoire. —ntticc.or.jp

The first feature film from accomplished short filmmaker Kate Shenton, On Tender Hooks is a documentary film delving into the world of human suspension and the people involved. Kate spends a year following a different people and group of suspenders. Every Sunday they pierce themselves with hooks and hang in mid-air from rigs in a display that challenges the perceptions and squeamishness of even the most hardened. The film is a fly on the wall documentary showing how the ordinary human body can achieve extraordinary things. Beginning with groups in London, and then following events in Rico, Croatia and Oslo, Norway, the film depicts a wide variety of experience and opinions, and delves thoughtfully into a deeply misunderstood practice On Tender Hooks was a self-funded project filmed and edited by director Kate Shenton. Completed in 2012 it is an example of independent film-making at its purest.

In 1971, author and film scholar Donald Richie published a poetic travelogue about his explorations of the islands of Japan’s Inland Sea, recording his search for traces of a traditional way of life as well as his own journey of self-discovery. Twenty years later, filmmaker Lucille Carra undertook a parallel trip inspired by Richie’s by-then-classic book, capturing images of hushed beauty and meeting people who still carried on the fading customs that Richie had observed. Interspersed with surprising detours—a visit to a Frank Sinatra–loving monk, a leper colony, an ersatz temple of plywood and plaster—and woven together by Richie’s narration as well as a score by celebrated composer Toru Takemitsu, The Inland Sea is an eye-opening voyage and a profound meditation on what it means to be a foreigner.

Young Canadians of Indian descent try to break into the Bollywood film industry.

The Inner and Outer World of Shahrukh Khan is the release title for a pair of documentaries about Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan, both directed by the London-based writer and producer/director Nasreen Munni Kabir, an authority on Hindi cinema.

James Baldwin was at once a major 20th century American author, a Civil Rights activist and, for two crucial decades, a prophetic voice calling Americans, black and white, to confront their shared racial tragedy.

Martin Scorsese, in New York, talks about the musics in his films and all his influence and great composers as Bernard Herrmann or Bernstein. From Mean Streets to Aviator.

The remarkable story of how 13 amateur female golfers fought to form the LPGA in 1950. With the odds stacked against them, they made history.

I Don’t Belong Anywhere - Le Cinéma de Chantal Akerman, explores some of the Belgian filmmaker’s 40 plus films. From Brussels to Tel-Aviv, from Paris to New-York, this documentary charts the sites of her peregrinations. An experimental filmmaker, a nomad, Chantal Akerman shares her cinematic trajectory, one that has never ceased to interrogate the the meaning of her existence. Thanks in great part to the interventions of her editor, Claire Atherton, she delineates the origins of her film language and her aesthetic stance.

Ukraine's topless feminist sensation Femen has created a media frenzy across Europe, but before they take the world by storm, these bold and beautiful women must confront the dark and perverse forces that power their organisation.

An electrifying portrait of a young artist determined to live life on his own terms. Born Rashard Bradshaw, Cakes Da Killa is a 22 year old hip hop artist. As an openly gay man he is not your run of the mill rapper, but he just might be your new favorite.

Two young women used their own body as a war weapon by participating in a hunger strike in the Turkish prisons in the year 2000. This hunger strike was repressed in a bloody way by the army. Between portraits and archives images, a reflection on the resistance and the sacrifice of the individual in front of the violence of the State.

Set in the Hasidic enclave of Borough Park, Brooklyn, "93Queen" follows a group of tenacious Hasidic women who are smashing the patriarchy in their community by creating the first all-female volunteer ambulance corps in New York City. With unprecedented-and insider-access, "93Queen" offers up a unique portrayal of a group of religious women who are taking matters into their own hands to change their own community from within.

Shia LaBeouf watches all his movies in reverse chronological order over a period of three days while you can, via live stream, watch him, watch himself.

The film shows the micro cosmos of three generations of women from one family. In detailed observation their movements between the present and an ever existing past is followed as their lives intersect while living together in one house. Coexisting, but separated by the age and time that each carry in them, they share their painful experiences and search for a way of life in the loss and agony of the war around them. Their lives overlapped with the events of Damascus, their city and constant reference, they watch while its organs slowly shut down, as if – just like its population – it is dying from a long coma.