Among the clouds (Dar miane abrha) tells the story of Malek, an Iranian teenager working as a guide and luggage carrier at the Iraqi border, a turbulent area that appears to be quite calm, but soon will turn into the troublesome scenery of a wistful coming of age story. Actually, here the war is only present as a context; the real one takes place between Malek's feelings of love, trust, and longing. When a mysterious and beautiful woman named Noura (Elnaz Shakerdoost) needs help crossing the border to Iran with a coffin, Malek falls into that dreamlike state of the film's title, and the plot thickens. Rouhollah Hejazi's first feature juggles with the universal themes of love, adulthood, and the loss of innocence, which will also work as the emotional borders which Malek and Noura are constantly crossing towards each other, going back and forth between Iran and Iraq. The sounds filling up the screen - with an intensity that seems to pour right out of it - form a powerful and overwhelming soundtrack which covers with emotion the gaps the plot might have in terms of originality. The tables turn at the end, with a surprising and unexpected closing scene, in which the score overstresses a very touching and subtle finale.
A former elite soldier of the Israeli Army describes his personal experience of war. Ideals and conflicting emotions.
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In 1989 the people of Bougainville Island objected to the copper mining that had caused vast environmental damage to the island. They formed the Bougainville Revolutionary Army. The war lasted nine years and the people learned to adapt and survive despite the blockade by the government of Papua New Guinea.
An Injury to One provides a glimpse of a particularly volatile moment in early 20th century American labor history: the rise and fall of Butte, Montana. Specifically, it chronicles the mysterious death of Wobbly organizer Frank Little. Butte's history was entirely shaped by its exploitation by the Anaconda Mining Company, which, at the height of WWI, produced ten percent of the world's copper from the town's depths. War profiteering and the company's extreme indifference to the safety of its employees (mortality rates in the mines were higher than in the trenches of Europe) led to Little's arrival. “The agitator” found in the desperate, agonized miners overwhelming support for his ideas, which included the abolishment of the wage system and the establishment of a socialist commonwealth.
UntitledThe Interactive Sonic Environment is a multi-layered internet-based space of sounds in which users experience sensitive listening within a commuting journey in the London Underground. The environment contains contributions made by volunteers, in the form of meaningful sounds selected by them and reflective texts written by them. Five main spaces—entrance, tickets, corridor, platform and carriage— have been divided into categories according to the movement that the commuters make during the journey (e.g. going up escalators to the tickets' place). Four ‘symbolic' spaces—doors, trains arriving, announcements and steps—are the result of repetitions in their selections, which I considered relevant as a shared space in their memories - sub-spaces derived from the real space. Each category contains a list of sounds that are triggered and overlapped according to the user's navigation. The activity proposed by the artwork is one of “wandering”, or free navigation. Navigation allows, through the resultant layering and sequencing, the perception of a musical discourse of the commuting experience. It is a single-user multimedia application that embodies collective meaning. The whole of the virtual space and the feelings triggered by it become the focus of the experience.
With a unique and exclusive interview with His Highness the Aga Khan and with rare footage, this hour-long documentary reveals the history of the Ismailis, chronicles the Aga Khan's rise to power half a century ago, and examines his ongoing struggle to maintain the delicate balance between tradition and modernity. This is the first film on the Aga Khan in over forty-five years.
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Video of the 1967 meeting in London of the “Symposium on the Dialectics of Liberation and the Demystification of Violence”, organized by R.D.Laing, with Allen Ginsberg, Paul Sweezey, Paul Goodman, Herbert Marcuse, Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, etc. An important record of the spectrum of leftwing politics and personalities during the turbulent Sixties.
UntitledHow can we learn ecological solutions from an ancient Culture? Ladakh, or Little Tibet, is a wildly beautiful desert land high in the western Himalayas. Although it has few natural resources and an extreme climate, it has been home to a thriving culture for over a thousand years. A tradition of frugality and cooperation coupled with an intimate and location-specific knowledge of the environment enabled the Ladakhis not only to survive, but also to prosper. Until development arrived.
UntitledCivilian casualties continue to mount long after wars “officially” end. I shot these video images of preserved fetuses and living children in a Vietnamese hospital in 1991. Medical professionals believe that the continuing high percentage of birth defects in Vietnam is a direct consequence of the US use of Agent Orange from 1961 to 1971. Depleted uranium weapons used in Iraq in 1991 are now linked to similar birth defects, both in Iraqi children as well as in babies born to soldiers serving in the Gulf War.
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