From the first camera to 45 billion cameras worldwide today, the visual sociologist filmmakers widen their lens to expose both humanity's unique obsession with the camera's image and the social consequences that lay ahead.
In 1973, five men and six women drifted across the Atlantic on a raft as part of a scientific experiment exploring the origins of violence and sexual attraction. Nobody expected what ultimately took place on that 3-month journey. Through archive material and a reunion of the surviving members of the expedition, this film tells the hidden story of the project.
Sensitive 12-year-old Alf is the low man on his class' totem pole, and he's sick of it. Forming a secret, Machiavellian alliance with another student who also has grown weary of being bullied, he hatches a plan to throw a wrench into the well-oiled gears of the school social order. Everything seems to go according to plan, until Alf discovers that turning the tables on his tormentors has its own dire consequences.
The first live-action Spotlight Story, HELP, brings cinema-quality filmmaking to the world of 360 storytelling. Filmed with a groundbreaking and custom-built camera array system, HELP drops the audience into the middle of downtown Los Angeles where an unexpected meteor shower has left a deep scar on the streets of Chinatown. What happens next creates panic in the streets and sends a young woman scrambling to escape.
The entire world praised the military and Aung San Suu Kyi, when power was passed on to the democracy icon after 50 years of military dictatorship. One year later she defended an ethnic cleansing and had isolated herself from the public. This film tells you why.
A successful rock band from Greenland? Yes, it's not a lie. In 1973, the Greenlandic Sumé released a debut album, which record time made it to all the households on the icy island. But Sumé's success was not just due to their catchy beat rock, but also to the band's ability to put words to the zeitgeist, where Greenlandic culture was slowly fading away
Moroccan paralympic gold medalist Azzedine Nouiri is no longer looking for the longest throw, but to overthrow the system that keeps athletes with different abilities marginalized as destitute second-class citizens.
Did Ida's grandfather live a double life as a secret agent during the cold war? Ida and her father believe that their beloved father and grandfather worked directly for the CIA during the Cold War in Denmark.
When a peace agreement between the FARC rebel movement and the Colombian government looks like it will put an end to half a century of conflicts, 30-year-old Yira visits her mother in Colombia after spending 10 years in exile in Cuba. Yira has herself become a mother and wants to give her daughter the family she never had. She confronts her mother, Ruby, with a neglected childhood in the shadow of her parents' political struggles and persecution. She wants her mother to join her in exile in Canada, so that they can finally be together in safety. But Ruby can't let go of her political ideals and choose her family instead. It is not just Yira's childhood that has been sacrificed. She has also sacrificed her own life and safety to such an extent that she has to drive around in an armoured car, constantly protected by armed guards. As the peacetime death toll continues to rise, Ruby is faced with a difficult dilemma. If she chooses her daughter, she gives up on her people.
The meaning of life, death and everything else? The possible answers are plenty in Max Kestner's adventurous film, which starts when the death of a giraffe at the Copenhagen Zoo goes viral from Hollywood to Chechnya.
At the south tip of Gran Canaria, the sun is always shining. Resorts warmly captures the easy and complicated lives of 6 tourists that never left their holiday. A visual tour of the pastel-coloured holiday destination of Gran Canaria, a haven for millions of tourists – and for people fleeing more than just rain and cold. The paradoxes of tourism meet the harsh realities of those who live in paradise all year round.
The director Cille Hannibal picks up her camera and starts filming her mother short after she lost her husband and companion in a tragic accident. This is a way for Cille to be there for her mother. A way they can be together in shared mourning. 'The Night We Fell' gives us a close and rare look at grief, and just like the mother and the daughter, the film moves into and out of grief and pain. The two women process their grief at the same time as they clear out his things. When the boxes are opened and a life is reviewed, the story of their love grows forth, and mother and daughter also form renewed and closer bonds. Together they explore the new possibilities that can give them hope and the desire for life to continue. Everyone who has lost a close person will be able to recognise something of themselves in Hannibal's poetic an sensuous films, where death is omnipresent, but is not allowed to overshadow the moments when the light starts to shimmer through.
One out of ten in Denmark suffers from mental illness and it is the most common health condition of them all. Yet, due to the taboo and stigmatisation of mental illness, it is still under prioritized and as a result the welfare system is pushed to its limits. The care of the mentally ill instead falls upon relatives, most often parents and they become the lifeline and primary carer. When a family member gets sick it affects everyone in that family and especially those who love them. LOVE BOUND unconvers the unconditional love, which governs the relationship most parents have to their children and that must somehow be altered, when a child is suffering from mental illness.
They do what suits them, have a lot of temper and attitude, and often get up and down. In an instance of failure, abuse and violence, only the girlfriends are usually leaning up. The raw life on the edge of the law, the lack of schooling and the eternal confrontations with the surroundings makes it difficult for the wild girls to imagine otherwise.
With a hypnosis session on the outskirts of Copenhagen serving as the collision point for several people's lives, the action quickly escalates in this moving one-shot film.
The opening of The Vasulka Effect couldn’t be more apt: Steina Vasulka addresses her husband Woody through various TV screens. He does the same and replies. A perfect image of the relationship between the free-spirited, groundbreaking pioneers of video art. After meeting in Prague in the early 1960s, they relocated from Czechoslovakia to New York, where they later founded The Kitchen, their legendary art and performance gallery.
In 2006, the American aluminium company ALCOA decides to build their plant in Greenland. The massive billion dollars’ project is the opportunity for Greenland to become financially independent from Denmark. The film zooms in on the isolated fishing town Maniitsoq as the years pass and the local inhabitants are put on hold – waiting for the American Dream.
In 2006 ANOHNI and the Johnsons and Charles Atlas took their collaborative performance TURNING to major cities in Europe. This documentary film explores the heart of that performance.
Susie and Sune are sister and brother. They have bought an old farm to pursue Susie’s dream of building her own business. She is a conservator and makes her living by stuffing animals, while he commutes for hours every day to do his job. She goes hunting, but he never really gets his hunting license. She wants a new hunting dog, he wants a new roof. ‘Revir’ is a sensitive tale of an unusual sibling bond against the dark backdrop of their shared upbringing, which the two adult siblings are forced to confront when their mother unexpectedly announces her arrival. Peter Hammer has a sure eye for all the little rifts and ingrained habits that shape any sibling relationship, as ‘Revir’ works its way towards a dramatic and existential turning point in Susie and Sune’s lives.
