The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom (2011)

Director:
Lucy Walker

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Synopsis:
Survivors in the areas hardest hit by Japan's recent tsunami find the courage to revive and rebuild as cherry blossom season begins.

Planet of Snail (2011)

Director:
Yi Seung-jun

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Synopsis:
Filmmaker Yi Seung-Jun invites viewers into the lives of a remarkable couple whose extraordinary relationship hinges on all of their senses. Robbed of his vision and hearing, Young-Chan experiences the world in a different way than most, and uses his poetry to express his unique outlook on life. Meanwhile, his wife Soon-Ho contends with a major spinal disability. Young-Chan and Soon-Ho communicate through finger Braille, an innovative form of communicative touch. As the devoted couple's relationship deepens, we experience the world through their unique perspective, and discover just how rich their world truly is.

In the Pit (2006)

Director:
Juan Carlos Rulfo

IMDB

Synopsis:
The hardships of a Mexico City construction crew struggling to complete a second deck atop the massive Periférico Freeway are explored in director Juan Carlos Rulfo's studied look at the modern work ethic. As countless drivers zoom past the enormous worksite day after day, the anonymous workers toil away in a relentless drive to finish construction on the massive freeway addition by the scheduled completion date of December 2005. Despite the long hours and sometimes harsh working conditions, workers such as "Shorty" and "EL Grande" look past the sub-standard safety conditions to focus on the task at hand. Though both men know that when the project is finally completed they will likely receive little to no recognition for their monumental feat, the differing attitudes that they take towards their jobs offers a compelling look at the divisive opinions that many Mexicans hold in regards to both themselves and their country.

The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief (2006)

Director:
Jake Clennell

IMDB

Synopsis:
With his nonfiction film The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief, neophyte documentarist Jake Clennell probes the contemporary phenomenon of Japanese "host bars" - or upper-crust clubs where wealthy female clients buy the affections of handsome, twentysomething male escorts. As an illustration of this concept, Clennell devotes the entire running time of the film to an exploration of Café Rakkyo, the most lucrative such club in Osaka Japan. The visit yields dispiriting glimpses of self-perpetuated delusions - such as the female client who insists that she can keep spending increasingly exorbitant amounts of money until she "buys" the lifelong love of her favorite host, and the male entertainers who succeed at their job by forcing themselves to take full advantage of a woman's innocence, gullibility and naïveté. Clennell also underscores, with great poignancy, the extreme emotional turmoil taken by this profession on both employees and patrons. Clennell's greatest observed irony is simply the fact that most of the women are, themselves, prostitutes. In the grand tradition of cinema direct Clennell relegates himself to pure observation, carefully refraining from intrusive value judgements or intervention of any kind, and allowing viewers to draw their own conclusions about the participants' onscreen lifestyles.

Power Trip (2003)

Director:
Paul Devlin

IMDB

Synopsis:
In 1999, the major American utility company AES Corporation spent over 30 million dollars to purchase the former Soviet Republic of Georgia's electrical distributing company, Telasi, in a bid to expand the American company's international market share. In his 2003 documentary entitled Power Trip, filmmaker Paul Devlin examined the actions of the Georgian citizenry and governmental officials, as well as those taken by the AES management team. What looked good on paper turned into a series of major business setbacks, as the Republic of Georgia had been beset with constant domestic turmoil since the collapse of the U.S.S.R. Quite nearly from the beginning of the Telasi buy-out, the AES upper management team was presented with numerous seemingly unpredictable and insurmountable obstacles which included the extremely low incomes of the vast majority of the population and pervasive governmental corruption. As the American company struggled to single-handedly update a nearly Third World economy, the Georgian populace was merely struggling to exist. Power Trip was a included in the program for the 2003 Berlin International Film Festival.

Up the Yangtze (2007)

Director:
Yung Chang

IMDB

Synopsis:
Director Yung Chang uses the construction of China's massive Three Gorges Dam as a springboard to better understanding the social hierarchies and changing times in his homeland in this documentary focusing on the luxury cruise ship that carries predominately Western tourists down the Yangtze River. Constructed as a symbol of modern progress in China, the Three Gorges Dam has forced millions of common people out of their ancestral homes, and will soon swallow up numerous nearby towns and villages. Despite the fact that the government has funded alterative housing for the dislocated families, however, many citizens make their way to higher ground feeling as if they have been duped by the powers that be. In order to truly understand how this affects the people, Chang focuses on telling the stories of middle-class scion Chen Bo Yu (renamed "Jerry" by the cruise line) and Yu Shui (who answers to the call of "Cindy" while on duty). As the ship sets sail, this hard-working pair do their best to familiarize themselves with Western social cues, striving to perform to the best of their abilities, and ponder the prospects of a brighter future.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011)

Director:
David Gelb

IMDB

Synopsis:
Jiro Ono is one of the most-respected and acclaimed sushi chefs in Japan. At the age of 85, he operates an exclusive sushi restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro, with a long waiting list for reservations (the restaurant has a mere ten tables and a typical meal costs $300) and a prized three-star rating from the Michelin restaurant guide. Perfecting the art of sushi has been one of Ono's obsessions since he was a young man, and filmmaker David Gelb offers a delicious look into his life and work in the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi. In the film, Ono discusses his unhappy childhood, his early days in the restaurant game, and his techniques and philosophies about his chosen dish; he also interacts with fish dealers and his two sons, both gifted chefs who live and work in their father's shadow. Jiro Dreams of Sushi was an official selection at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival.

The Gleaners & I (2000)

Director:
Agnès Varda

IMDB

Synopsis:
Legendary filmmaker Agnes Varda takes digital camcorder in hand and roams about the French countryside in search of "gleaners." An age-old practice, as depicted in Millet's famous painting, performed traditionally by peasant women, gleaners scavenged the remains of a crop after the harvest. Varda finds their modern-day equivalent collecting rejected potatoes outside of Lyon, fallen apples in Provence, and refuse in the markets of Paris. Along the way, she talks to a man sporting yellow rubber boots who has lived on trash for ten years, a gourmet chef who gleans for his restaurant, a homeless doctorate in biology who teaches literacy courses to immigrants for free, a couple of artists who use trash in their work, and the grandson of early cinema innovator Étienne-Jules Marey. Along the way, Varda discusses heart-shaped potatoes, big trucks on the highway, the waste of consumerism, and the ravages of time. This film was screened at the 2000 Cannes and Toronto Film Festivals.

9 Star Hotel (2007)

Director:
Ido Haar

IMDB

Synopsis:
Middle Eastern director Ido Haar helms the haunting cinema direct documentary 9 Star Hotel. The work introduces the audience to a cadre of Palestinian men who have built a transient community on the Israeli border, comprised of jerry-built huts and tiny, sarcophagus-like sleeping compartments. The men leave these quarters and systematically cross the border each morning before dawn, to work illegally at construction jobs in Israel - risking their safety and their lives to simply draw a regular income. Throughout, the workers stick close together (Haar suggests that the circumstances actually engender tighter social bonds between them) and evince a surprising sense of humor, tenacity and resilience. Meanwhile, constant hopes for improved circumstances in the future belie their lingering fears of being discovered and shot or arrested by Israeli authorities.

The Glass House (2009)

Director:
Hamid Rahmanian

IMDB

Synopsis:
Growing up can be hard under ideal circumstances, but for young women in Iran, a male-dominated society where a female's rights and opportunities are compromised from birth, growing into an emotionally healthy adult can be profoundly difficult. Iranian expatriate Marjaneh Halati has opened an outreach center for teenage women in Tehran, where they can speak to counselors and receive training that can help them deal with the crises they face. Filmmaker Hamid Rahmanian offers a telling portrait of four of the young women who have come to Halati's center for help in the documentary The Glass House. Mitra is sixteen years old and growing up in a violent household where her father will beat her for talking back to him, and she's come to the center looking for help in conflict resolution while learning to express herself through her fiction. Nazila is nineteen and has found an outlet for the anger she feels about her life as a rapper; however, her family forbids her to record her music and her outspoken rhymes would almost certainly never be aired in Iran. At twenty, Sussan has been the subject of physical and emotional abuse for much of her life, and repeated beatings have left her with brain damage and memory loss. And Samira is trying to deal with an addition to drugs that was inflicted upon her by her own family. The Glass House received its American premiere at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun (2006)

Director:
Pernille Rose Grønkjær

IMDB

Synopsis:
A lovable, eighty-two year old virgin living alone in a dilapidated Danish castle enlists the aid of an ambitious and headstrong Russian Orthodox nun in realizing his lifelong dream of transforming his vast abode into a Russian Orthodox monastery in filmmaker Pernille Rose Gronkjær's heartwarming, and often humorous, documentary. Mr. Vig is an amiable eccentric who finally finds his dream coming to fruition as controlling nun Sister Ambrosija agrees to send a group of nuns and priests to evaluate and develop the site. An unapologetically overbearing woman who has a very precise vision of how the monastery should be run, Sister Ambrosija commences to making a seemingly-endless list of repair demands and the put-upon Mr. Vig implores the filmmaker for advice on dealing with the slightly-boorish bride of Christ. Despite their initial differences and occasional misgivings, however, Mr. Vig and Sister Ambrosija soon form a unique and exceptional bond as they work together for the good of a common cause.

Mondovino (2004)

Director:
Jonathan Nossiter

IMDB

Synopsis:
Filmmaker Jonathan Nossiter is a serious wine connoisseur as well as a practicing sommelier when he isn't busy behind the camera, and he's combined his two passions in this documentary on the international wine business. Mondovino offers a witty but well-informed look at how business concerns and the homogenization of tastes around the world are changing the way wine is being made. Nossiter's primary focus is on American vintners and their new degree of worldwide acceptance (in part due to the efforts of wildly influential U.S. wine critic Robert Parker), as well as French wine makers who are struggling to maintain a more traditional approach in the wake of a rapidly shifting business climate, such as Hubert de Montille and Yvonne Hegoburu. Nossiter deals with the personalities of his subjects as much as their status in the wine business, and he frequently introduces us to the pets of his interview subjects. Mondovino was screened in competition at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (2003)

Directors:
Kim Bartley, Donnacha O'Briains

IMDB

Synopsis:
Taking its title from a poem/song by Gil Scott-Heron, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is an award-winning international documentary. Irish filmmakers Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain went to Venezuela to make a documentary about the charismatic, democratically elected president, Hugo Chavez. Very popular with the Venezuelan people, Chavez is a firm supporter of socialism and a redistribution of wealth from the oil profits in his country. He's also an outspoken opponent of the Bush administration's tactics in Afghanistan. In April 2002, the filmmakers ended up witnessing the failed coup that took place when a group of oil-interested parties tried to remove Chavez from office. Pedro Carmona was supposed to be installed as the new leader. However, due to the loyalty of his people, Chavez was back in power in 48 hours. While the state-controlled media (Channel 8 in Venezuela) gave the president a call-in show to talk with the public, privatized media outlets reported that pro-Chavez supporters had fired on an anti-Chavez march. After making its U.S. premiere at the 2003 South by Southwest Film Festival, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (also known as Chavez: Inside the Coup) has aired around the world on the RTE, BBC, and CBC.

Wall (2004)

Director:
Simone Bitton

IMDB

Synopsis:
In the summer of 2002, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon ordered the construction of a massive security wall, which would clearly define the border between Israel and Palestine and prevent Palestinian forces from easily entering Israeli territory. While the wall follows the nation's official borderlines, it cuts through neighborhoods, gardens, farmlands and others areas, serving as an ugly and divisive reminder of the ongoing conflict and ultimately trapping people on both sides within the barrier. Documentary filmmaker Simone Bitton, a Jew born in Morocco who identifies with both Israeli and Arab cultures, examines the long and costly process of building this fence in Wall (aka Mur), which offers a visual record of the barrier's emergence and features interview with the people who build it, as well as those forced to live in its shadow. Wall was screened as part of the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.

Arakimentari (2004)

Director:
Travis Klose

IMDB

Synopsis:
Nobuyoshi Araki is Japan's most famous and notorious photographer. In a culture where complete female nudity is frowned upon even in men's magazines, Araki has been acclaimed and condemned for his photo books and exhibitions which usually focus upon women, usually nude and often in bold (and sometimes disturbing) poses. While he has been decried as a pornographer and a misogynist in his homeland, many others regard him as singular voice in the photographic arena, and many of the women who work with him have spoke of his sincere love and respect for them. Arakimentari is a film by American documentarian Travis Klose which offers a look at the professional and personal sides of Araki, including his background, his relationships with his models, his less well known portraiture and landscape work, and how he spends his spare time. Also included are interviews with several friends and contemporaries, including musician Björk, photographer Richard Kern, and actor/filmmaker Takeshi Kitano.

Campaign (2007)

Director:
Kazuhiro Soda

IMDB

Synopsis:
Documentary filmmaker Kazuhiro Soda offers a revealing examination of modern democracy with this cinéma vérité-style look at how political connections have a curious way of trumping actual experience. Kazuhiko Yamauchi was a stamp and coin dealer with little charisma and even less political experience. Backed by the political powerhouse of Prime Minister Koizumi and his Liberal Democratic Party, however, the man who would have little hope of taking office on his own merit suddenly becomes the dark horse candidate to watch. As election day draws near, the events that unfold offer fascinating insight into the inner workings of the Japanese political machine.

Etoiles: Dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet (2001)

Director:
Nils Tavernier

IMDB

Synopsis:
The Paris Opera Ballet has long been one of the most respected ballet companies in France, and many of the nation's most gifted dancers vie for the privilege of performing there. This documentary offers an intimate look at the men and women of The Paris Opera Ballet as they prepare and rehearse for performances of Swan Lake and a demanding dance interpretation of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony; the tight-knit but deeply competitive world of ballet is introduced, where close friends often find themselves battling for the same role, and the lessons learned through time and experience often run counter to the gradual decay of the body's mechanisms through age. Etoiles: Dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet was the first theatrical feature from director Nils Tavernier, the son of noted filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier.

Balseros (2002)

Directors:
Carles Bosch, Josep Maria Domènech

IMDB

Synopsis:
In 1994, after local protests against his regime had reached a fever pitch, Cuban leader Fidel Castro made a surprising announcement -- that any ships that wished to leave Cuba would not be stopped by his seagoing forces. Before long, dozens of jerry-rigged vessels were attempting to make the 90-mile journey to the United States across shark-infested waters, but American president Bill Clinton responded by announcing the Cubans would not be given asylum, while those who had already arrived were sent to a refugee camp in Guantanamo Bay. The Cuban expatriates at Guantanamo Bay had to wait nine months before they were allowed to enter the U.S. and begin the long process of finding new homes in America. Filmmaker Carlos Bosch followed the stories of the Cuban exiles, and, in 1999, tracked down a handful of them to see how they had fared in their first five years in their new country. Balseros is a documentary which shares the stories of the Cuban settlers and the surprising places (both good and bad) where the dream of freedom has taken them.

To Be and to Have (2002)

Director:
Nicolas Philibert

IMDB

Synopsis:
The one-room schoolhouse, where one teacher instructs several grades at once, is generally regarded a quaint thing of the past and a symbol of obsolete and ineffective teaching methods. However, the documentary To Be and to Have offers an in-depth look at a small school in rural France where one remarkable man has been doing the job of a small teaching staff for 20 years, and has taught several generations of bright and capable children along the way. Georges Lopez is an educator at a small school in France's Auvergne region, where between December 2000 and June 2001 he taught 12 students between the ages of four and ten. Employing a curriculum that embraces both academics and practical skills, Lopez and his school represent a surprising mix of the old and the new, where computer technology and old-fashioned memorization of the multiplication tables sit side by side. To Be and to Have captured Georges Lopez near the end of his career in education -- shortly after the film was completed, he retired after 35 years as a teacher.

Beyond Hatred (2005)

Director:
Olivier Meyrou

IMDB

Synopsis:
When their son Francois was brutally murdered by skinheads on September 13, 2002, Jean-Paul and Marie-Cecile vowed to do everything within their power to bring the killers to justice, and try to understand just what motivated them to carry out such a reprehensible act of violence. As preparations for the murder trial began, emerging details told the story of a hateful gang that went to the park in search of an Arab to kill. When those efforts failed, the gang then focused their rage on a young man who boldly defied them by refusing to deny that he was gay. Now, in order to move beyond the hatred and pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, Jean-Paul, Marie-Cecile, and Francois' sister summon the quiet courage needed to discuss every aspect of their harrowing ordeal as filmmaker Olivier Meyrou allows their cathartic but heartbreaking story to be told on its own terms, and without superfluous narration or exposition.