Notes about identity

2017-11-18 | es

Gyrischachen - von Sünden, Sofas und Cervelats

A high-rise apartment built in the 1960s provides housing for 2500 people from 42 nations. Separated from the city by a river and bounded by towering sandstone cliffs, everyone attempts to live and survive in their own way. Foreigners who have a go at being Swiss, and Swiss who observe with scepticism. They meet in the corner shop run by an Iraqi living in exile, send their kids to a children’s club managed by a missionary, and old drinking mates meet regularly over a beer in the neighbourhood’s only bar. Despite all the differences, they are rather proud of the fact that they come from here.

2016-05-05 | en

Le point de vue du lion

2011-01-01 | fr

The Valley

As thousands of migrants attempt to cross the French-Italian border on foot through treacherous mountain routes, the state cracks down on the local communities that come to their aid in this revealing look at an unfolding human rights crisis.

2019-05-03 | fr

A Tale of Two Kitchens

Two countries, two restaurants, one vision. At Gabriela Cámara's acclaimed Contramar in Mexico City, the welcoming, uniformed waiters are as beloved by diners as the menu featuring fresh, local seafood caught within 24 hours. The entire staff sees themselves as part of an extended family. Meanwhile at Cala in San Francisco, Cámara hires staff from different backgrounds and cultures, including ex-felons and ex-addicts, who view the work as an important opportunity to grow as individuals. A Tale of Two Kitchens explores the ways in which a restaurant can serve as a place of both dignity and community.

2019-05-22 | en

Southern Border

On the border, the line as principle of property and belonging reaches an extreme dimension where it physically defines the sphere of its relations. Those who transgress it reconstruct these imaginary lines on a daily basis, redefining the traditional geography and occupying the non-spaces where others live in a temporary form of existence. These others, the non-citizens, are phantasmtic, exchangeable parts of a flexible market. Made invisible, they are permanently controlled persons. Under the pretext of a greater civilian security, they are kept clear from the public spaces reserved for the citizens with rights and pushed into non-public spaces, which are run by state and military surveillance, multinational operations servicing a European market and non-governmental organisations.

2003-01-01 | es

Colorful Guatemala

James A. FitzPatrick takes a look at colorful Guatemala.

1935-02-23 | en

Glimpses of Guatemala

We begin this short visit to Guatemala at the port town of Livingstone, then journey up the Rio Dulce. We stop to watch men tap the trees, harvest the sap, and load the product onto small planes. At a local market, we see indigenous life much as it's been for hundreds of years. Then it's back to the coast, to the prosperous Isla de Flores, a trading island.

1946-02-09 | en

Viramundo

Viramundo shows the saga of the northeastern migrants that arrive in São Paulo, beginning with a train arriving and ending with a train leaving São Paulo in a cycle repeated every day. Viramundo's aim was to question why the military coup d'état in Brazil happened without any popular resistance or revolution or reaction of the society.

1965-01-01 | pt

2017 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Documentary

2017-02-03 | en

Hear That Train a Comin'

Meet the crew of the Union Pacific Challenger No. 3985, the largest and most powerful steam engine in the world. This colorful documentary is a behind-the-scenes look at the conductors, engineers and mechanics who keep this fickle train running, an engaging history of steam power, and a scenic tour the Great Plains -- from Cheyenne, Wyo., through Denver and across Nebraska to the Omaha headquarters of the Union Pacific.

2006-06-13 | en

In Between

In rural Kosovo, identical houses are built for family members working abroad, in the hope that they will one day return to settle in their old homeland.

2019-02-25 | sq

The Wildebeest Migration: Nature's Greatest Journey

Every year, on the steppes of the Serengeti, the most spectacular migration of animals on our planet: Around two million wildebeest, Burchell's zebra and Thomson's gazelles begin their tour of nearly 2,000 miles across the almost treeless savannah. For the first time, a documentary captures stunning footage in the midst of this demanding journey. The documentary starts at the beginning of the year, when more than two million animals gather in the shadow of the volcanoes on the southern edge of the Serengeti in order to birth their offspring. In just two weeks, the animal herd's population has increased by one third, and after only two days, the calves can already run as fast as the adults The young wildebeest in this phase of their life are the most vulnerable to attacks by lions, cheetahs, leopards or hyenas. The film then follows the survivors of these attacks through the next three months on their incredible journey, a trip so long that 200,000 wildebeest will not reach the end.

2012-12-15 | en

Contained Mobility

Upon entering the harbor, the voyager leaves the exceptional condition of the boundless sea--this traversable space of maritime immensity--to come ashore in an offshore place, in a container world that only tolerates the trans-local state of not being of this place--nor of any other really--but of existing in a condition of permanent not-belonging, of juridical non-existence. He comes to signify the itinerant body, bound to string along a chain of territories, never reaching a final destination. Probing the protocols of access time and again, he moves through non-civil places, waits for status in off-social spaces, only to remain suspended in the post-humanist lapse. What used to be a state of temporary exemption--survival in the fluid time-space of legal deferral--has slowly consolidated into the prime mode of migratory subsistence. The site of this existence is connected but segregated; it is the world system of contained mobility. (Video Data Bank)

| en

X-Mission

X-Mission explores the logic of the refugee camp as one of the oldest extra-territorial zones. Taking the Palestinian refugee camp as a case in point, the video engages with the different discourses — legal, symbolic, urban, historical — that give meaning to this exceptional space.

| en

A 3 Minute Hug

As daylight breaks between the border cities of El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico, undocumented migrants and their relatives, divided by a wall, prepare to participate in an activist event. For three minutes, they’ll embrace in no man’s land for the briefest and sweetest of reunions.

2018-11-20 | es

Death by Rescue: The Lethal Effects of Non-Assistance at Sea

In April 2015, two shipwrecks in the central Mediterranean resulted in over a thousand deaths. The first, on 12 April, occurred when an overcrowded boat was approached by a large commercial vessel. Less than a week later, on 18 April 2015, a similar incident led to over eight hundred deaths after an overcrowded vessel collided with a cargo ship that had approached to rescue its passengers. Both incidents are in part the result of changing EU policies toward at-sea rescue, particularly the retreat of state rescue operations and a resulting onus on commercial vessels to fill the ‘rescue gap’.

2016-04-18 | en

London's Railways in the 1960s

The British Railways modernisation programme of the 1960s radically changed the rail network, and the British Transport Films unit and the TV news were there to capture it. Compiled here is never before released colour footage of Southern steam at Waterloo (with Nine Elms depot), all the major London stations, The Blue Pullman and early diesels, The Golden Arrow and Night Ferry service, goods and mail, steam on the Metropolitan Railway and building the Victoria Line.

2010-04-06 | en

747: The Jumbo Revolution

At any given moment hundreds of people are soaring above us in a 747. From the moment the very first jumbo jet took off in 1969, it has been the aircraft against which all others are judged. But its 45-year journey has been anything but smooth. This is the definitive story of the Boeing 747, from its milestones and triumphs to its turning points and disasters. Witness its history through rare archival footage and tales from pilots, engineers, designers, and passengers who were there when it all began.

2014-02-27 | en

Crossroads at the Edge of Worlds

This video research is based on a trip to Morocco in July 2005, during which the director documented irregular migration transiting through Morocco, as well as their control. This geographical project focuses on the main migratory axes: Oujda, entry point for migrants in Morocco; Tangier, from where migrants can try to cross the strait or the fences of Ceuta; Rabat, organization space; and Laayoune, the closest point to the Canaries. The video questions the nature and meaning of these extraterritorial enclaves that structure the Moroccan territory.

2005-01-01 | en