The Electronic Diaries

Murdered and Missing in Montana

November 2021 •English

A documentary examining the mysterious deaths of three young Indigenous women in south-central Montana, featuring access to family members, tribal officials, law enforcement, and community activists.

Four Daughters

July 2023 •Arabic

Between light and darkness stands Olfa, a Tunisian woman and the mother of four daughters. One day, her two older daughters disappear. To fill in their absence, the filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania invites professional actresses and invents a unique cinema experience that will lift the veil on Olfa and her daughters' life stories. An intimate journey of hope, rebellion, violence, transmission and sisterhood that will question the very foundations of our societies.

The German Neighbor

November 2016 •Spanish

In 1960 Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped in Argentina and taken to Israel to face trial. In 2016, Renate -a young German translator who lives in Buenos Aires- is hired to translate it. Her work shows the unusual life and remarkable trial defense of Eichmann.

Substance

January 2014 •English

An innocent mix-up leads to disaster when two girlfriends encounter an extraterrestrial substance at a winter music festival.

Shoot for the Contents

January 1992 •English

Reflecting on Mao's famous saying, "Let a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend," Trinh T. Minh-ha's film — whose title refers in part to a Chinese guessing game — is a unique excursion into the maze of allegorical naming and storytelling in China.

Probable Robot

September 2015 •English

Mona and her ex-girlfriend, Jules, broke up six months ago and they still can't manage to have a conversation that doesn't dissolve into an argument. It wouldn't be such a problem if they didn't work in neighboring retail shops and have to see each other every day. Meanwhile, something weird is going on with the residents of their small town. Some of them are getting sick, others are acting a little less human and a lot more like robots. Can Mona and Jules set aside their relationship drama long enough to avoid the body snatching invaders?

The Man in the Silk Hat

November 1983 •French

A documentary with many excerpts from the films of French movie pioneer Max Linder, narrated by his daughter.

Habitual Sadness

August 1997 •Korean

The story of the women at the "House of Sharing" continues. Old women who share a common bond lead a peaceful life in the countryside, raising vegetables, chickens and painting pictures. They are no different from the elderly women we see every day. But they are all scarred by pain and sorrow from their collective history of being comfort women during World War 2. They became subject to prejudice in their own homeland after their return to Korea. It is painful for them to watch other peoples' children and grandchildren, and they feel rage when the Japanese government tries to cover up the unspeakable crimes they committed against them. The film asks us to remember what these women sacrificed and the shame and misery they faced even as these individuals pass away often forgotten by their own people.

Period: The End of Menstruation

May 2006 •English

As millions of women and girls take shots and pills to stop their periods, the meaning of menstruation changes. Current marketing of hormonal birth control (Depo-Provera, Seasonale, Seasonique, Lybrel, Anya) attracts customers by promising freedom from monthly periods. For many consumers, menstrual suppression eliminates painful monthly flow, giving them more control in their lives. For others, menstrual suppression represents a frightening shift in thinking about the human body and another dangerous experiment on woman’s health. Period: The End of Menstruation? interrogates the cultural and medical side effects of suppression before 'the curse' disappears.

Gene Boy Came Home

August 2007 •English

A portrait of Eugene "Gene Boy" Benedict from Odanak Indian Reserve near Montreal, Quebec. At 17, adrift and beginning to lose his way, he accepted a dare and enlisted in the US Marines – and was sent to the frontlines of the Vietnam War. This film is the account of his two years of service and his long journey back to Odanak afterwards.

Las Marthas

January 2014 •English

Marthas is a PBS documentary about an extraordinary rite of passage in Laredo, Texas where teenage Mexican-American girls debut in a grand Colonial Ball dressed as American revolutionaries - a tradition that goes back 114 years.

Don't Blink - Robert Frank

November 2015 •English

The life and work of Robert Frank—as a photographer and a filmmaker—are so intertwined that they're one in the same, and the vast amount of territory he's covered, from The Americans in 1958 up to the present, is intimately registered in his now-formidable body of artistic gestures. From the early '90s on, Frank has been making his films and videos with the brilliant editor Laura Israel, who has helped him to keep things homemade and preserve the illuminating spark of first contact between camera and people/places. Don't Blink is Israel's like-minded portrait of her friend and collaborator, a lively rummage sale of images and sounds and recollected passages and unfathomable losses and friendships that leaves us a fast and fleeting imprint of the life of the Swiss-born man who reinvented himself the American way, and is still standing on ground of his own making at the age of 90.

Ceallaigh at Kilmainham

January 2013 •English

A 16mm collaged and handcrafted personal essay short film that serves as an exploration of land, roots, and the struggle and strength of the persevering women who came before me. This filmic essay exploration is set against the backdrop of Ireland's radical history.

Horizons

April 2015 •English

By following the career of two dancers of the National Cuban Ballet, Amanda, young ballerina and Viengsay Valdez, star dancer, Horizons revisits the extraordinary destiny of Alicia Alonso, prima ballerina assoluta, with a steel temperament who is now in the twilight of her life.

Flo

April 2013 •English

Despite blindness, multiple sclerosis, and lung cancer, photographer Flo Fox continues to shoot the streets of New York City. No longer able to hold a camera, she instructs her aides to take photos for her.

Elvis Loses His Excess & Other Tales From the World's Longest Yard Sale

January 2014 •English

Travel down U.S. Highway 127 from Michigan to Alabama and meet the people at the world’s longest yard sale—an annual four-day, 690-mile exchange of not only goods, but also stories.

Box 25

January 2015 •Spanish

Documentary about the relation between Panama and the United States, during the building of the Panama Canal.

Where Gods Are Dead

February 1993 •Norwegian Bokmål

A Norwegian TV-worker tries to prevent her son, which she has with her former husband, a Serb now living in Jugoslavia, to become a soldier in the starting civil war.

Vienna's Lost Daughters

March 2010 •German

The Reincarnation of Khensur Rinpoche

April 1992 •English

Choenzey is a 47-year-old monk living in a Tibetan refugee monastery in South India. His spiritual master, Khensur Rinpoche, a revered high lama, has been dead for four years. According to Tibetan belief, he will soon be reincarnated. It is Choenzey's responsibility, as his closest disciple, to find the reincarnation and to look after him. The film follows Choenzey's search and his eventual discovery of an impish but gentle 4-year-old boy who is recognized by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan State Oracle to be the reincarnation. Without sentimentality, the film captures the moving relationship that develops between the erstwhile disciple and his young master. (columbia.edu)