"A galvanizing documentary; An intimate portrait of the artist." – New York Times

Ai Weiwei is China's most famous international artist, and its most outspoken domestic critic. Against a backdrop of strict censorship and an unresponsive legal system, Ai expresses himself and organizes people through art and social media. In response, Chinese authorities have shut down his blog, beat him up, bulldozed his newly built studio, and held him in secret detention. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is the inside story of a dissident for the digital age who inspires global audiences and blurs the boundaries of art and politics. First-time director Alison Klayman gained unprecedented access to Ai while working as a journalist in China. Her detailed portrait provides a nuanced exploration of contemporary China and one of its most compelling public figures.
Courtesy of www.aiweiweineversorry.com

Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Spirit of Defiance - 2012 Sundance Film Festival
2012 Youth Jury Award - Movies That Matter Festival
2012 Opening Night Film - Hot Docs
2012 Festival Director's Choice Award - Mountainfilm in Telluride



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• Back To the Square
• COINTLEPRO 101
• Big Boys Gone Bananas

“We had no clue as to what the government could do or what they did do even though Vietnam was going on...” – Juror in the case of falsely accused Geronimo Pratt

In 1971, an American leftist activist group broke into the offices of the FBI in Media, Pennsylvania. They discovered more than 1000 classified documents, and amongst them proof of some of the most disturbing covert and often illegal operations carried out by the FBI as part of the Counter Intelligence Program or COINTELPRO between 1956 and 1971. COINTELPRO 101 is a straight-forward introduction to the Program, mounted by the American government against organizations such as The Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement and other socialist or communist collectives. In the voice of the people formerly targeted by these operations, the film recounts acts of state violence, false arrests and brazen assassinations and brings to light a practiced, well-hidden U.S. state war against legitimate organized dissent. One reviewer points out – ‘That was America then … and this is America now...’
www.thefreedomarchives.org

Free Speech Award 2012
Best Documentary – DIFVF 2012
Official Selection – Jubilee Film Festival 2012, North Carolina Black Film Festival 2011


You might also like:

• Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
• Roadmap to Apartheid
• Born into Struggle

“From little things, big things grow…” – The Black Arm Band, Murundak: Songs of Freedom

Music is a weapon and under repressive regimes, song is not just a medium of expression – it is a galvanizing force. Murundak – Songs of Freedom journeys into the heart of Aboriginal protest music following The Black Arm Band, a gathering of some of Australia’s finest Indigenous musicians, as they take to the road with their songs of resistance and freedom. Through the moving anthems of their movement, this well structured film traces the troubled journeys of Aborignal people, through colonialisation and genocide, against oppression and racism and for identity and recognition. Named after the word for ‘alive’ in the language of the Woirurrung, Murundak is itself like a beautiful song - a powerful arrangement that brings to life cinematic memory in the form of archival footage and photography, collective memory in the music and personal memory in the recollections of the musicians.
www.murundakdocumentary.com

Grand Prix – FIFO
Grand Prize – Tiempo de Historia 56th Seminci
Best Documentary – 2011 Atom Awards
Media Peace Award – United Nations
Jury Award – Cultural Diversity 56th Seminci
2011 AACTA Awards – Feature Documentary Best Sound


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• The Creators
• Bastardy
• Bigger Than Life

“Dirty tricks, lawsuits, manipulation, and the price of Free Speech…”

What is a big corporation capable of doing in order to protect its brand? Swedish documentary filmmaker Fredrik Gertten finds out first hand. His previous film BANANAS!* recounts the lawsuit that 12 Nicaraguan plantation workers successfully brought against the fruit giant Dole Food Company. That film was selected for competition by the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival. Nothing wrong so far, right? But then just before leaving Sweden to attend the Los Angeles world premiere of his film, Gertten gets a strange message: the festival has decided to remove BANANAS!* from competition. And subsequently, Gertten receives a letter from Dole's attorneys threatening legal action. What follows is an unparalleled story that Gertten captures in this powerful film, revealing precisely how a multinational will stop at nothing to get its way. As Dole's public relations company puts it, "It is easier to cope with a bad conscience than a bad reputation."

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• Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
• COINTELPRO 101
• Island President

“If you are looking for Hell, Ask the artist where it is. If you cannot find an artist Then you are already in Hell.” – Avigdor Pawsner

Weaving through the lives of Faith47 (graffiti artist), Warongx (afro-blues), Emile YX? (hip hop), Sweat.X (glam rap), Blaq Pearl (spoken word) and Mthetho Mapoyi (opera), The Creators culminates in an intertwined multi-plot crafted by the artists themselves. Born into separate areas of a formerly-segregated South Africa, the artists re-craft history and the impacts of apartheid in their own creative languages. The lens reveals the impulse behind the artists’ social consciousness, the individuals’ eccentricities, and each creator’s unique form of expression. Diving into the current of subversive art which fuels South Africa’s many clashing and merging cultures, The Creators brings into focus the invisible connections among strangers' disparate lives. Can creative expression traverse the divide?
Courtesy of www.thecreatorsdocumentary.com

Best Documentary – Texas Black Film Festival 2011
Winner Best Music Documentary – World Music and Independent Film Festival 2011
Winner Best Documentary - National Geographic All Rounds Film Festival 2011
Official Selection - Zanzibar International Film Festival 2011, Fulbright Academy Film Fest


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• Murundak: Songs of Freedom
• We Are Together
• Meanwhile in Mamelodi

Dir: Lara Lee
Year: 2012
Dur: Documentary, 51 Minutes
USA

“When elephants go to war, it is the grass that suffers. This is a film about the elephants, but made for the grasses.”

Over a year later, with thousands dead and counting, the ongoing conflict in Syria has become a microcosm for the complicated politics of the region, and an unsavory reflection of the world at large. Against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, NATO’s toppling 4pm RMN of Moammar Qaddafi in Libya, and the complicated politics of the region, this film seeks to explore the Syrian conflict through the humanity of the civilians who have been killed, abused, and displaced to the squalor of refugee camps. In all such conflicts, large and small, it is civilians—women and children, families and whole communities—who suffer at the leisure of those in power. While focusing on the plight of those caught in the crossfire of the hegemons, we seek to unravel the conflict by exploring the motivations of its actors—the Ba’athist regime of Bashar al-Assad, the Free Syrian Army and other geopolitical players like the United States, Israel, Russia, China, Iran, Lebanon, Turkey, the Gulf countries. 

You might also like:

• Roadmap to Apartheid
• 5 Broken Cameras
• Back to the Square