A searing examination of the unrelenting Chechen conflict, observed through the prisms of a Russian military boys academy, a war-torn town and a children's refugee camp.
A documentary on the effect of fishing the Nile perch in Tanzania's Lake Victoria. The predatory fish, which has wiped out the native species, is sold in European supermarkets, while starving Tanzanian families have to make do with the leftovers.
Director:
Hubert Sauper
Stars:
Elizabeth 'Eliza' Maganga Nsese,
Raphael Tukiko Wagara,
Dimond Remtulia
A documentary which challenges former Indonesian death-squad leaders to reenact their mass-killings in whichever cinematic genres they wish, including classic Hollywood crime scenarios and lavish musical numbers.
Acclaimed filmmaker Alan Berliner chronicles the deeply personal story of his mother's first cousin--well-known poet/translator/professor Edwin Honig--on his journey into the depths of ... See full summary »
A 10 minute long journey of emotions that befall children faces. Fear, Curiosity; a Smile. They all sit in a dark theater. What they see, we don't; we can only guess from their faces.
A searing examination of the unrelenting Chechen conflict, observed through the prisms of a Russian military boys academy, a war-torn town and a children's refugee camp.
To make this film, Pirjo Honkasalo had to sneak in Chechnya as Russian authorities have restricted foreigners' access to the troublesome region. See more »
As a volunteer working with homeless children and youth in St Petersburg I had high expectations of the film 3 Rooms of Melancholia, since the film was said to reflect emotional and mental states related to children rejected from dysfunctional families and in general to the homeless.
However after seeing the film, I want to address that I am utterly shocked by the selfish and insensitive way the director Honkasalo dealt with the subjects of her documentary. Instead of giving the child interviewees a voice and a chance to talk about their lives before and during their military boarding school, this director serves us a series of narrated pathos-embedded statements depicting their awful backgrounds. As the homeless boys in the film are clearly working on restoring their crushed egos by trying to function progressively as group members in an institution accepted and respected by the society they live in, this immature, socio-pornographic primadonna comes with her pathological need to throw Gothic sensations out of her poetic dirt-bag. How little can a person understand the ashamed mind of the homeless and rejected and still be allowed to direct documentaries about this subject? The people awarding this documentary with human rights film prizes have little sense of the actual need the rejected and homeless have to be accepted as strong, progressive, dynamic characters who despite their socially disgraceful backgrounds can have their say in life without being publicly Kain-marked as the hopelessly pitiful.
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As a volunteer working with homeless children and youth in St Petersburg I had high expectations of the film 3 Rooms of Melancholia, since the film was said to reflect emotional and mental states related to children rejected from dysfunctional families and in general to the homeless.
However after seeing the film, I want to address that I am utterly shocked by the selfish and insensitive way the director Honkasalo dealt with the subjects of her documentary. Instead of giving the child interviewees a voice and a chance to talk about their lives before and during their military boarding school, this director serves us a series of narrated pathos-embedded statements depicting their awful backgrounds. As the homeless boys in the film are clearly working on restoring their crushed egos by trying to function progressively as group members in an institution accepted and respected by the society they live in, this immature, socio-pornographic primadonna comes with her pathological need to throw Gothic sensations out of her poetic dirt-bag. How little can a person understand the ashamed mind of the homeless and rejected and still be allowed to direct documentaries about this subject? The people awarding this documentary with human rights film prizes have little sense of the actual need the rejected and homeless have to be accepted as strong, progressive, dynamic characters who despite their socially disgraceful backgrounds can have their say in life without being publicly Kain-marked as the hopelessly pitiful.