Brazil / USA Director: Guto Barra
Starting in the '40s with Carmen Miranda and continuing ever since, Brazil's music has created waves across the globe. Featuring infectious samples of different musical styles and interviews with David Byrne, Devendra Banhart, M.I.A., Os Mutantes, Seu Jorge, Thievery Corporation, CSS, Creed Taylor, and many others, this vibrant documentary explores how the inimitable sound and spirit of Brazilian music has been adopted and transformed throughout the world.
English, Portugese with subtitles, 80 minutes
Austria / Slovakia Director: Peter Kérekes
Without the battlefield cook, there is no war—because without the cook, there is no food. Using the field kitchen as a lens through which to view the major European conflicts of the 20th century, this documentary allows the bakers, butchers, and chefs of the great European armies to recount their versions of history. Cooking History functions both as a fascinating lesson in the wartime kitchen and a pleasurable glimpse of some of its most animated characters.
Croatian, Czech, English, French, German, Russian, Serbian with subtitles, 88 minutes
USA Directors: Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio
The directors, who both grew up on Staten Island, connect the urban myth of a child-snatching escaped mental patient that haunted their youth with the true stories of the kids who actually went missing in their community. This chilling horror documentary follows the filmmakers as they investigate the seedy underbelly of their borough, searching for answers only to unearth more mysteries.
84 minutes
USA Director: Heather Ross
In this affecting documentary, the girls of the Warrenville, Illinois prison are given a chance to tell their stories in a musical based on their lives. To do this, they must reach within themselves and reflect on the life choices they have made. With unprecedented access to the juvenile prison, director Heather Ross skillfully traces these young women's attempts to reclaim their humanity and ultimately their freedom.
61 minutes
France Directors: Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea Annonier
In 1964, director Henri-Georges Clouzot and his gorgeous ingÉnue, actress Romy Schneider, began filming an ambitious project to revolutionize the art of cinema. Today, it languishes in film cans, unfinished and unseen. How Clouzot set about realizing his vision—and what went wrong along the way—is the subject of this fascinating doc.
French with subtitles, 102 minutes
USA Director: Elaine Madsen
The world is full of women who sidestepped retirement to pursue their passion. In this inspiring doc, Emmy® winner Elaine Madsen (alongside her actress daughter Virginia Madsen, who produced) sits down with more than a dozen of them—including Rita Moreno, Eartha Kitt, and Evanston mayor Lorraine Morton—to reflect on their extraordinary accomplishments. NOTE: There will be an addition screening of I Know a Woman Like That on Oct 13th at 5:00pm at Film Row Cinema at Columbia College in conjunction with our Reel Women panel.
103 minutes
France / USA Director: Anne Aghion
"When you bear a child, you make its flesh, but not its heart." These are the words of a peasant woman reflecting on why neighbor turned on neighbor in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Ten years in the making, this documentary by award-winning filmmaker Anne Aghion follows the victims—and perpetrators—as they learn to live side by side in the aftermath of the genocide.
Kinyarwanda with subtitles, 80 minutes
USA Director: Marshall Curry
Academy Award®-nominated director Marshall Curry (Street Fight) returns with an equally exhilarating and emotional documentary following a year in the life of three top go-kart racers as they compete for the national championship. Barely 13 years old, Anna, Josh, and Brandon—and their families—must find out if they truly have what it takes to make it to NASCAR. Racing Dreams won the top documentary prize at the Tribeca Film Festival.
95 minutes
USA Directors: Dan Sturman and Bill Guttentag
Relive the American civil rights movement through the soul-stirring folk songs that fortified protestors struggling for equality. This powerful doc pairs modern renditions by Wyclef Jean, John Legend, TV on the Radio, the Roots, and others with footage from the bitter days of segregation and emotional present-day interviews with the people (including Harry Belafonte and Congressman John Lewis) who fought and lived through it.
82 minutes
Slovakia / Spain Director: Diana Fabiánová
Entertaining and surprisingly inviting, The Moon Inside You takes viewers on an international trek exploring the myths, phobias, quackery, and physiology of menstruation. Combining personal experience with the social stigmas associated with basic female functions, this insightful documentary uses humor, spontaneous interviews, and even Claymation to allay the fears of many viewers and offer welcome information and insight to many more.
75 minutes
Mexico Directors: Juan Carlos Rulfo and Carlos Hagerman
This intimate documentary depicts the impact immigration has had on the families who have watched brothers, sons, and fathers leave Mexico in order to support their families. A film about nostalgia and longing for those who have left, Those Who Remain gently presents the gorgeous landscape of Mexico's ranchland and the quiet life of its inhabitants, those who have remained.
Spanish with subtitles, 96 minutes
Italy / Sweden Director: Erik Gandini
Shockingly relevant and precisely crafted, Erik Gandini's documentary portrays the relationships between Italy's political elite and its powerful media empire. As Gandini puts it, "President Silvio Berlusconi has created a perfect system of TV entertainment and politics." With an eerily fitting soundtrack to guide it along, Videocracy exhibits firsthand the dangers of government-television cohabitation.
English, Italian with subtitles, 80 minutes
USA Director: Eric Bricker
In his eight-decade career, California-based Julius Shulman became the world's preeminent architecture photographer and the man who defined the way we view modernism. This visually inventive documentary—narrated by Dustin Hoffman—revisits with the joyful, whip-smart photographer some of the landmark houses he has immortalized on film. Shulman passed away in July at age 98, so Bricker's film has become a fitting eulogy to an American icon.
83 minutes
