Sword of the Samurai

JEWS excavates a lost world of manners and ritual in home movies shot by several Chicago families from the 1920s through the 1940s. Much as in similar found footage soliloquies by Péter Forgács, Jay Rosenblatt and Ken Jacobs, director Roger Deutsch wrings unexpected pathos from mundane traces of the past. Children mug for the camera with dances of the day, upright mothers march their strollers up the avenue, men smoke, the family gathers around the table to light the candles. The bare title cannot help but raise the specter of contemporaneous events in Europe, lending an extra degree of urgency to the film's meditation on disappearance. - Max Goldberg

A documentary from Erkki Karu, one of the earliest pioneers of Finnish cinema: This government-produced propaganda film introduces the nature, sports, military, agriculture and capital of Finland.

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

George Albert Smith and Charles Urban snaffled the plum job of travelling to Italy to take a series of views of Italy for the Warwick Trading Company, including this one. The long panning shots of Pompeii linger respectfully, as a tourist would, before the camera finally raises its eye to the mighty volcano looming in the distance beyond.

Eighteen years in the making, two-headed cow started off as a black and white film that followed Dexter Romweber and his drummer Crow on a rock and roll tour along the same route as General Sherman. The film was not finished due to many circumstances, but the filmmakers were able to resume the film seventeen years later. After major TV appearances, a stint on a major label, bouts of depression and drug addiction, the film took on a different tone and poignancy.

The documentary goes through the 23 years of MTV Brazil, taking stock from the avant-garde to the ostracism of the broadcaster that was the main guide for the musical, cultural and social formation of young people in the 90's and 2000's with interviews and testimonials from former VJ's and artists that emerged and became popular in the country because of the channel.

"Stitched" is a fun-filled documentary following three quilters racing to complete their entries for the International Quilt Festival, the largest and most competitive quilt show in the nation. Judged on a combination of craftsmanship and flair, traditionalists compete with newcomers as the competition features heated battles between hand and machine quilters, and a controversial painted nude piece that sparks debate.

Men and women in the Horn of Africa and adjiacent regions of the Middle East tell stories of their relationships and contacts with demons and spirits in their life and culture.

As director Hakim Belabbes chronicles his journey from his home in Chicago to visit his family in his hometown of Boujad in Morocco, his exploration of family relationships is self-conscious and at times painfully honest. We witness his most private moments with his family. The film intimately explores the domestic spaces and religious rituals of intra-family relationships, especially when compounded by one member's break with traditional values.

Caught between chasing his past and accepting his impending end, a man follows his childhood memories through the dark alleyways and desolate cemeteries of Boujad, Morocco.

Tango of Yearning (1998) is the first episode of an autobiographical trilogy on postwar Lebanon, later including Nightfall (2000) and Civil War (2002). Taking its title from Tango of Hope, a classic ballad by Nur al-Huda, the film draws from the director’s reflections on war, love, and cinema, as well as his personal experience at the public television channel TéléLiban. Conjuring various snippets of audiovisual archival material, the film is a poetic elegy to film, Beirut’s movie theaters, and a city undergoing radical transformation. Mohamed Soueid has long been a proponent of the experimental video documentary movement in Lebanon, playing a significant role in the country’s creative renaissance since the end of the civil war. Originally trained as a news videographer during the war, the experience offered him a facility with the medium, which he further developed by making non-linear documentary films with a distinctly personal take.

After “Letter From a Time of Exile”, the director is back in Lebanon where he discovers that his dreams about his country are an illusion and that the exile in your homeland is by far the worst exile. Programmer's Note: Borhane Alaouié returns to Beirut from his exile. His documentary film constitutes a new letter at the start of the 21st century in reply to the letters of the 1980s. The reconstruction process appears to affect stones more than people.