Documentary Features 2008

for narrative features see here

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BLIND SPOT
Director: Adolfo Doring

Blind Spot is a documentary film that illustrates the current Oil and Energy crisis that our world is facing. Whatever measures of ignorance, greed, wishful thinking, we have put ourselves at a crossroads, which offer two roads with dire consequences. If we continue to burn fossil fuels we will choke the life out of the planet and if we don’t our way of life will collapse.
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ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
Director: Dean Puckett

Six and a half years after the tragedy of 9/11 the psychological impact of this catastrophic event has had reverberations across the globe.
 
The Elephant In The Room follows filmmaker Dean Puckett as he examines the cultural impact and paranoia that the events of 9/11 have had on British Culture; from the Truth Movement hoping to disseminate the evidence of the day, through Muslim psyche in modern Britain culminating in the return to New York on the 6th anniversary, to see a city that is still an open wound. We are exposed to the silent shame of America; the 9/11 first responders, thousands of whom are suffering from respiratory illness and disease after their valiant efforts to aid in the emergency.

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LAND OF MY ANCESTORS
Director: Lala Rolls

We follow Maori artist Darcy Nicholas though his childhood, forged in a strong Maori community under Mount Taranaki. A childhood imbued with stories of the ancestors and of Parihaka, the peaceful protest movement against land confiscations by New Zealand's Colonial Government in the 1800s.

With Darcy we travel behind the stunning weaving exhibition, The Eternal Thread, to San Francisco, and to the Warm Springs Reservation and the Siletz Nation in Oregon and back again.

A documentary that celebrates the connections between Maori and the indigenous people of America and Canada. A documentary that speaks of peace and place of art in a nations pscyhe.

A documentary that tells its story with the art, the language and the music of the land and the people.
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RUNNING WITH MUM
Director: Martin Greaves

The filmmaker grew up in London, but was never comfortable with the playground anti-German war games. Perhaps because he wondered about his German Mum’s horribly mutilated legs. She would never tell him what had happened.

Then came 9/11 – and it turned out this was the same date that 200 planes had come to kill her.

So on the 5th anniversary of the New York attacks and the 62nd of the Darmstadt bombings, Mum agreed to revisit her German childhood home.

She tells her son for the first time about the horror the civilians experienced in a night of deliberately created firestorms. She reflects on fear, on pain, on forgiveness, and on what the passage of time does to a city and its devastated citizens.
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2nd VERSE: THE REBIRTH OF POETRY
Director: Carl Brown

'2nd Verse” explores urban teen life in the San Francisco Bay Area through the rising popularity of poetry and Spoken Word. Although poetry is the unifying characteristic that brings these young people together, the film does not concentrate on their poems so much as it tells the story of their lives amid the Bay Area's melting pot of ethnic and economic backgrounds. We show how these teens coexist and draw strength from each other, and how these youth poets are changed by their engagement with spoken word, exploring their identity and connection to their unique California community. From a sixteen-year-old girl who lost her father to alcohol at a young age, to an undocumented teen struggling with poverty and his sexuality.
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SO YOU SHALL REAP
Director: Darryn de la Soul

So You Shall Reap came about accidentally when I worked as an 'outsider' sound engineer for an 11-day evangelical Christian church conference in London. The preaching style of the International Super-Star Preachers, their obsession with material wealth and their ability to extract massive amounts of cash from the 8,000-strong congregation was both so amazing and amusing, I felt compelled to record as much as possible.

Filmed largely on my cell phone, this guerrilla documentary follows both my own experience of the event as the days passed, and exposes some very questionable teachings and tactics.

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SOUTH COAST
Director: Will Jewell

It's not East Coast. It's not West Coast. This is.. SOUTH COAST! Forget the all-pervasive MTV images of hip hop being all just bling, dollars and materialism - 'South Coast' presents a very different picture, as this character-driven feature documentary charts the growth and explosion of a quirky, vibrant and quintessentially British strain of hip hop that has grown up in its southern seaside towns. Hip hop in the UK has been ignored by the media and making your millions is never going to be an option. These people are making it for the sheer love, and the film features a host of engaging characters including Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim), MC Buzz, gay rappers, train painters, born-again Christian rappers and an amazing soundtrack.

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THING WITH NO NAME
Director: Sarah Friedland

Set in a stunning UNESCO World Heritage Site in rural South Africa, Thing With No Name is an intimate portrait of two HIV+ women as they begin recently introduced antiretroviral (ARV) treatment. Danisile responds well to the medications, while Ntombeleni experiences the delirium and difficult side effects that are a strong source of controversy within the Zulu community. Universal aspects of motherhood and survival are explored, from Danisile’s strained relationship with her teenage daughter, who secretly fears joining South Africa’s 1.2 million orphans, to the traditional ceremonies that Ntombeleni’s family holds to combat her illness in their own way. This film reveals the private and public obstacles that have led to an out of control, and still unspoken of epidemic.

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WELCOME TO TOXIC AIRLINES
Director:Tristan Loraine

'Welcome Aboard Toxic Airlines tells the very real and ongoing story of what many claim is the biggest cover up in aviation history. Passengers and crews for nearly fifty years have been supplied with unfiltered air to breath, taken directly from the engines, even though this air supply is known to become contaminated with neurotoxins, carcinogens and other hazardous chemicals. With unique access into the aviation industry, the film maker, a former airline captain, reveals the cover up and serious exposure consequences on flight safety, passenger and crew health, of those who have and continue to be unknowingly exposed.?

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