The Fall of Womenland

Haji Omar and his three sons belong to the Lakankhel, a Pashtoon tribal group in northeastern Afghanistan. The film focuses on his family: Haji Omar, the patriarch; Anwar, the eldest, his father's favorite, a pastoralist and expert horseman; Jannat Gul, cultivator and ambitious rebel; and Ismail, the youngest, attending school with a view to a job as a government official.

Arguing that advertising not only sells things, but also ideas about the world, media scholar Sut Jhally offers a blistering analysis of commercial culture's inability to let go of reactionary gender representations. Jhally's starting point is the breakthrough work of the late sociologist Erving Goffman, whose 1959 book The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life prefigured the growing field of performance studies. Jhally applies Goffman's analysis of the body in print advertising to hundreds of print ads today, uncovering an astonishing pattern of regressive and destructive gender codes. By looking beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that tend to focus on either biology or objectification, The Codes of Gender offers important insights into the social construction of masculinity and femininity, the relationship between gender and power, and the everyday performance of cultural norms.

In 1935, German scientists dug for bones; in 1943, they murdered to get them. How the German scientific community supported Nazism, distorted history to legitimize a hideous system and was an accomplice to its unspeakable crimes. The story of the Ahnenerbe, a sinister organization created to rewrite the obscure origins of a nation.

In the 1980s, Algeria experienced a tumultuous social context which reached its peak during the riots of October 88. This wave of protest, with youth as its figurehead, echoed the texts of raï singers. Thirst for freedom, misery of life and the aspirations of youth are among the main themes of their works which will inspire an entire generation. More than music, raï celebrates the Arabic language and becomes a vector of Algerian culture, thus providing the cultural weapons of emerging Algerian nationalism With Cheb Khaled, Cheb Mami and Chaba Fadela as leaders of the movement, raï is also a way of telling and reflecting the essence of Algeria in these difficult times. While the threat weighs on artists in Algeria, their exile allows raï to be exported internationally and thus, to bring the colors of Algeria to life throughout the world.

Scientist Mark Plotkin races against time to save the ancient healing knowledge of Indian tribes from extinction.

Why is social trust breaking down, and how do we find it again? This is the question at the heart of Leviathan. Directed and produced by Alexander Beiner, it draws on sociology, myth, psychology, economics and systems theory to delve into the deep code of culture and make sense of the times we live in. It’s a journey that invites the viewer to confront the shadows lurking at the heart of our systems, and points the way toward hope, healing and action.

Chileans are asked about their definition of the word (and the concept of) "power", as they answer images flash on the screen of powerful and powerless figures in Chilean history.

Séfar (in Arabic: سيفار) is an ancient city in the heart of the Tassili n'Ajjer mountain range in Algeria, more than 2,400 km south of Algiers and very close to the Libyan border. Séfar is the largest troglodyte city in the world, with several thousand fossilized houses. Very few travelers go there given its geographical remoteness and especially because of the difficulties of access to the site. The site is full of several paintings, some of which date back more than 12,000 years, mostly depicting animals and scenes of hunting or daily life which testify that this hostile place has not always been an inhabited desert. Local superstition suggests that the site is inhabited by djins, no doubt in connection with the strange paintings found on the site.

The Richardson Olmsted Campus, a former psychiatric center and National Historic Landmark, is seeing new life as it undergoes restoration and adaptation to a modern use.

An unprejudiced portrait of Spanish folklore and a crude analysis in black and white of its intimate relationship with atavism and superstition, with violence and pain, with blood and death; a story of terror, a journey to the most sinister and ancestral Spain; the one that lived far from the most visited tourist destinations, from the economic miracle and unstoppable progress, relentlessly promoted by the Franco regime during the sixties.

When one thinks of the American Deep South, the image of veiled Muslim students strolling the University of Alabama campus is the last thing that comes to mind. VOICES OF MUSLIM WOMEN FROM THE US SOUTH is a documentary that explores the Muslim culture through the lens of five University of Alabama Muslim students. The film tackles how Muslim women carve a space for self-expression in the Deep South and how they negotiate their identities in a predominantly Christian society that often has unflattering views about Islam and Muslims. Through interviews with students and faculty at Alabama, this film examines representations and issues of agency by asking: How do Muslim female students carve a space in a culture that thinks of Muslims as terrorists and Muslim women as backward?

The director’s grandparents Wilhelmine, an Austrian Catholic, and Bernard, a Jewish Czechoslovakian communist, have always been part of her life, although she never met them in person. Her uncle Hermann lives in what was once their house, with their furniture, Marx and Lenin busts, Hanukkah lamp, countless photos, letters and oil paintings. Through the film Judith Schein asks whether it is possible for a house and its interiors to narrate History.

A documentary about the histoy and linguistic ties of the Finno-Ugric, and Samoyedic peoples. Speakers of the Kamassian, Nenets, Khanty, Komi, Mari, and Karelian languages were filmed in their everyday settings in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The footage was shot in Altai Krai, the Nenets Okrug, Khantia-Mansia, Uzbekistan, the Komi Republic, Mari el, Karelia, and Estonia. The first documentary in Lennart Meri's "Encyclopaedia Cinematographica Gentium Fenno - Ugricarum (1970 - 1997)" series.

"Shaman" was filmed on July the 16th, 1977 in the northernmost corner of Eurasia, on the Taymyr Peninsula, at the Avam river, concurrently with the shooting of the documentary "The Winds of the Milky Way". The Nganasan Shaman Demnime (1913-1980) was 64 years old at the time. The documentary about Demnime's incarnation ritual was completed 20 years later. The fifth and final documentary in Lennart Meri's "Encyclopaedia Cinematographica Gentium Fenno - Uricarum" series.