A moving portrait of traditional Finnish American culture in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, highlighting that fragile community of memory connecting ourselves with parents and grandparents. It uses the “biographical model” of folklore filmmaking to tell the story of Erikki Vourenmaa, a 92-year-old Finnish immigrant, and his family living near Ironwood, Michigan. This three-generation farm family works, celebrates, reflects, and grieves together. The film explores the meaning of family, ethnic history, aging and intergenerational bonds. It contrasts between the immigrant elder, his American-born son and the partially assimilated grandchildren to illustrate change and continuity in the "sauna belt" of the Lake Superior Region. As Dr. Sharon Sherman concluded, “Loukinen’s focus on the bonds between generations will strike emotional chords about family relationships and ethnic identity for numerous cultural groups.”
An animated documentary that speaks to immigrants' personal experiences living in Aotearoa, exploring themes of racism, discrimination, loss, loneliness, and maintaining cultural ties while living in another country.
Offering unprecedented access to the 20 days leading up to the 2025 Presidential Inauguration — through the eyes of the First Lady-elect herself — step inside Melania Trump's world as she orchestrates inauguration plans, navigates the complexities of the White House transition, and reenters public life with her family.
Filmmaker Christopher Quinn observes the ordeal of three Sudanese refugees -- Jon Bul Dau, Daniel Abul Pach and Panther Bior -- as they try to come to terms with the horrors they experienced in their homeland, while adjusting to their new lives in the United States.
Documentary that shows the changing attitude towards immigrant labor in The Netherlands. The documentary follows three immigrants that arrived in Holland 30 years ago to work in a bakery.
Honduran immigrants living in Mexico, teenage siblings Rocío and Ale must take over care of their two younger siblings after their mother is sentenced to prison on dubious grounds.
This feature documentary takes us to the heart of the Jane-Finch "Corridor" in the early 1980s. Covering six square blocks in Toronto's North York, the area readily evokes images of vandalism, high-density subsidized housing, racial tension, despair and crime.
British documentarian Nick Broomfield creates a follow-up piece to his 1992 documentary of the serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a highway prostitute who was convicted of killing six men in Florida between 1989 and 1990.
Lake Effect is a two-year Michigan ski film highlighting the joys of backyard adventure and the shifting perspective of Mike King, a professional skier who for a decade has only sought adventure from the peaks of mountain tops in the far reaches of the West.
Sally (Sally Yeh) is a club singer, caught in a love rectangle between three men: Stone (Kenny Bee), a bank robber newly released from prison, club owner Paul King (Michael Chan Wai-Man) and Pow (Melvin Wong), a policeman.
In 1963, living a routine life on Norma Place in Los Angeles, recluse writer Dorothy Parker and bisexual husband Alan Campbell recall their often-rocky relationship, started thirty years earlier.
A young woman travels with her partner to England on the unexpected death of her brother. Staying with her sister-in-law, she finds her companion soon drawn into a satanic cult based in the house whose rites seem to centre somewhat on large-scale sexual congress.
Musician Fela Anikulapo Kuti recorded more than 60 albums to promote the magic of Afrobeat but never lost his political voice as an outspoken critic against widespread government corruption in Nigeria.
When former Green Beret John Rambo is harassed by local law enforcement and arrested for vagrancy, he is forced to flee into the mountains and wage an escalating one-man war against his pursuers.
Tomisaburo Wakayama is back with a new take on the classic Yamamoto Shugoro masterpiece “Ame Agaru” as a samurai on the run with his bride who makes a living by challenging dojo masters to a match, then taking money from them to keep quiet about it.
Original television production for young people. A dramatically unusual story of the most elusive meeting of former classmates from primary school, who, thanks to their first social experiences, corrected adolescent swarms and clarified their possibilities for real self-employment, their life desires and creative goals in life.
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Have you watched Finnish American Lives yet? What did you think about it?
