Ulrike Ottinger’s provocative mélange of ethnography, stunning tableaux and baroque vignettes was inspired by what she calls the “well-stocked miracle” of Korean wedding chests, assembled according to time-honored customs. This exploration of love and marriage in South Korea looks closely at ancient and present-day rituals, revealing what is old in the new and new in the old. Her inquiry leads us from shamans, temples and priests, to the enchanted maze of 21st-century Seoul, where vendors of medicinal herbs co-exist with high-tech beauty salons for wedding couples and secular marriage palaces. Using film much like a canvas, Ottinger creates a modern fairytale flush with mythological heroes, traditional rites, ancestral symbolism, dreams of eternal love, and a whole lot of Western kitsch. One of her most acclaimed documentaries, it captures the amazing phenomenon of new mega-cities and their contradictory societies caught in a balancing act.
A fluid documentary in which director Luostarinen interviews fifty women on birth, body image, and the harshness of contemporary attitudes toward physicality, aging, and inevitable death.
Friends and admirers of iconoclastic film director Sam Fuller read from his memoirs in this unconventional documentary directed by Fuller's only child, Samantha.
Witnessing the highest rate of HIV infection in the world and the lowest life expectancy on the planet, three grandmothers in Swaziland cope in this critical moment in time.
This feature documentary is an exploration of the concept of dirt and impurity. From the slums of Kolkata to Vancouver's Downtown Eastside to a barbeque joint in Central Texas, Dirt digs deep into the webs of meaning and feeling attached to that deceptively simple 4-letter word.
When Umi and Dwipa left Indonesia to work in an Ontario greenhouse as part of Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program, they hoped the jobs would provide the opportunity and income for a better life.
An airstrip, a hangar and a classroom somewhere in rural Ghana: This is the place where 18-year-old Lydia and 20-year-old Esther hope to achieve their dream: learning how to fly.
Popular movie trailers from 2009
These some of the most viewed trailers for movies released in 2009:
In this unaired TNT TV pilot, a Charlestown native returns to his hometown from serving in Afghanistan to join the Boston Police force like his father and brother before him.
A vicious genetically modified creature that's half human and half dire wolf escapes from a research facility so it can go on a murderous rampage in a quiet rural community.
