Tagged: documentary

Last year we interviewed Pamela Yates about her documentary Granito: How to Nail A Dictator which details the indictment of General Efrain Rios Montt, believed to be responsible for the murder of 200,000 mostly indigenous Mayan Ixil people during the Guatemalan genocide.

Just about everybody who’s ever shopped at the grocery store has instinctively checked produce for bruising or blemishes, or put aside a can of soup because the can was dented… but there are many people willing to eat for free what paying customers will not – even if they have to dig through a dumpster to find it. New Hampshire native Alex Mallis is head of Analect Films – and the director of the short documentary Spoils: Extraordinary Harvest. The film follows a diverse group of so-called ‘dumpster-divers’ on their late night journey to a New York City Trader Joes. You can catch Spoils this Saturday at 11 am at the Colonial Theater as part of the Monadnock Film Festival - and Alex joins us to explain the philosophy and logistics behind reclaiming discarded food from the dumpster.

Central Park was New York City’s place of refuge and openness until April 19, 1989 when a woman was brutally assaulted and left for dead. Author Sarah Burns turned her research about the event into a documentary film detailing the racially charged convictions of five black and Latino youth. They were exonerated over a decade later when another man confessed to committing the crime.

Two weeks ago marked the second anniversary of the nuclear disaster and subsequent evacuation of Fukushima, Japan defying the government-mandated evacuation orders and living by himself inside “The Zone” is 53 year-old Naoto Matsumara, a fifth generation rice farmer who returned to Fukushima not long after the disaster first unfolded. Vice Japan’s Ivan Kovac is director and editor of “Alone in the Zone”, a documentary that follows Naoto on his mission to care for the pets and livestock abandoned after the 2011 tsunami and subsequent nuclear meltdown.

Testimony by victims and military officials in front of congress this month has shed light on the scope of sexual assault in the military service. Men and women who sign up for military service put their lives on the line for our country. Yet a woman serving in the military is more likely to be sexually assaulted than killed by enemy fire.

“Girl Rising” is a new documentary directed by Academy-Award nominee Richard Robbins and the centerpiece of a global campaign called 10X10 (“Ten Times Ten”), which is dedicated to educating and empowering girls. The film is premiering this Thursday, March 7th, at hundreds of simultaneous public screenings across the U.S, including one at Fox Run Stadium in Newington, New Hampshire.

Ai Weiwei is China’s best known artist and the sharpest thorn in the side of its government. He’s a humorous and clever digital dissident, whose installations, viral videos, and tweets mock Chinese censors, and have made him an international symbol for freedom.      

After years of attempting to cozy up to him with bribes and favors, the Chinese government turned on Ai Weiwei, charging him with tax evasion and bulldozing his freshly built studio in Shanghai. Then, on April 3, 2011, he disappeared.