
0.0University student Anna and her boyfriend Tomek use a precious photograph to trace and unveil the complex wartime and post-war past of their parents.
8.5Sámi artefacts from the Finnish National Museum are returning home to Sápmi, while the holy drums of the Sámi people are still imprisoned in the basements of museums across Europe. The returning objects symbolise the dignity, identity, history, connection to ancestors and a whole world view that was taken from the Sámi people. Director Suvi West takes the viewer behind the scenes of the museum world to reflect on the spirit of the objects, the inequality of cultures and the colonialist burden of museums.
6.8Live footage from concentration camps after the liberation, and the complex transport and lodging of masses of prisoners of war and other deported people back to their home countries, at the end of World War II. A 45min 35mm print also exists (shown at Cinémathèque française in 2023).
5.0“Kill the Indian to save the man” was the catchphrase of The Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a boarding school opened in Pennsylvania in 1879. It became a grim epitaph for numerous native children who died there. In 2017, a delegation from the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming attempts to retrieve the remains of three Northern Arapaho children buried far from home in the school cemetery, on a journey to recast the troubled legacy of Indian boarding schools, and heal historic wounds. This documentary film is produced by The Content Lab LLC, with support from The Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund, The Wyoming Humanities Council, and Wyoming PBS.
0.0‘Sharp Objects’ follows the forgotten story of the Klungkung keris back to its origins and to its post-colonial relevance to Bali today, tracing the looting of the keris to modern day tourism in Bali. The film juxtaposes the 'knowledge' of colonial archives against community-based knowledge and mythology, convoluting the understanding of what is preserved, what is dead and what is lost. The artists apply a tangible intervention on the photochemical material they use for the film. This time consuming approach embodies the narrative of the labor intensive iron forging craftmanship of a keris blacksmith.
0.0Idak-Idak-Idak is a hybrid-documentary relating the stolen Lombok Treasures with the Sasak diaspora through three generations of women: a daughter, her mother, and her grandmother. Blending full-spectrum cinematography with personal footage, this film moves between Indonesia and the Netherlands to examine colonial legacies, displacement and healing the heart of home. In Sasak, "Idak" can be interpreted as both “heart” and “absence”, becoming a container for memory, loss, and the unseen layers of the self between generations.
0.0The Stone That Remembers interprets the Durga Mahisas-uramardini statue’s journey from its home, the Singhasari Temple, to the hands of colonizers, and various museums. The film follow the patriarchal displacement of a woman that represents the Durga, exploring the parallels between the fate of the statue and many women today.
0.0The Sykora family are only four people out of millions of Venezuelans that have recently escaped their collapsing country. They land in the Czech Republic, the country where Grandpa Jan was born, but also a place utterly strange to them. In a matter of months their savings have almost gone and job seeking becomes a nightmare. Again, the dream of just having a normal life starts to vanish. Will the family manage not to crumble along the way?
0.0A century ago the Torres Strait Island were the subjects of the famous Cambridge Anthropological Expedition - the resulting depletion of their cultural artifacts left them with nothing but a history of remembered loss. The only people in the Pacific to make elaborate turtleshell masks have none left - they are all in foreign museums. In a quest to reclaim the past, Ephraim Bani, a wise and knowledgeable Torres Strait Islander, travels with his wife to the great museums of Europe where his heritage lies. The film, an SBS Independent production, shows that the thickest of masks cracks when a descendant of the original owners enters a museum.
5.5A man that is a stranger, is an incredibly easy man to hate. However, walking in a stranger’s shoes, even for a short while, can transform a perceived adversary into an ally. Power is found in coming to know our neighbor’s hearts. For in the darkness of ignorance, enemies are made and wars are waged, but in the light of understanding, family extends beyond blood lines and legacies of hatred crumble.
0.0Like millions of indigenous people, many Native American tribes do not control their own material history and culture. For the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes living on the isolated Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, new contact with lost artifacts risks opening old wounds but also offers the possibility for healing. What Was Ours is the story of how a young journalist and a teenage powwow princess, both of the Arapaho tribe, travelled together with a Shoshone elder in search of missing artifacts in the vast archives of Chicago’s Field Museum. There they discover a treasure trove of ancestral objects, setting them on a journey to recover what has been lost and build hope for the future.
7.0Lake Mungo is an ancient Pleistocene lake-bed in south-western New South Wales, and is one of the world’s richest archaeological sites. Message from Mungo focuses on the interface over the last 40 years between the scientists on one hand, and, on the other, the Indigenous communities who identify with the land and with the human remains revealed at the site. This interface has often been deeply troubled and contentious, but within the conflict and its gradual resolution lies a moving story of the progressive empowerment of the traditional custodians of the area.
0.0Drawing on original footage from National Geographic, Etched in Bone explores the impact of one notorious bone theft by a member of the 1948 American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land. Hundred of bones were stolen and deposited in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, until it became known to Arnhem elders in the late 1990s. The return of the sacred artefacts was called for, resulting in a tense standoff between indigenous tribespeople and the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian.
0.0Four French museums, the Louvre, the Quai Branly, the French National Library, and the Rouen Museum, are faced with pressing demands for the return of works of art. The number of demands is multiplying. They come from all over the world, and in particular from Egypt, Mali and New Zealand. The question of returning works of art to their countries of origin is increasingly making news. Take for example the emotions aroused by President Sarkozy’s decision, on the 12th November 2010, to return 297 royal manuscripts to South Korea. The ensuing row involved diametrically opposed points of view. Was it a violation of the principle of inalienability of France’s national collections or was it a just reparation for the victims of colonization? The rich countries’ great museums and the countries of origin have completely different visions of the issue. The museums defend the idea of a universal museum whose works belong to the whole of humanity.
Filmmaker Kevin McMahon accompanies the Haida delegation on a repatriation trip to Chicago in 2003. His film reveals the whole repatriation process through the stories and experiences of the people who participated, both Museum staff and the Haida people.
6.8A group of women in an isolated religious colony struggle to reconcile their faith with a series of sexual assaults committed by the colony's men.
4.3Felix, a young advertiser, is down on his luck. Ridiculed by his boss and suffering from unrequited love he knows that something has to change, when the chance of a lifetime appears completely out of the blue. He acquires "The Midas Touch" - the ability to conquer every woman with a mere touch. Enjoying life to the fullest for a brief period of time, Felix quickly notices that evil forces are after his new "talent" and "The Midas Touch" soon gets completely out of hand.
7.0Buddy is a young boy on the cusp of adolescence, whose life is filled with familial love, childhood hijinks, and a blossoming romance. Yet, with his beloved hometown caught up in increasing turmoil, his family faces a momentous choice: hope the conflict will pass or leave everything they know behind for a new life.
6.2Hildy Good, a wry New England realtor and descendant of the Salem witches who loves her wine and loves her secrets. Her compartmentalized life starts to unravel as she rekindles an old romance and becomes dangerously entwined in one person’s reckless behavior.
6.1Two successful women, sick and tired of dating and relationships, decide to keep two young men in their pool house for strictly sexual purposes.
6.6Follows Callie and Joseph one year after they fell in love, now running a dairy farm and winery, but their romance is threatened when business and family obligations call Joseph back to the city.
6.4A father comes to grips with his daughter’s upcoming wedding through the prism of multiple relationships within a big, sprawling Cuban-American family.
6.3When her all-male house-cleaning business gets out of control, a mature woman must embrace her own sexuality, if she is to make a new life for herself.
7.0Extrovert Corinne convinces Jane, a shy, talented baker, to commit to a year of bringing cakes to bars, to help her meet people and build confidence. But when Corinne receives a life-altering diagnosis, the pair faces a challenge unlike anything they've experienced before.
5.9Anne and Bob, a well-to-do American couple, have just moved to a beautiful manor house in romantic Paris. To impress their sophisticated friends, they decide to host a lavish dinner party, but must disguise their maid as a noblewoman to even out the number of guests. When the maid runs off with a wealthy guest, Anne must chase her around Paris to thwart the joyous and unexpected love affair.
6.4An aspiring musician struggling with schizophrenia falls for a mysterious woman who may be all in his head. When she suddenly vanishes, he takes off on a cross-country journey across Australia to find her, forcing his long-suffering brother to chase after him.
5.9A thief on the run convinces a single father that he is his long-lost son. Complications ensue when he falls in love with his newfound "sister".
6.7A young American woman is sent by her parents to a cultural immersion program in Taipei where she begins a new journey of self-discovery and romance.
7.1Left heartbroken after Romeo begins to pursue her cousin Juliet, Rosaline schemes to foil the famous romance and win back her guy in this comedic twist of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
6.5When a would-be psychologist, curiously named Dr. Mumford, comes to the idyllic town of the same name and offers his talent for listening and a disarming frankness, the town's quirkiest citizens scramble for a seat on his couch. As he lightens hearts darkened by old secrets no one realizes he's hiding a whopper of his own, or that he's fallen head over heels for one of his patients!
5.9Roger Greenberg, a failed musician now making a living as a carpenter in New York, returns to Los Angeles to house-sit for his brother. He's stranded there—since he doesn't drive—until his brother's assistant, Florence, comes to his rescue. She's as much a lost soul as he is, and the pair form a significant connection—giving Roger a much-needed reason to be happy.
6.2A ghostwriter finds himself romantically involved with his current wife, a married woman and his long-vanished wife.
6.6A suicidal young man is committed to a Dublin psychiatric hospital where he meets new friends who greatly influence his life.
6.0A limo driver's blind date sparks a tale of love, betrayal, friendship and grace—centered on two working-class New York City couples.
6.3A road trip through Louisiana transforms three strangers who were originally brought together by their respective feelings of loneliness.
6.3Clay Kincaid hates the nickname 'Saint', he got for being too kind to stray animals and desperate people. Especially when it comes to women. With a rough and damaged past that has left him jaded, he doesn't do committed relationships. This is before he meets Samantha Jamieson, an heiress turned runaway in need of help. When she starts to work as a waitress at his bar, he discovers that she is someone truly special and amazing… someone that could warm his damaged heart.