Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
Like several West African religions, Vodouisants believe in a supreme being called Bondyè, from bon “good” + dyè “God.” Because Bondyè is unreachable, Vodouisants aim their prayers to lesser entities, the spirits known as Lwa (Loa), contacted and served through possession. In turn, the Lwa confer material blessings, physical well-being, protection, abundance.
Ikland recounts a quest to re-connect with the Ik people. For producer Cevin Soling, they represented the last outpost of imagination in a world devoid of myth. Soling and his crew risked their lives by traveling through war-ravaged northern Uganda to reach them. Their experience was alien and surreal in ways only Jonathan Swift might have imagined…
Oscar-entry documentary chronicles the unsolved mystery of the car bombing of Old-Growth Forests Activists and their later arrest by the FBI for their own injuries. The film also illustrates the Redwood Summer movement to save the Headwaters Forest of Northern California and Judi Bari’s victorious 1st Amendment lawsuit.
A short film follows artist Chris Jordan to investigate the thousands of albatrosses dying from ingestion of plastic from the Pacific Garbage Patch. The Albatross journey across the sea takes them over the world’s largest dump: slowly rotating masses of partially-submerged trash between San Francisco and Hawai’i.
The Monkey Wrench Gang is the wish-fulfilment dream of eco-Luddites everywhere. Civilisation violates the land, so Hayduke (“a good, healthy psychopath”) and his pals violate civilization.
Fellini in the 1969 experimental documentary on US television opines on his Felliniesque creative process: “I think almost exclusively in images, which explains why an actor’s face and body are more important to me than plot structure . . . . The key word to understanding my kind of cinema is vitality. What I seek is to live the expression itself.”
You are what you eat…but what if you don’t know what you are eating? This November, Californians will vote on “the right to know” what is being eaten. As well, “The World According to Monsanto” looks at the risks of biotechnology to our environment and food supply.