Tramas

Gladstone

September 2009 •English

A portrait of a street corner in flux.

Favela no Ar

January 2002 •Portuguese

The documentary shows the awakening of the poor youth to social consciousness in the identification of life that imitates art with art that imitates life. It is the São Paulo chapter of the cultural history of national rap in the voice of its main exponents.

Tall Poppy: A Skater's Story

June 2021 •English

A child who just loved to skate from the age of eight, Poppy Starr Olsen became the number one female bowl skater in Australia at 14 and went on to take out bronze at the XGames at 17 - the ultimate competition in the world of skateboarding. The same year, skateboarding was announced as an official additional sport category at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Now faced with the opportunity to represent Australia on the world stage Poppy grapples with the transition from skater to athlete and the pressure of competition mounts in a way it has never done before.

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

September 1927 •German

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

Napalm - the sound of the industrial city

March 2013 •Portuguese

Directed by journalist Ricardo Alexandre, the documentary tells the story of the Napalm nightclub, responsible for the new wave and post-punk generation in Sao Paulo. Mixing live shows, cutting-edge DJing and videos in its "modern" internal television system, the venue quickly became a meeting point for young people who shaped the grayer side of Brazilian rock in the 80s.

Beautiful Brazil

February 1952 •English

We start in Rio de Janeiro, with the statue of Cristo Redentor on Mount Corcovado, the avenue along the beach, the beauty of an historic city, and the landmark, Sugarloaf. Brazil's 47 million people celebrate racial diversity. From the Copacabana, we travel 40 miles to a resort, Quitandinha, where President Truman spoke. Then it's on to Sao Paulo, a modern, industrial city, and finally to the spectacular waterfalls of Iguazu on the border between Brazil and Argentina.

Fulano de Tal

Invalid date •Portuguese

OG: The Harry Jumonji Story

February 2017 •English

'OG' is a film about a legendary, Brazilian born, NYC skateboarder, Harry Jumonji. In the course of telling his story, through his triumphs and travails, Jumonji emerges in this portrait as an adolescent innocent, much like skateboarding itself. He is irrepressible, manically energetic and ultimately, pure. He has a transcendent presence, well beyond charm or charisma, of such unalloyed joy that nothing he does is unforgiveable. This is fortunate because, as a drug addict, unsurprisingly, he lies, cheats and steals. Harry is rendered as the poet, the sprite, the artist and the street saint he is.

Blue-Eyed Helsinki

December 1963 •Finnish

A boat trip in the Helsinki archipelago: images of water, light and people on the cruise. The same people are met in the city in different situations: at work, with their family, in conversations with a circle of friends, meditating and figuring out their duties. Work and aspirations are important and encouraging to them. They all seem to have something personal to say about their time, their views and their imaginations.

Khamsin

January 2019 •French

Lebanon today. The traces of the civil war are all too tangible as government corruption becomes unbearable. In a country where conflict and peace are caught in an endless cycle, musicians from different backgrounds pool their talents to create an underground music scene. Each evokes his or her representation of Lebanon: its shifting geographical, political, historical and social borders, its painful passage through conflict and instability. A touching portrait of a young generation trying to build an oasis in a hostile environment where the forces of destruction continue to wreak havoc.

Nadja in Paris

January 1964 •French

Nadja is a guest student, who stays at Cité Universitaire and visits the Sorbonne, while preparing a thesis on Proust; she also likes to stroll about Paris.

Skin of Glass

October 2023 •English

A poetic and personal cinematic meditation on displacement and loss, SKIN OF GLASS follows filmmaker Denise Zmekhol’s journey after discovering that her late father's most celebrated work as an architect, a modernist glass skyscraper in the heart of São Paulo, Brazil, has become occupied by hundreds of homeless families.

Moleque

January 2010 •Portuguese

A quasi-ordinary day of a young man living in the streets of São Paulo, Brazil.

Once Upon a Vilnius

September 2022 •Lithuanian

Vilnius is a city of notable historical heritage and unique character currently undergoing considerable changes. Some of the life fragments our camera has recorded are no more. The film, therefore, is a testimony to that which has faded into oblivion, and a glimpse into what is to come.

Vila do Conde Extended

July 2015 •Portuguese

A boy from Vila do Conde records a love letter on a cassette. His voice blends with music, archive images and stories from the past, some lived and others heard.

Uma Nova Onda de Liberdade: A História do Madame Satã

November 2015 •Portuguese

In operation to this day, the mansion known as Madame Satan began its activities in 1983, and in the 1980s was the main hub of avant-garde artists of the city, from which came out disparate and essential names for music, performing arts, visual arts, journalism, photo and video of Sao Paulo, as well as mythical characters of the night of São Paulo who made history with their absurd and impactful performances.

Hidden Cities

April 2010 •German

"The theme of the film HIDDEN CITIES is personal urban perceptions, which we call 'the city'. The city, as a living organism, reflecting social processes and interactions, economic relations, political conditions and private matters. In the city, human memories, desires and tragedies find expression in the form of designations and marks engraved in house walls and paving slabs. But what the city really is under this thick layer of signs, what it contains or conceals, is what we are researching in the HIDDEN CITIES project. The source material for the film are 9 sequential photo works created by Gusztáv Hámos between 1975 and 2010. Each of these 'city perceptions' depicts essential situations of urban experiences containing human and inhuman acts in a compact form. The cities in which the photo sequences have been made are Berlin, Budapest and New York – places with a traumatised past: Wars, dictatorships, terrorist catastrophes."

Manhatta

January 1921 •English

Morning reveals New York harbor, the wharves, the Brooklyn Bridge. A ferry boat docks, disgorging its huddled mass. People move briskly along Wall St. or stroll more languorously through a cemetery. Ranks of skyscrapers extrude columns of smoke and steam. In plain view. Or framed, as through a balustrade. A crane promotes the city's upward progress, as an ironworker balances on a high beam. A locomotive in a railway yard prepares to depart, while an arriving ocean liner jostles with attentive tugboats. Fading sunlight is reflected in the waters of the harbor. The imagery is interspersed with quotations from Walt Whitman, who is left unnamed.

LA. LA. End

October 2024 •English

The Californian sun, which lights up the city, lights up again every evening in cinemas all over the world". Guided by these words from Blaise Cendrars, L.A. L.A. END is a stroll through Los Angeles, among the remnants of Hollywood's Golden Age. Following in the footsteps of a Marilyn Monroe lookalike, we meet a gallery of characters who paint a sensitive portrait of a bygone era that gradually becomes a portrait of a woman.

Survival in Berlin-Neukölln

November 2017 •German

About Stefan Stricker, who calls himself Juwelia and has been running a gallery on Sanderstraße in Berlin Neukölln for many years. Every weekend he invites guests to shamelessly recount from his life and to sing poetic songs written with his friend from Hollywood Jose Promis. Juwelia has been poor and sexy all her life, has always struggled for recognition, but only partially.