Jessye Norman Sings Carmen

$avvy

April 2021 •English

$avy investigates the historical, cultural, and societal norms around women and money.

Windbreaks on the Prairies

January 1943 •English

This short film serves as a cautionary tale to farmers who recklessly cut down trees on their land. When prairie farmers engaged in this practice to facilitate plowing, they discovered that the trees had served as windbreaks protecting top soil from erosion. The Dominion Department of Agriculture's experimental station at Indian Head, Saskatchewan, cultivated acres of young trees for distribution to farmers.

The Imperial Lullaby

March 2020 •Italian

The armies of Fascist Italy conquered Addis Ababa, capital of Abyssinia, in May 1936, thus culminating the African colonial adventure of the ruthless dictator Benito Mussolini, by then lord of Libya, Eritrea and Somalia; a bloody and tragic story told through the naive drawings of Pietro Dall'Igna, an Italian schoolboy born in 1925.

The Seeds of Vandana Shiva

November 2021 •English

How did the willful daughter of a Himalayan forest conservator become Monsanto’s worst nightmare? The Seeds of Vandana Shiva tells the remarkable life story of Gandhian eco-activist Dr. Vandana Shiva, how she stood up to the corporate Goliaths of industrial agriculture, rose to prominence in the regenerative food movement, and inspired an international crusade for change.

Giuseppe Verdi: Aida

February 2021 •German

The Turn of the Screw

January 1982 •English

Benjamin Britten’s opera of the Henry James novel. An inexperienced governess is sent to a country house to care for two children, whom she is gradually convinced have been corrupted by the ghosts of a previous manservant and governess…

Living in Fear

Invalid date •English

Filmed and edited entirely in isolation, Living in Fear is an educational and inspiring documentary directed by myself, Stephanie Castelete-Tyrrell, a disabled filmmaker as I capture the fears and struggles disabled people faced before the government implemented the lockdown on the 23rd March 2020. Thousands of people with disabilities were left in the dark and had to make the call weeks before to lockdown as it was inevitable that we would die if we caught the virus. Food was impossible to access because we couldn't go out or get delivery slots, and even if we did panic buyers made it impossible to get the items we desperately needed. We were truly isolated, unable to have family and friends visit. Having carers coming in and out of the house was risky and many disabled people felt that having basic care was putting their lives at risk.

Melting Snow

April 2021 •English

Two tons of snow—flown from New Hampshire to Puerto Rico in 1952 in order to “gift” Puerto Ricans a “white Christmas”—become a metaphor for the colonialist paternalism of America’s relationship to Puerto Rico.

let me come in

April 2021 •English

Bill Morrison’s experimental short features decayed film reels from the lost, German silent film Pawns of Passion (1928).

Jillian Michaels: Killer Buns & Thighs

September 2011 •English

Jillian Michaels Killer Buns & Thighs promises to deliver with three fat-blasting booty sculpting workouts that will get you results fast! These 30-minute workouts range in difficulty level in order to provide something for everyone from beginners to the most advanced athletes.

10 + 4 (Dah be alaveh chahar)

July 2007 •English

After casting painter and video artist Mania Akbari as the central figure of his groundbreaking Ten (2002), and then witnessing her outstanding debut as a feature film director in 20 Fingers (2004), Abbas Kiarostami urged her to direct a sequel to the film. In Dah be alaveh Chahar (10 + 4), though, circumstances are different: Mania is fighting cancer. She has undergone surgery; she has lost her hair following chemotherapy and no longer wears the compulsory headscarf; and sometimes she is too weak to drive. So the camera follows her to record conversations with friends and family in different spaces, from the gondola she had famously used in her first feature to a hospital bed.

How Good to See You Alive

October 1989 •Portuguese

Four years after a military coup overthrew the Brazilian government in 1964, all civil rights were suspended and torture became a systematic practice. Using a mix of fiction and documentary this extraordinary film is a searing record of personal memory, political repression and the will to survive. Interviews with eight women who were political prisoners during the military dictatorship are framed by the fantasies and imaginings of an anonymous character, portrayed by actress Irene Ravache.

Abesalom and Eteri

December 1966 •Georgian

Prince Abesalom runs into an orphaned Eteri while hunting, falls for her and brings the woman to his palace as his fiancé. The Prince’s aid Murman loses his self-control at Eteri’s beauty and gives her a spelled necklace as a wedding gift. Eteri contracts a mysterious disease that only Murman is capable to heal.

Lobotomobile

September 2008 •English

A short musical drawing from the real-life exploits of lobotomist Dr. Walter Freeman.

Crimes of Honour

December 1999 •English

Throughout the Islamic world, each year hundreds of women are shot, stabbed, strangled or burned to death by male relatives because they are thought to have “dishonoured” their families. They may have lost their virginity, refused an arranged marriage or left an abusive husband. Even if a woman is raped or merely the victim of gossip, she must pay the price. Crimes of Honour documents the terrible reality of femicide – the belief that a girl’s body is the property of the family, and any suggestion of sexual impropriety must be cleansed with her blood. We meet women in hiding from their families, a brother who describes his reasons for killing the sister he loved, and a handful of women who have committed themselves to the protection of young women in danger of losing their lives.

Images of the Orient - "Vandalic Tourism"

September 2001 •English

Working from archives of private film footage from a trip to India by the upper class of the late 1920s, a period of strong anti-colonial outbreak, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi deconstruct the images and analyze the attitude and behavior of Westerners in the East.

People, Years, Life

January 1990 •English

Using images shot in Russia and Armenia from World War I to the 1930s and retrieved from a Soviet film archive, Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi constructed a meditative film about the status of Armenians as a people without a state. Inspired by the diary of Gianikian’s father, People, Years, Life uses rare footage depicting the region’s major historic events: the end of Tsarist Russia, violence in the Caucasus during World War I, the 1918 Armenian exodus from Azerbaijan. Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi’s treatment of the material manipulates the speed of the images, adds color and music, and magnifies various parts of the image, so that the movement of bodies across the frame begins to carry the weight of exile, mourning, dispossession.

Balkan Inventory

November 2000 •Italian

Comprised of images shot by amateur photographers and German soldiers in the Balkans from the twenties through the forties, BALKAN INVENTORY was begun by Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi in response to the tragedy unfolding in the former Yugoslavia.

Ghiro ghiro tondo

November 2007 •English

Inspired by their beloved Dolomite area in Northeast Italy, a battle theater in World Wars I and II, Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi continue to explore issues of war and peace in their most recent production. The film uses shots of ordinary toys found in the area, many missing limbs and other pieces, to represent, in both direct and oblique ways, the historical period between Fascism, Nazism, and the postwar era.

Criminal Animals

January 1994 •English

In this filmic comment on Fascist ideology - which uses footage from the recently discovered archives of Luca Comerio - invisible hands push captive animals to fight among themselves.