Behind Time, Time Comes

Comitiva Esperança

January 1985 •Portuguese

Miyama, Kyōto Prefecture

May 2023 •German

The follow-up film to “Barstow, California” takes us to the mountains of Miyama, a remote forest and tourist area north of Kyoto. Uwe Walter, a shakuhachi player from Germany, lives there with his wife Mitsuyo for 30 years. Together with the villagers he prepares the annual Gion Festival. On the eve of the festival, the village representatives tell him that his self-built studio is to be demolished. This brings back memories for him of earlier times and his first steps as a Nō actor. In the manner of a fresco, the film interweaves rural depictions of everyday life with the story of its German protagonist. In the village community with its togetherness of generations, Uwe shares life with his neighbours, with farmers, hunters, woodsmen, poultry farmers and anglers, tills his kitchen garden, and like other tradition-conscious villagers, he also grows his rice. The film shows them in a harsh mountain landscape between the rainy season and the first snow.

Praise of the Distance

October 2008 •Galician

Province of Lugo, Galicia, Spain. A year in the life of A Fonsagrada, a rural region whose inhabitants live both near and far from urban civilization; a praise of the distance that crosses the four seasons of the year, whose inevitable passage transforms both the natural environment and the existence of people, a simple, dignified and peaceful existence.

L'Amour vache

March 2023 •French

Fuente Álamo, la caricia del tiempo

January 2001 •Spanish

The camera falls in love with the characters, the landscape and the objects and is installed with the tenderness that inoculates the life of the town itself. The camera is the thousand eyes of the gaze of a rigorous anthropologist, although in love, multiplying so as not to lose detail in 24 hours of people, activity, games, intimacy ... Recording every sound that pierces the oceanic silence of the countryside open.And night comes. And the gazpacho. And the party. You see.

Prime Farmland

August 2020 •English

This documentary film follows farmers and activists fighting together to stop the Indiana Enterprise Center, a mega-sized industrial park planned west of South Bend, Indiana

Indigo Girls: It's Only Life After All

April 2024 •English

An intimate look into the lives of one of the most iconic folk-rock bands in America - the Indigo Girls. With never-before-seen archival and intimate vérité the film dives into the songwriting and storytelling of the music that transformed a generation.

Under the Cold Stars

September 2020 •Italian

Set in the mountains of northeast Italy, this film may be considered an observational documentary about rural life. Although this is undeniably the case, at the same time Under the cold stars can hardly be considered a documentary: the microcosm on which it focuses appears to be a reflection of a broader reality and perhaps a way to deal with the themes of man’s existence and his relationship with animals, nature and, most importantly, with time. As written by Franco Piavoli "it is a film which essentially relies on images and sound, where words themselves are sound and the music of life, of the relentless flow of time."

Modern Life

October 2008 •French

For ten years, Raymond Depardon has followed the lives of farmer living in the mountain ranges. He allows us to enter their farms with astounding naturalness. This moving film speaks, with great serenity, of our roots and of the future of the people who work on the land. This the last part of Depardon's triptych "Profils paysans" about what it is like to be a farmer today in an isolated highland area in France. "La vie moderne" examines what has become of the persons he has followed for ten years, while featuring younger people who try to farm or raise cattle or poultry, come hell or high water.

La ruta de don Quijote

January 1934 •Spanish

A poetic journey through the paths and places of old Castile that were traveled and visited by the melancholic knight Don Quixote of La Mancha and his judicious squire Sancho Panza, the immortal characters of Miguel de Cervantes, which offers a candid depiction of rural life in Spain in the early 1930s and illustrates the first sentence of the first article of the Spanish Constitution of 1931, which proclaims that Spain is a democratic republic of workers of all kind.

Ayrudzi

January 2017 •Armenian

The members of the Ayrudzi troupe travel across various villages of Armenia on horseback and put on folk song and dance concerts and shadow theatre performances for the locals.

Tendre Des Fils

January 2017 •French

The Southern Wind

September 2021 •French

In Canada, the village of Val Gagné is facing a rural exodus. Life seems to be dissolving, the future is uncertain. But these Franco-Ontarian villagers are surprised by a wind of renewal. A wind that will give them hope.

Havakeen Lunch

January 1979 •English

After eighteen years of operating the favourite lunch counter in Manitoba's Interlake region, Ellen and Martin Kihn have retired. A poignant look at the last day, The Kihns, their friends and their customers, demanding rural life and the place the disappearing institution of the country cafe plays in these people's lives. A tribute to the cafes found in small towns.

Old Women's House

November 1957 •Polish

This film is focused on elderly women spending their last years of life in a nursing home in Krakow. The discreet heroine of the film is an elderly lady whose check-in is recorded by the camera. Thanks to this, we gain access to intimate situations, for example a sudden acceleration of the heartbeat in the middle of the night. The camera follows the women around the clock, starting from their morning prayer.

The Pageant

April 2020 •Hebrew

Every year since 2011, a unique beauty contest has been taking place in Haifa. The contestants are female survivors of the Holocaust. In the midst of this flashy spectacle, their personal traumas remain as deep as ever. There are many things about this contest that are controversial: it is organized by the right Zionist organization, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, and the dubious contest itself rises the public indignation of various speakers, including other survivors.

Strudel Sisters

May 2016 •Hungarian

Two elderly sisters share the delicate art of making traditional Hungarian strudel and reveal a deeply personal family story about their mother, who taught them everything they know.

Het Pad van Sien

January 2022 •Dutch

Sien (74) leaves for her hideout on the captivating island of Vlieland. Here she recollects her memories on an old tape recorder of her turbulent life as a mother, life-drawing model, squatter and activist in Amsterdam in the sixties.

SKATEPARK

March 2024 •French

No one has ever seen a skateboarder at this Loiret skatepark. At first glance, this place away from the village is deserted. But if you hang around for a long time, you enter the kingdom of adolescents, an empire without adults where relationships are made and broken with the rhythm of the seasons.

Profils paysans : l'approche

May 2001 •French

The first of a documentary serie about rural France.