The Trouble I've Seen
1976 · 10m · Documentary
A shot-on-video look at three impoverished Black communities in rural Georgia in 1976 - America's bicentennial, interspersing photos with footage and voices of those in their communities.
More Like This
24 Hour Sunset
2023 · ★ 8
This film portrait of a new kind is a deep dive into the heart of the art scene of Los Angeles. From a ride on Sunset Boulevard in a convertible car at the sunrise, going through a lunch with the art dealer Patrick Painter and a visit to Peter Shire's studio... Having a beer and a deep talk with Paul McCarthy, calling Raymond Pettibon stuck in New-York or searching for Ed Ruscha in bars.... From Ariana Papademetropoulos opening exhibition to the visit of a car wreck with Umar Raschid... From the old house of Cary Grant to the dodgy underground of Downtown passing through Eugenio Lopez's private art collection on the Hollywood hills... Through intimate conversation, 24 Hour Sunset gives us access to the thoughts, inspirations and practice of legendary artists, world famous art dealers, appraised curators and collectors, as well as the young up coming scene of artists living in Los Angeles.
More info →
Black Pete – No, You're It
1980
A drama-documentary film about the fatal effect of poor living conditions on health – the so-called "social inheritance." The principal characters in the film are two fourteen or fifteen-year-old children, Carl and Hanne. Covering a hundred-year period and drawing on case stories recorded by actual hospital staff, the film illustrates a number of variations of "the same old story."
More info →
Bangla Surf Girls
2021 · ★ 8.2
Three working-class teenage girls in a port city in Bangladesh escape daily hardships and stifling family lives by riding waves on their surfboards and grabbing hold of the fleeting and thrilling sense of freedom that brings.
More info →
Come Back, Sebastiana
1953 · ★ 5.6
The story of a poor girl who leaves her starving family and sheep for a more prosperous village. Her grandfather finds her and tries to convince her to return to her home.
More info →
The Enigma of HeDonism
2021
The Enigma of Hedonism are profile documentaries that tell the life of Heri Dono. His attitude and view as an artist that transcends canvas and time has had an important impact on artists and artists in other fields in their work. Not only that, his exploration of the various and types of working mediums and the experience of participating in various prestigious exhibitions in the world has made him dubbed as the greatest artist of Indonesia today.
More info →
The Charcoal People
2000 · ★ 8
This deeply human documentary examines the subject of environmental destruction, highlighting the impoverished migrant workers who are chopping down the Amazon rainforest to create charcoal for pig iron production used primarily in the automobile industry. The film examines the children and elders and their daily lives and work as they burn timber in igloo-looking huts, their bodies charred gray for $2 a day, struggling to survive.
More info →
Out of the Ashes
2010
Against a backdrop of war and poverty, Out of the Ashes, traces the extraordinary journey of a team of young, Afghan men, as they chase a seemingly impossible dream, shedding new light on a nation beyond that of burqas, bombs, drugs and devastation. This feature-length documentary follows the Afghan cricket team in their quest against the odds to qualify for the 2011 World Cup, premiering at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on 17th June. Backed by BBC Storyville and Oscar-winning director and cricket fan, Sam Mendes, 'Out of the Ashes' follows the squad over two years as they go from playing in their shalwar-kameezes on rubble pitches to batting their way around the globe and up the international league tables.
More info →
American Hollow
1999 · ★ 6.2
This documentary follows the lives of the Bowling family as they fight to survive in dirt-poor Appalachia. Matriarch Iree has given birth to 13 children, but only two have left to seek better lives in Ohio while the rest have married and started their own impoverished families near home. Uneducated and unskilled, all are unemployed, and domestic violence and alcoholism pose serious problems. The filmmakers explore the family's relationships through interviews and footage of their daily lives.
More info →
Made in Serbia
2005 · ★ 7.2
MADE IN SERBIA portrays the Serbian video porn industry by presenting four life stories of domestic porn actors. Unlike their Western counterparts, these people work in porn industry in order to survive and obtain basic life supplies. The film follows the young hot shot porn star who travels to a shoot in Hungary, a bisexual actor who visits hometown, a 40 year old actress that invites her husband into the porn business and a peasant who became a local legend thanks to working in porn industry. The whole story is framed within one young man's search for the long lost girl who appears to have entered the world of porn. He shoots the documentary in order to find her.
More info →
Houses of Poverty
1936 · ★ 5.8
Henri Storck’s militant short on Depression-era Belgium, set in Walloon slums on the outskirts of a prosperous city. Staged vignettes expose substandard housing, overcrowding, and numbed survival through claustrophobic, frame-filling images; a coda on slum clearance and “garden city” rehousing offers guarded hope.
More info →Stars
2007 · ★ 7
Shot almost in its entirety in the corridors of the Villa 21, one of Buenas Aires' most well-known shanty-towns, Estrellas (Stars) revolves around the work of Julio Arrieta, who is both a theatre director and is responsible for providing shooting locations for those directores wishing to film in an Argentine ghetto.
More info →