Climbing the Summit

The ocean is the origin of creation. We simply wouldn't be here without it. In this poetic short film, we explore our relationship with it, allowing the ocean to speak to us, while wondering how we can best respond to the questions it makes us ponder. Will we ever be able to change our destructive behavior towards its environment? Perhaps we can only do so by understanding our relationship with it and remembering the deep connection we seem to have forgotten about.

Ella Havelka made history in 2013 by becoming the first Indigenous dancer at the 50-year-old Australian Ballet. In this engaging, MIFF Premiere Fund-supported world premiere, Ella – a descendant of the Wiradjuri people – charts her inspiring journey from growing up in modest circumstances as the only child of a single mother in rural Australia to gaining entry to National Ballet School, then spending formative years with the acclaimed Bangarra Dance Theatre before accepting the invitation of The Australian Ballet's artistic director David McAllister to join one of the world's foremost ballet companies.

The film shows one day from waking up in the morning all the way to waking up again the next morning. The everyday situations that many commercials are made of, the little dramas that they create and solve through the product or service they sell, are stitched together into one day. This is a film about the everyday in (German, or Western-European) society because the commercials are part of the everyday of most people (everyone who watches television) and they depict an ideal image of society. The film abundantly uses repetition as an editing technique, in visual ways as described above, but also because commercials can be read in different ways. For instance, Brat baking foil shows up at the evening dinner sequence, when an ovendish is put on the table, and again later on in the sequence about going out to a classic concert, because the clip has classic music.

Radical resistance in the postwar British Caribbean community, from the 1948 Nationality Act to the 1958 Brixton riots.

During the time of the Stolen Generations, thousands upon thousands of Aboriginal girls were taken from their families and pressed into domestic servitude by the Australian Government. They were supposedly employed as servants, but with total control over their movements, wages and living conditions, their lives all too frequently became an inescapable cycle of abuse, rape and enslavement, with consequences that echo powerfully to this day. Recounting the stories of five of these women – Rita, Violet and the three Wenberg sisters – Servant or Slave is a commanding piece of first-person testimony to a dark and unacknowledged corner of Australian history. Shot with admirable craft and humanity by documentarian Steven McGregor (Croker Island Exodus, MIFF 2012), Servant or Slave is a work of great sadness and urgency, bringing to forceful life the human tragedy of Australia's Indigenous history in the unadorned words of those who lived it.

Documentary film written by music critic Artemiy Troitskiy. It depicts the variety of Soviet and Baltic rock music and offers its viewer an idea that all this forbidden music is not really dangerous for society. Featuring music bands: "Круиз" (Tambov), "In Spe" (Estonia), "Новый мир" (Estonian hard-rock), "Великие Луки" (punk-rock from Tallinn). Moscow music scene represented by: "Тупые", "Нюанс", "Звуки Му". Leningrad music scene: "Джунгли", "Алиса". Also appearing: "Воплі Відоплясова" from Kiev and "Антис" from Lithuania. Not credited: Roman Neumoev with "Инструкция по выживанию" and Oleg Sudakov with "Гражданская оборона".

Parents talk about their gay and lesbian children, and how they came to accept their lifestyle.

What is the difference between a story and a good story? In this short documentary, ten of the greatest screenwriters in Brazil answer this and other questions, guiding us through the universe of creative writing and all its possibilities.

Sing! is a 2001 American short documentary film about the Los Angeles Children's Chorus, directed by Freida Lee Mock. How do squeaky-voiced 8 year olds become amazing singers? Sing! tells the story of how a community group, amid severe cutbacks in the arts, is able to develop a children's chorus that is one of the best in the country. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

The Numbers Start with the River is a 1971 American short documentary film about small-town life in Iowa. Produced by Donald Wrye for the United States Information Agency, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

The Invisible Subtitler is an independent documentary about the use of subtitles in cinema and the life of subtitlers themselves, focusing on the economic issues faced by the subtitlers and how they are currently invisible in the globalized business of the film industry.