Blood Diamonds

Filomena Lopes recalls the first moments of Angola's independence. A story fictionalised through photographic archives. A personal investigation into the director's own family history.

Between 1947 and 1951, more than 80 000 Greek men, women and children were deported to the isle of Makronissos (Greece) in reeducation camps created to ‘fight the spread of Communism’. Among those exiles were a number of writers and poets, including Yannis Ritsos and Tassos Livaditis. Despite the deprivation and torture, they managed to write poems which describe the struggle for survival in this world of internment. These texts, some of them buried in the camps, were later found. «Like Lions of stone at the gateway of night» blends these poetic writings with the reeducation propaganda speeches constantly piped through the camps’ loudspeakers. Long tracking shots take us on a trance-like journey through the camp ruins, interrupted along the way by segments from photographic archives. A cinematic essay, which revives the memory of forgotten ruins and a battle lost.

Documentary series which uses film and eyewitness accounts from both sides of the conflict that divided Spain in the years leading up to World War Two, also placing it in its international context.

THE LANGUAGE YOU CRY IN tells an amazing scholarly detective story that searches for -and finds- meaningful links between African Americans and their ancestral past. It bridges hundreds of years and thousands of miles from the Gullah people of present-day Georgia back to 18th century Sierra Leone.

When Lena and Ulli start the engine of their old Land Rover, Lady Terés, they have a plan: to drive from Hamburg to South Africa in six months. What they don't know yet is that they won't ever get there. Two totally different characters, jammed together in two square meters of space for almost two years, they experience what it really means to travel: leaving your comfort zone for good.

On April 12th, 1864, at an insignificant little fort, several hundred black Union soldiers fought a hopeless battle against a Confederate general who was destined to become the first Grand Wizard of the KKK. This battle had a domino effect, trickling down the long road of history. Today, it is just a footnote in most history books; however, no other event of the Civil War has had such a profound impact on the twentieth century, especially on American culture.

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.

In the early 1980s, at the beginning of what would become a 12-year-long civil war, El Salvador's talented football team was one national institution upon which both the left and the right could agree. When the team pulled off a stunning 1-0 upset against Mexico and qualified to compete in the 1982 World Cup, it was a high point for the tiny country's national pride. Unfortunately, the team's Cinderella story devolved into a nightmarish farce.

Concerning Violence is based on newly discovered, powerful archival material documenting the most daring moments in the struggle for liberation in the Third World, accompanied by classic text from The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.

Shot over one night in the loud, dimly lit printing press, this is the story of the men whose labour lies behind Sierra Leone's oldest daily newspaper.

In Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, a group of friends lives on the streets. They call themselves the Freetown Streetboys, even though there are some women among them as well. Suley, Lama, David, Alfred, Shero and Sarah have all faced enormous physical and psychological challenges, and have been abandoned by the world around them. Without commentary and in poetic, cinematic images, the camera records the dark environment that they inhabit. The group shares their heartrending stories of the precarious nature of life in this complex country. But there is also room for everyday personal struggles, such as starting relationships, how to bring up children (or not), and sex.