Current Films

After a lengthy and dev­as­tat­ing civil war in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Congo (DRC), the cap­i­tal city of Kin­shasa is rebuild­ing. Through the eyes of three civic work­ers strug­gling to … read more

Every day huge trucks thun­der through the Kyrgyz vil­lage of Barskoon. They are car­ry­ing a deadly freight: cyanide, which is used to extract gold at the nearby Kumtor mine. In … read more

Faced with dimin­ish­ing returns on his har­vest, a poor young farmer in Myan­mar pawns his cow for a moped and seeks alter­na­tive income as a taxi driver. Among his first … read more

It took Mehran Tamadon two years to con­vince four Shia cler­ics to take part in an unusu­al dia­logue. The film­mak­er, who lives in Paris, used his family’s idyl­lic coun­try house … read more

Renowned ethno­graph­ic film­mak­ers David and Judith Mac­Dougall explore the many mean­ings of pho­tog­ra­phy in this pro­found and pen­e­trat­ing doc­u­men­tary. The film focus­es on the pho­tog­ra­phers of Mus­soorie, a hill sta­tion in the Himalayan foothills of north­ern India whose fame has attract­ed tourists since the 19th cen­tu­ry. Through a rich mix­ture of scenes that includes the pho­tog­ra­phers at work, their clients, and both old and new pho­tographs, the film exam­ines pho­tog­ra­phy as art and as social arti­fact -- a medium of real­i­ty, fan­ta­sy, memory, and desire.

“There is now an inter­est in making films that do not simply deliv­er a state­ment about a topic but open it up in richer and more pro­duc­tive ways. These are films that devel­op com­plex net­works of con­nec­tions and rela­tion­ships. In a sense they are meant as struc­tures for gen­er­at­ing mean­ing. That is cer­tain­ly our inten­tion in PHOTO WALLAHS. We want it to be a resource for a range of obser­va­tions, ideas, and pos­si­bil­i­ties.” (David Mac­Dougall, Visual Anthro­pol­o­gy Review)

Four people recount­ing their expe­ri­ences in Egypt: The owner of the largest col­lec­tion of photo neg­a­tives in the coun­try, a Coptic polit­i­cal activist, an elder­ly social­ist writer, and a younger … read more

TALES depicts a coura­geous and honest image of today’s Iran­ian soci­ety and its recent issues, cov­er­ing sub­jects like stu­dents’ and work­ers’ move­ments as well as many others. The char­ac­ters, which … read more

In a Lau­sanne hous­ing block with 80 ten­ants who have multi-lin­gual names that the mail­man will never be able to remem­ber, the renters from many dif­fer­ent nations share four wash­ing … read more

From the 16th cen­tu­ry the Indian vil­lage of Del­wara in south­ern Rajasthan was ruled as a prin­ci­pal­i­ty of the king­dom of Mewar. Its palace, which over­looks the vil­lage, is now … read more