A ghost ride through Finnish TV archives of the 1960s grazes the moon landing, American TV shows, a war in Africa. But how to connect with the world when dancing is forbidden?!
The anonymous narrator is a kind of web-adventurous flâneuse, neurotic and endlessly curious. A disturbance in the proprioception, which is the ability to sense the position, movement and location of the body and its parts, makes her perceive the world in a new way. Seemingly random anecdotes found on the internet and instructions from her cryptic physiotherapist start to come together in surprising ways. The found material forms a mosaic that reflects a world full of gazes, rules and technologies that separate us. Lines from the present and the distant past take our narrator to the 1960s, where medieval dance bans, televised wars, lost bones, space utopias and American TV stars collide. This film reflects how we can be and live in the world within ourselves and with each other. With those who are near and with those who are far. Along with all this, the film recommends dancing to everyone.
The formation and history of Lake Baikal in Siberia are re-imagined with hand-made animation, featuring the voice of a Buryat woman who can still recall some words in her endangered Buryat-Mongolian language.
Celestial Queer: The Life, Work and Wonder of James MacSwain
Celestial Queer: The Life, Work and Wonder of James MacSwain
Sue Johnson, Eryn Foster
DOK Film Market Exclusives
Documentary Film
Canada
2023
72 minutes
English
International Premiere open
Synopsis
Celestial Queer is a 72-minute feature documentary celebrating James MacSwain, a beloved queer artist, animator and gay rights activist. Born and raised in the “backwater” of Atlantic Canada, MacSwain has been making ground-breaking experimental films, animations and provocative art performances for more than half a century.
Through a combination of playful verité and rarely-seen footage from his archive, Celestial Queer accompanies MacSwain and a revolving cast of characters as he revisits everything from the sites of some of his most recognised works to the rocky tidal shores of Nova Scotia. The film also includes rarely-seen footage from the famous 1984 rooftop “Phallus Performance” during which MacSwain was almost arrested and charged with obscenity. New work has been made specifically in conjunction with the film, while also including restorations of over a dozen of MacSwain's 16mm films.
Jim's effusive character, prolific work, and community organising have inspired generations of artists to be fearlessly themselves. Celestial Queer now introduces audiences to one of Canada's best-kept secrets – an artist who is effortlessly charming, engagingly prolific, and subversive to his surrealist core.
22 years after they established the women's organisation Machsom Watch, its founders reveal what really happened at the checkpoints between Israel and the West Bank.
22 years after they established the women's organisation Machsom Watch, its founders reveal what really happened at the checkpoints between Israel and the West Bank between 2002 and 2012. This is the story of a group of courageous women who dedicated their lives to safeguarding human rights and peace.
The film is built on 9 short stories of the women who participate in the film. Each one of them is adding a personal view of the daily routine of the checkpoint that together crate a very powerful and moving document.
Truck driver Abu Husain spends endless hours in Qatar in a self-contained world of standing, waiting, and tenaciously moving trucks on the fringes of society.
Truck driver Abu Husain, like many guest workers in Qatar, spends endless hours in a self-contained world of standing, waiting, and tenaciously moving trucks on the fringes of society.
In southern California, date palms from the Middle East grow, tales from One Thousand and One Nights are told and a volcanic eruption is expected. A document of enchanting simultaneity.
Along the San Andreas fault line in Southern California, indigenous palm trees and date palms imported from the Middle East flourish. The people who tend to them reflect a landscape of frictions and affections shaped over generations by agriculture, luxury real estate, and border politics. Like the infinity storytelling of The 1001 Nights, stories fold into dreams and back into stories, a constellation of voices settle over mountains and into the earth. Intertwining colour 16mm with textural black and white film hand processed with the dates leftover from harvest and plants native to the valley, Feet in Water, Head on Fire is a sensory, polyvocal evocation of place.
Two best friends are drifting through the city of Montreal. They come from a small Inuit settlement in northern Canada and share the same heritage, language and longings.
Kathy and Teresa are best friends. Far from their home village, a small Inuit settlement in northern Canada, the two young women share a tender relationship in the city of Montreal.
14-year-old Kiki is sentenced to juvenile prison for violence and drug offences. His sister convinces the authorities to give him one last chance: a therapeutic trip to the desert.
After being kicked out of every available youth-at-risk framework, and after facing criminal charges for drug trafficking and violence, Kiki is about to enter a youth prison by court order. Gal, his sister, manages to convince the authorities to give Kiki one last chance. Gal is a caregiver for youth-at-risk in a framework that takes youth on experiential, therapeutic field trips through the desert. Gal and her co-workers take Kiki on a field trip to the desert. She is determined to succeed where everyone else has failed. Will the journey enable Kiki to grow and to take responsibility for his own fate?
106 timepieces disappeared from Jerusalem's Museum of Islamic Art in the biggest art heist in Israel's history. 40 years later, the enigmatic thief's widow tells their story.
It all started with a watch, or more precisely, with over 106 rare European timepieces. One piece alone, made especially for the ill-fated French queen Marie Antoinette, was valued at a whopping $30 million. On a quiet Friday evening in 1983, the collection disappeared from Jerusalem's Museum of Islamic Art. It wasn't seen again for a quarter of a century. The biggest art theft in Israel's history left the police scratching their heads. When the timepieces gradually resurfaced a quarter of a century later, the enigmatic thief was dead. His widow, Nili Shamrat from LA, tells director Nili Tal their story for the first time among policemen, lawyers and curators.
In an attempt to understand the stamp of genius and logical madness of her stepfather, Michal goes on a journey with personal videos that explore America's most notorious criminals.
Michal opens a cardboard box, containing a rare private video tape archive of her conversations with some of the most psychopathic criminals in America – Charles Manson, Richard Ramirez, and others. What motivated her to enter this dark world?
We would find out that she is only trying to understand the abuse she herself suffered.
In an unusual and courageous way, Michal tries to get answers to questions she did not dare ask her father, Motke Kedar, a genius and a psychopath in his own right, who was involved in one of the most infamous scandals of the Israeli Mossad.
In 2010, a man was found dead in one of Israel's maximum security prisons. When the story broke, the suicide of this anonymous Mossad agent revealed the agency's failures.
On December 15, 2010, a prisoner was found dead in his cell at one of Israel's maximum security prisons. The prisoner had hung himself despite being under heavy surveillance 24/7. None of the prison's guards knew his real name or his crime. They knew him only as Prisoner X.
Ka.tzetnik lived a life of secrecy, becoming a myth. Rumours suggested that he wrote all night, donning his Auschwitz uniform and that he never left his house despite his books selling millions.
The film explores the writer's personal odyssey in coping with his trauma through the unconventional path of LSD.
Adam’s body becomes a mirror of his soul, making every grievance visible to everyone through strange deformations. A brilliant insight into the mind of a 15-year-old boy.
Adam is a 15-year-old teenager who has the strange peculiarity of having a body that changes, based on the mockery and negative comments he receives from those around him. The accumulation of its physical changes, only adds a layer of complexity to those already present in his life. The summer when Ange, his grandmother, dies, he has to work to develop his autonomy. He maintains the huge house of the family of Kevin Brousseau, a haughty teenager who left on summer vacation. He also has to maintain Mr. Bibeau's lawn, but he can no longer care for himself, because of his heart operation. In addition to his strange body which deforms without end, Adam must learn to juggle summer jobs, his friendship with Timothée, the desire that he feels towards Jeanne, the intimidation he suffers from Glazer's gang, his natural clumsiness, the family complications with his sister Karine, self-discovery and several other facets of teenage life that can be as difficult as they can be beautiful.
DOK Industry is realised with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA Programme of the European Union, the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM) and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media upon a Decision of the German Bundestag.