AEMS is happy to announce that eleven new DVDs have been added to our documentary film collection.
Browse the new titles below. For more information about each film, including whether a film has been reviewed in News & Reviews, click for links to our database. To borrow one of the titles, please email our librarian, Kristin, at aems@illinois.edu or proceed to our catalog if you have a library account.
Ai Weiwei the Fake Case
A film by Andreas Johnsen. 2014. 89 minutes.
After 81 days of solitary detention world famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is put under house arrest. He suffers from sleeping disorder and memory loss, 18 cameras are monitoring his studio and home, police agents follow his every move, and heavy restrictions from the Kafkaesque Chinese authorities weigh him down. Journalists, the art world and his family all want a piece of him and on top of that he is met with a gigantic lawsuit from the Chinese government, soon to be named ‘The Fake Case’. Ai Weiwei is shaken, but during the year on probation he steadily finds new ways to provoke and challenge the mighty powers of the Chinese authorities in his fight for human rights. Ai Weiwei strongly believes that China is ready for change. And he will do everything to make it happen.
Bitter Seeds
Directed by Micha X. Peled. 2012. 88 minutes.
Bitter Seeds examines the epidemic of suicides among India’s cotton farmers who are deeply in debt after switching to genetically modified seeds.
Embrace
A film by Dan Smyer Yu and Pema Tashi. 2011. 55 minutes.
Through the narratives of a father and a son, two tantric yogis of two generations, this film illustrates both the transcendental and inter-sentient dimensions of Tibetan sacred sites and of their ecological significance. It documents a ritualized relationship of people and the place of their dwelling and natural surroundings.
Memory of Forgotten War
A film by Deann Borshay Liem and Ramsay Liem. 2013. 37 minutes.
Unknown or forgotten by most Americans, the Korean War divided a people with several millenniums of shared history. Memory of Forgotten War conveys the human costs of military conflict through deeply personal accounts of four Korean American survivors whose experiences and memories embrace the full circle of the war: its outbreak and the day-to struggle for survival, separation from family members across the DMZ, the aftermath of a devastated Korean peninsula, and immigration to the United States. Each person reunites with relatives in North Korea conveying beyond words the meaning of four decades of family loss. Their stories belie the notion that war ends for civilians when the guns are silenced an foreshadow the future of countless others displaced by ongoing military conflict today.
The Mosuo Sisters
Directed by Marlo Poras and Yu Ying Wu Chou. 2013. 80 minutes.
The Mosuo Sisters follows Juma and Latso, young women from one of the last remaining matriarchal societies, as they are thrust into the worldwide economic downturn and lose their jobs. Determined to keep their family out of poverty, one sister sacrifices her dreams and stays home to farm, while the other leaves to try her luck in the city.
Returning Souls
Directed by Tai-Li Hu. 2012. 85 minutes.
In this documentary film by Tai-Li Hu of Academia Sinica, Taiwan, a unique case of repatriation unfolds as the villagers of the matrilineal Amis tribe in Taiwan recover the ancestral souls residing in the pillars of their ancestral house, toppled by a typhoon and now on display in a museum. Bringing back the ancestral souls, begins the difficult reconstruction of a new ancestral house.
Somewhere Between
A film by Linda Goldstein Knowlton. 2012. 88 minutes.
Of the roughly 80,000 girls who have been adopted from China since 1989, a decade after China implemented its One Child Policy, the film intimately follows four teenagers: Haley, Jenna, Anna and Fang. These four wise-beyond-their-years yet typical American Teens reveal a heartbreaking sense of self-awareness as they attempt to answer the uniquely human question, "Who am I?" Issues of belonging, race and gender are brought to life through these articulate subjects, who approach life with honesty and open hearts.
Surviving the Tsunami ‒ My Atomic Aunt
A film by Kyoko Miyake. 2013. 52 minutes.
Film director Kyoko Miyake remembered Namie, a fishing village ravaged by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, as her childhood paradise. Revisiting her family’s hometown after 10 years abroad, Miayke’s multilayered documentary examines the disaster’s profound personal, social and environmental impact.
What's for Dinner?
A film by Jian Yi. 2013. 29 minutes.
Meat is now central to billions of people's daily needs. The environmental, climate, public health, ethical, and human impacts are enormous and remain largely undocumented. What's for Dinner? explores this terrain in fast-globalizing China through the eyes of a retired pic farmer in rural Jiangxi province; a vegan restauranteur in Beijing; a bullish young livestock entrepreneur; and residents of the province known as the "world's factory" contending with water polluted by wastes from pig factory farms. They personalize the vast trends around them, in a country on the cusp of becoming a world power. Given that every fifth person in the world in Chinese, what the Chinese eat and how China produces its food, affects not only China but the world too.
Tales of the Waria
Directed by Kathy Huang. 2011. 56 minutes.
Indonesia is home to the world’s largest Muslim population. It is also home to a community of transgendered individuals known as warias, biological men who live openly as women. In this eye-opening PBS documentary, four warias search for romance and intimacy. Along the way, they encounter unique obstacles that force them to make extraordinary sacrifices to keep the ones they love.
To The Light
Directed by Yuanchen Liu. 2012. 69 minutes.
To the Light delves into the hopes and struggles of the mining families of Sichuan, in western China. The father of two, Luo originally became a coal miner to pay the fine for violating China’s One Child Policy. The mines are notoriously dangerous and thousands are killed every year. Going deep underground, the film exposes the perils faced by these miners, the slim rewards, and dire consequences when things go wrong. In spite of the risks, the working poor continue to flock to the mines, unable to heed the warning that earning a living wage may also mean dying for it.