São Paulo: Uma Cidade Segregada

Uma Nova Onda de Liberdade: A História do Madame Satã

In operation to this day, the mansion known as Madame Satan began its activities in 1983, and in the 1980s was the main hub of avant-garde artists of the city, from which came out disparate and essential names for music, performing arts, visual arts, journalism, photo and video of Sao Paulo, as well as mythical characters of the night of São Paulo who made history with their absurd and impactful performances.

Radiant City

Since the end of World War II, one of kind of urban residential development has dominate how cities in North America have grown, the suburbs. In these artificial neighborhoods, there is a sense of careless sprawl in an car dominated culture that ineffectually tries to create the more organically grown older communities. Interspersed with the comments of various experts about the nature of suburbia

Voice of Freedom

On Easter Sunday, 1939, contralto Marian Anderson stepped up to a microphone in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Inscribed on the walls of the monument behind her were the words “all men are created equal.” Barred from performing in Constitution Hall because of her race, Anderson would sing for the American people in the open air. Hailed as a voice that “comes around once in a hundred years” by maestros in Europe and widely celebrated by both white and black audiences at home, her fame hadn’t been enough to spare her from the indignities and outright violence of racism and segregation.

Skin of Glass

A poetic and personal cinematic meditation on displacement and loss, SKIN OF GLASS follows filmmaker Denise Zmekhol’s journey after discovering that her late father's most celebrated work as an architect, a modernist glass skyscraper in the heart of São Paulo, Brazil, has become occupied by hundreds of homeless families.

The Other Side of the Postcard

The Favela Pacification Program was launched in 2008 to reduce crime and drug trafficking in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In April 2015 however, police shot and killed 10-year old Eduardo in Complexo do Alemão, causing uproar in that community. Alemão and other pacified communities began to realise that the program had become the very thing it was designed to destroy. Taking place in the build to the 2016 Olympic Games, this is the side of Rio that you have never seen before.

Everything Will Be

Sundance award-winning director Julia Kwan’s documentary Everything Will Be captures the subtle nuances of a culturally diverse neighbourhood—Vancouver’s once thriving Chinatown—in the midst of transformation. The community’s oldest and newest members offer their intimate perspectives on the shifting landscape as they reflect on change, memory and legacy. Night and day, a neon sign that reads "EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT" looms over Chinatown. Everything is going to be alright, indeed, but the big question is for whom?

Tokio - Die Stadtkultur von morgen

Tokyo, the largest city in the world, wants to create a new urban culture. It is returning to the urban traditions and building techniques of the small town. The aim is to create a new balance between megacity and small-scale garden city. Tokyo's architects are the driving force. They want to create a new urban culture with revolutionary ideas.

Little White Lie

Lacey Schwartz grew up in a typical upper-middle-class Jewish household in Woodstock, NY, with loving parents and a strong sense of her Jewish identity - despite the open questions from those around her about how a white girl could have such dark skin. She believes her family's explanation that her looks were inherited from her dark-skinned Sicilian grandfather. But when her parents abruptly split, her gut starts to tell her something different. At age of 18, she finally confronts her mother and learns the truth: her biological father was not the man who raised her, but a black man named Rodney with whom her mother had had an affair.

Acasă, My Home

In the wilderness of the Bucharest Delta, nine children and their parents lived in perfect harmony with nature for 20 years – until they are chased out and forced to adapt to life in the big city.

Smudge

This short documentary follows three Indigenous women as they practice ancestral forms of worship: drumming, singing, and using sweetgrass. These ancient spiritual traditions may at first seem at odds with urban life, but to Indigenous people in Canada who are used to praying in natural settings, the whole world is sacred space.

Changing Landscapes

A sophisticated and beautifully constructed account of landscape change in and around Paris in the early 1960s. The film raises complex issues about the meaning and experience of modern landscapes and the enigmatic characteristics of features such as canals, pylons and deserted factories. Rohmer also explores the role of landscape within different traditions of modern art and design and refers to specific architects, artists and engineers.

I Love This Dirty Town

An authored film by Margaret Drabble about the rise of the suburbs and the failure of city planning.

Dancing with the Devil

Rio de Janeiro. September, 2008. Three men stalk the gloomy back-alleys of the city's notorious slums. Spiderman, a 28-year-old drug lord, embarks on a routine patrol through the shadowy streets of Coréia, the sprawling slum he controls. Inspector Leonardo Torres, a muscle-bound operative from Rio's drug squad, inches through the alleys of another shantytown, shots ringing out around him. And Pastor Dione, an evangelical preacher intent on ending Rio's drug conflict, trawls the slums for lost souls. With unprecedented access to some of Rio's most wanted men, Dancing with the Devil in the City of God tells the story of Rio's drug war through the eyes of three men locked into one of the bloodiest urban conflicts on earth. Written by Jon Blair and Tom Phillips

O Tigre e a Gazela

The faces, the gestures and speech of beggars, madmen and revelers passing through the streets of São Paulo. The sounds and images are illustrated with Frantz Fanon extracts.

Tokyo Ride

Revisiting the genre of the road movie in a very diaristic and personal way, the film takes us on board architect Ryue Nishizawa’s vintage Alfa Romeo (Giulia) for a day long wandering in the streets of Tokyo.

The Beginning of Life 2: Outside

Genuine connections between children and nature can revolutionize our future. But is this discovery still possible in the world's major urban centers? The new chapter of "The Beginning of Life" reveals the transformative power of this concept.

Detroit Lives

Before its economic decline, Detroit was a major metropolis. Now, in the 2000s, the young people of the Motor City are making it their own DIY paradise where rules are second to passion and creativity. Johnny Knoxville tours the city to meet some of the people who are creating a new Detroit on their own terms, against real adversity.

Ayahuasca, Expansão da Consciência

Saigon, U.S.A.

Since the fall of Saigon in 1975, Vietnamese refugees have built the largest Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam, in Orange County, California. In 1999, "Little Saigon" burst onto the national stage when a store owner displayed a poster of Ho Chi Minh, triggering protests by Vietnamese Americans struggling to reconcile their past demons with their present lives. Saigon, U.S.A. uses this moment to examine this community's changing identity and growing empowerment.

Favela Government

Brazil's "Red Command" drug cartel is considered a plague by the government. But for the people of the favelas they control, Red Command *is* the government. They’re the de facto leadership of the area. The gang has taken over the role of the authorities in their shanty towns, where the state has long abandoned them. Away Days got special access to the Rio favelas, hanging out out with young foot-soldiers, speaking to commanders, and seeing how civilians live between the gangs and the equally violent police militias.