Elders & Family: The Family Meeting

Never a Backward Step

This feature documentary is a profile of Canadian press tycoon Roy Thomson, whose single-minded attention to business brought him riches, power, and even a baronetcy in England. A native of Timmins, Ontario, Thomson had a tremendous career as publisher, television magnate, financier, and owner of many newspapers, including leading London dailies. The film is a frank study of an equally frank man.

Da Terra

Emília Pedro e Fernanda Jorge revisit childhood memories to identify over 70 land parcels inherited from their father. As physical traces fade, memory and oral tradition become the only way to 'see' what is no longer visible.

Alma Anciana

Three juxtaposing stories taking place in Portugal, Austria and Cuba create an intimate and poetic portrait of the daily lives and struggles of the elderly in an unstable world, seen through the eyes of their grandchildren.

Some Kind of Heaven

Behind the gates of a palm-tree-lined fantasyland, three residents and one interloper at America’s largest retirement community strive to find happiness.

Boca Fechada

Babies at 50

In this revealing one-hour special, we look at the lives of older mums and women desperate to become mothers - at any age. Medical experts say that it is now possible for a woman of 80 to have a baby but is it morally and ethically correct? This heart-rending program looks at the difficult choices facing women who want to become mothers late in life and explores the desperate measures they take in order to fulfill their dream.

Pogoniskos

A trip to Pogoniskos, a Greek village in the northern borders of Epirus. Stories about war, but also about fairies. Without a purpose and without an end. Our grandfather was the narrator, while our grandmother took care of us. Their return to their roots made our own journey unique.

Blijven Gaan

Five seniors, the eldest is 91 years old, train together in a gym in Rotterdam to keep fit. But the body falters and their environment is getting smaller and smaller. By doing sports, the seniors support each other: origin and social status disappear. The gym fraternizes and gives the elderly unprecedented pleasure. Despite the fanatical sports, the decline is unstoppable. This documentary also shows the seniors alone at home and the confrontational fight against the body that is becoming stiffer, with the realization that that battle is always lost in the long run.

The Voice Beneath the Sea

A documentary about the laying of the first transatlantic telephone line.

FLOAT!

With depth, intimacy, and humor, FLOAT! captures filmmaker Azza Cohen's magnetic grandma’s life-affirming journey learning to swim at 82, inspiring audiences to defy societal expectations of aging and to boldly look forward at every stage.

Celling Out

Documentary exploring the history and cultural impact of cellphones featuring scientists, cultural critics, and filmmakers. Produced for the "Cellular" DVD.

A Step Apart

Some experts say the American family isn't working anymore. In this production, seven step families bare their hearts and tell what it takes to make a step family work. A must-see for any step family members.

I Bought a Time Machine

Yeon Park orders a time machine on eBay for her father’s birthday, seeing it as an opportunity to discover a few truths about her family’s past. Yeon responds to her father’s private prints through another distribution of the sensible. Fun and intimate, I Bought a Time Machine uses technology like a mediation necessary for communication.

The Castle

Having worked as a housekeeper all her life, Justina inherits from her former employer a mansion in the middle of the Argentinian pampas. Under one condition: she must never leave. In this modern fairy tale, Justina and her daughter Alexia will face the challenges of keeping that promise alive.

Cabbage

An intimate work made in collaboration with the filmmaker’s family, Cabbage re-frames language and explores personal agency within an ableist paradigm. It centralises her brothers' digital and rhythmic writings using eye tracking technology, and her mother’s reflections on a life lived having to prove her son’s humanity.

Claes

Claes is a pensioner whose greatest wish is to finally make it to the nearby cinema. What if it rains? What if his sweater doesn’t match the shirt he is wearing? It's probably better to stay in the safety of his own home and switch on the television. In the total isolation of his solitary life, and out of an entirely unfounded fear of stepping outside his flat, Claes has turned his tidy home into a prison. This is a film that demonstrates what loneliness can do to a person.

In the Garden of Sounds

«Nel giardino dei suoni» («In The Garden of Sounds») is a touching, poetic exploration of the relationship between mind, body and sound, and a cinematic journey to the borders of communication. Nicola Bellucci tells the extraordinary story of Wolfgang Fasser, a blind musician and soundscape artist who works with severely handicapped children, helping them to find their place in a world not made for them. On his own way into the darkness, Fasser discovered the world of sounds, a parallel universe to our visual world. His far-reaching explorations of sound’s effect on mind and body led him to the field of music therapy.

Transmitting Baba

An ocean stood between Baba and her grandson, so she did the only thing she could: she became a whale and swam to him.

Koko: A Talking Gorilla

A documentary that follows Dr. Penny Patterson's current scientific study of Koko, a gorilla who communicates through American Sign Language.

The Brave Class

Three college students start a social experiment to prove that reality changes according to the words we use to describe it. Through research, activist actions, and artistic interventions, they analyze the importance of language in the way we understand the world. The documentary includes analysis from more than 20 international experts and leaders in the fields of political communication and information.