Glamour Reel Docs: Dreamland

The Ones Who Stay

Four young Cuban artists choose to stay in Cuba during what has now become the island's largest migration crisis. The One Who Stay is an intimate portrait of those who stay behind, lose loved ones, and shape the identity of a generation at risk of fading away.

Land of Cold

Immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa have chosen to start their lives over north of the 49th parallel. Here, in the vast expanses of Northern Canada, they reflect on the challenges and splendors of a season they’ve never yet experienced: winter.

The Poet of the Castle

A 10-minute portrait of modernist poet and de Andrade’s godfather, Manuel Bandeira, is clear in its affection for it subject, though like many New-Waveish films of the time, depicts the modern urban landscape as an ominous and alienating force.

The Master of Apipucos

Documentary about influential Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre, made in his country house in Apipucos, Pernambuco (Northeast Brazil).

Haida Carver

On Canada's Pacific coast this film finds a young Haida artist, Robert Davidson, shaping miniature totems from argillite, a jet-like stone. The film follows the artist to the island where he finds the stone, and then shows how he carves it in the manner of his grandfather, who taught him the craft.

Zoo

A perfect, fast and hilarious montage. Using images from Artis (Amsterdam Zoo), Bert Haanstra shows that a couple of similarities can be discovered between human and animal. Particularly the manner in which human and ape are confronted with each other, is significant. The images speak for themselves, human voices or commentary is absent. The ironic music of Pim Jacobs does add an extra dimension to the whole. With regards to human and animal Haanstra limits himself for the time being to this short film, recorded with a hidden camera. Later on, in several big films, he would return to this subject.

Plague

Plague: From the Latin word “plaga” meaning 'blow', 'wound'. Meaning: Massive, sudden appearance of living beings of the same species that cause serious damage to animal or plant populations. Abundance of something harmful.

However Odd, But Khokhlova

The film is about Russian silent movie star Alexandra Khokhlova. She was the first Soviet blacklisted actress. In her 90es, Khokhlova acts in this extraordinary documentary: she acts herself. Film critics recognised her appearance here as the last and brilliant role of great actress.

Elemental

40,000 years in the making: Kogonada's video essay created for The Connected Series.

Vocation

Documentary about three outstanding internationally recognized and awarded young professionals: sculptor Levon Tockmadjian, violinist Rouben Aharonian, Chess International Grand Master Rafael Vahanian. The film discovers some aspects of creative process.

My Sky, My Land

Armenian artist Hakob Hakobian repatriated from Egypt. There, far from his native land he was painting portraits trying to find in the faces of his models Armenian features. In Armenia he is painting also landscapes and even just the sky. Working in his studio he tells about his friends-repatriates. They by themselves, or their parents had survived during the genocide of Armenians in Turkey in 1915, and were dispersed all around the world. We see Hakobian's friends back in Armenia at their work: an old farmer with his big family, a driver, a gas-stove expert.

The Doctor

The story of a county-side doctor, extraordinary woman, to whom the villagers turn not only in case of medical help, but also to have a piece of good advice.

Un viernes santo

Lumsden

Lumsden, Saskatchewan is a town of 850 citizens on a river called the Qu'Appelle. In the spring of 1974, the river doubled its volume and threatened to flood the town. The townspeople organized themselves and the whole province stood behind them. Lumsden is the story of an incredible battle against impossible odds.

Azzel

This short documentary looks at Azzel, one of the Niger Department of National Education’s first schools for nomads. The film describes the traditional nomadic lifestyle of the Tuareg and the changes brought about by these government-run boarding schools.

The Girls Who Were Not Afraid

Rebeca and Isabel are two teenage girls living in Ecatepec, Mexico State. They know all about the problems of gender violence and crime that afflict their hometown, but they have a solution.

Galician Caress (of Clay)

This film was reconstructed and completed in 1995 by Javier Codesal for the Filmoteca de Andalucia, from the montage and the sound that Val del Omar had outlined before his death, after having returned to a project abandoned twenty years before with the incorporation of significant additions (above all in the soundtrack). Val del Omar's notes show that, as he typically did, he had other alternative titles in mind, such as "Acariño de la Terra Meiga" (Caress of the Magic Land), "Acariño a nosa terra" (Caress of Our Land), or "Barro de ánimas" (Clay of Souls), and that in the final phase of the unfinished project he wanted to add a second sound channel – following the diaphonic principle, and using electro-acoustic techniques – consisting of ambient material that he intended to record at the first screenings of the film in the very places and to the very people that were its origin: its "clay".

Fire in Castilla (Tactilvision from the Moor of Fright)

A short, experimental documentary featuring sculptures by Alonso de Berruguete and Juan de Juni. Shot within the Valladolid National Museum, the film is an excercise in what Val de Omar called "Tactile vision".

Raja Rammohan Roy

A documentary short about the life and work of social reformer and the Father of the Bengali Renaissance, Raja Ram Mohun Roy

Underwater Guest

Mounting of the film by Dmitry Frolov on the basis of documentary frames of performances of Russian ballet dancers and lifeless margins of the Russian outback. Symbolizes the slowly naked and dying Russian world.