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Roses in December

The film begins with the exhumation of four American women tortured, raped, and murdered by the right-wing government of El Salvador on December 2, 1980. The women — Dorothy Kazel, an Ursuline; Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Maryknoll mission sisters; and Jean Donovan, a young laywoman from Cleveland — were providing food, shelter, medical care and burial to the poor. They were targeted for assassination by a death squad within the U.S.-supported Salvadoran military as part of a policy of suppressing the poor and “liberation theology.” The award-winning documentary focuses primarily on the life of Jean Donovan through archival news footage, interviews, home movies, and diary readings.

Roses in December

7.0 1982
Shift Change

This documentary looks at the microchip, an American invention exploited by the Japanese that caused a second industrial revolution. The devastating effect on millions of human lives is related through interviews with some of the newly jobless in Hamilton, Ontario. Using the example of Japan for contrast, host James Laxer demonstrates that the cost of technological advances need not be so high if their effects are foreseen and planned for. Part 2 of the series Reckoning: The Political Economy of Canada.

Shift Change

7.0 1986
The Wedding Camels

Set among the Turkana pastoralists of northwestern Kenya, the film chronicles the marriage negotiations between Lorang’s daughter Akai and Kongu, a friend and age-mate of her father. Much of the film focuses on extended discussions over the bridewealth—goats and camels to be given to the bride’s family—which draw in relatives from both sides and grow increasingly tense. Filmed in an observational style without narration, the documentary records the negotiations and social dynamics that shape the marriage arrangement.

The Wedding Camels

6.0 1980
Video Visits: In Love with Paris

Journey to Paris, the City of Light. Marvel at the panorama from the top of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. Walk down the Champs-Élysées from l'Etoile to Place de la Concorde. Go inside Maxim's and Tour d'Argent to experience an elegant French meal, then pause at Dux magots for a cafe au lait. Stroll along the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore and window shop at Dior and Lanvin. Enter the Louvre to view Winged VIctory, Venus de Milo and Mona Lisa. Glide down the Seine on a bateau mouche, past Notre Dame and the Ile St. Louis. Zoom through traffic in a Parisian taxi and ride the Metro. Climb to Montmartre, Sacre Coeur and Place du Tertre. Take a side trip to Versailles and be dazzled by the Hall of Mirrors.

Video Visits: In Love with Paris

NR 1986
N!ai, The Story of a !Kung Woman

This film provides a broad overview of Ju/'hoan life, both past and present, and an intimate portrait of N!ai, a Ju/'hoan woman who in 1978 was in her mid-thirties. N!ai tells her own story, and in so doing, the story of Ju/'hoan life over a thirty year period. "Before the white people came we did what we wanted," N!ai recalls, describing the life she remembers as a child: following her mother to pick berries, roots, and nuts as the season changed; the division of giraffe meat; the kinds of rain; her resistance to her marriage to /Gunda at the age of eight; and her changing feelings about her husband when he becomes a healer. As N!ai speaks, the film presents scenes from the 1950's that show her as a young girl and a young wife. The uniqueness of N!ai may lie in its tight integration of ethnography and history. While it portrays the changes in Ju/'hoan society over thirty years, it never loses sight of the individual, N!ai.

N!ai, The Story of a !Kung Woman

6.8 1981
Paris-Dakar Rally 1985

The Paris-Dakar Rally is one of the last great motorsport adventures, travelling thousands of miles through the most challenging terrain on Earth. In 1985, desert heat, car-breaking conditions and dangerous sandstorms left the competitors battling against all odds to reach the finish. From the snow and ice of the Atlas Mountains to the baking heat of the Sahara Desert, this action-packed review follows the 572 cars, motorcycles and trucks as they tackle the 14,000km adventure. In the toughest Dakar Rally yet, the route proved too much for many - just 77 competitors would last the full 22 days. Spectacular footage delivers all the drama as the cars, bikes and trucks battle with the terrain, while interviews with the stars take you behind the scenes of one of the toughest rally raids ever.

Paris-Dakar Rally 1985

NR 1985
Remnants of the Watts Festival

The Watts Summer Festival is one of the oldest African American cultural festivals in the United States. The Watts community founded the event in 1966, one year after the Watts uprising. Ulysses Jenkins's film captures moments from the festival, including footage from a performance by the band War. This California funk band—famous for songs such as "Low Rider," "The Cisco Kid," and "Why Can't We Be Friends?"—was also well known for its multiethnic membership. The 1972 Watts Festival was one of the first events that Jenkins filmed, and he captured the underlying issues of community and commemoration that defined the annual event. At the time the local news media would, in Jenkins's opinion, misrepresent the festival by issuing warnings about it, and the artist's own footage served to counteract the media's negative view.

Remnants of the Watts Festival

NR 1980
Reverse Television - Portraits of Viewers

"Reverse Television" was created in the mid-1980's by video artist Bill Viola. The 30-second portraits were about portraiture and the idea of a person staring at the viewer (as the viewer stares at the TV screen). Conceived of as a "micro-series," the work features 42 30-second portraits of television viewers in their living rooms. The portraits appear very formally composed, with attention paid to composition, lighting, and color. The viewers sit quietly, only occasionally making a slight shift in position. No external sound score has been added, so that the only sounds heard are sync sounds that have been heightened. These sounds include viewers' clothing when they move, swallowing, and background noises, such as traffic outside the viewer's home or a dog barking in the distance.

Reverse Television - Portraits of Viewers

6.0 1984
Ivory Coast Rally 1987

Always one of the calendar's toughest rallies, this one was no exception and the cameramen covered more miles than the cars to bring viewers of this video a dramatic record of the 30 long special stages through West Africa. Winners of the last three Ivory Coast events, Toyota, had a brand new car to run in the 1987 event, the Supra Turbo. With Bjorn Waldegard and Lars-Eric Torph to drive them, Team Europe certainly looked set to continue Japanese success. But it wasn't just the Toyotas who were in good shape. On their appearance, Volkswagen entered ex-Safari Rally cars for Erwin Weber and Kenneth Eriksson. Nissan had 200SXs for Mike Kirkland, Alain Ambrosino and the vastly experienced Shekhar Mehta. Plunging through the undergrowth, roaring along dried-out lakes, lurching into deep water-holes and racing through sparsely populated villages are all featured in this film.

Ivory Coast Rally 1987

NR 1987
Holocaust: The Liberation of Majdanek

This documentary is the film record of one of the first Nazi war crimes trials, conducted while the war was still raging. The concentration and extermination camp Majdanek, near Lublin, erected in 1941, was liberated in July 1944. When the Soviet and Polish troops drove the Nazis out of the region, they uncovered the evidence of Nazi genocide. One month later, a joint Soviet-Polish commission heard evidence from survivors and witnesses as to the atrocities that took place, and their testimony is preserved in this film.

Holocaust: The Liberation of Majdanek

NR 1986
Buried Alive: The Story Of East Timor

Buried Alive exposes some of the ugly truths about the nature of Western Democracy, the world media and third world colonialism. But the story of East Timor also presents the potential for individuals to effect change. The history of East Timor from its time as a Portuguse colony, rise of Fretilin Party, declaration of independence, civil war, desertion by Portugal and the rest of the world and invasion by Indonesia. Shows the struggle of Jose Remos-Horta to draw attention and support at the United Nations for the plight of East Timor.

Buried Alive: The Story Of East Timor

NR 1989
Free Cinema, 1956 - ? An Essay on Film by Lindsay Anderson

A documentary about the history of the Free Cinema movement, made by one of it's greatest proponents, Lindsay Anderson, to commemorate British Film Year in 1985. Produced by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill. Unlike Richard Attenborough's celebratory episode of the same series, or Alan Parker's more aggressive show, which was balanced between celebrating the greats and attacking Parker's bugbears, Greenaway and Jarman and the BFI, Anderson's show accentuates the negative, painting an image of a British cinema in terminal artistic decline and trashing the ambitions and approach of British Film Year itself. It's mordantly funny and very savage.

Free Cinema, 1956 - ? An Essay on Film by Lindsay Anderson

NR 1985