Synopsis: INTO ETERNITY is a mind-bending film that explores the utter impossibility of storing nuclear waste for 100,000 years, the time estimated by scientists to render it safe. It is, on the one hand, a documentary about the Onkalo storage facility presently under construction in Finland, and on the other hand, a startlingly beautiful work of art and an urgent provocation that ponders the question of who - or what - will remain on this earth when that time frame has elapsed.
Movie Trailer:
Genere: Documentary
In theaters: February 2nd, 2011
Director: Michael Madsen
Writers: Michael Madsen, Jesper Bergmann
Stars: Timo Äikäs, Carl Reinhold Bråkenhjelm, Mikael Jensen
Sinopsis: After a 35-year absence, director Mercedes Alvarez returns to her native village Aldealsenor in remote northwest Spain. She was the last child born there; now only 14 aged inhabitants remain. Though her film is intensely personal, Alvarez yields the spotlight to the dwindling but tenacious villagers. The passing years have made them natural philosophers, historians, and comedians -they muse on the transience of things, regard the folly of conquerors from Caesar to Bush, and lace it all with ironic, quintessentially Spanish humor. For the moment, life goes on. Very soon however, without any outward commotion and without anyone to bear witness, it will all come to an end. The final 14 represent the last generation of a people that have carried on more than 1000 years of uninterrupted village life. Soon they will join the other ghosts that haunt these ancient hills - ghosts of dinosaurs, Romans, Moors, and Fascists. Alvarez's proxy within the film is her friend, the painter Pello Azketa. The 14 neighbors from this village and Azketa share something in common: things have begun to disappear before their eyes. Azketa's encroaching blindness mirrors the film's theme of dimming memory and his nebulous landscapes offer a key to the region's austere beauty, its stony heights dotted with lonely, wind-stunted trees that squat beneath a towering sky. From a small patch of ground, Alvarez opens up a vast domain, dissolving the personal into the universal, the fleeting into the timeless, and isolation into a connectedness that reaches high into the heavens and deep into the past.
Synopsis: Justin Bieber: Never Say Never is the inspiring true story and rare inside look at the rise of Justin from street performer in the small town of Stratford, Ontario to internet phenomenon to global super star culminating with a dream sold out show at the famed Madison Square Garden in 3-D.
Synopsis: Vidal Sassoon is more than just a hairdresser-he's a rock star, an artist, a craftsman who "changed the world with a pair of scissors." With the geometric, Bauhaus-inspired hairdos he pioneered in the 1960s and his "wash and wear" philosophy that liberated generations of women from the tyranny of the salon, Sassoon revolutionized the art of hairstyling and left an indelible mark on popular culture. This documentary traces with visual gusto the life of a self-made man whose passion and perseverance took him from a Jewish orphanage in London to the absolute pinnacle of his craft. Trailer: Director: Craig Teper
Writer: Craig Teper
Stars: Mary Quant, Ronnie Sassoon
Country: USA
Language: English
Production Co: Vidal Sassoon The Movie
Synopsis: In Botswana's Okavango Delta, an ostracized lioness and her two cubs must fight alone to survive - overcoming all manner of hazard, from the raging wildfires on the Delta, to the jealousy of sister lionesses, to the marauding males who kill her mate, to the prey that becomes predator. Their only defense is to escape to Duba Island -- and with that, an unknown future. The setting for this epic tale is one of the last regions where lions can live in the wild. Faced with dwindling land and increasing pressure from hunting, lions - like our lone lioness and her cubs - are approaching the brink of extinction.
Trailer:
Director: Dereck Joubert Stars: Jeremy Irons Release Date: 18 February 2011 (USA)
Filming Locations: Botswana Production Co: National Geographic
Synopsis: In the valleys of Appalachia, a battle is being fought over a mountain, the consequences of which affect every American; it's a battle that has taken innocent lives and threatens to take more. It is a battle over protecting our health and environment from the destructive power of Big Coal. Mining and burning coal is at the epicenter of America's struggle to balance its energy needs with environmental and health concerns. Nowhere is that concern greater than in Coal River Valley, West Virginia, where a small but passionate group of ordinary citizens are trying to stop Big Coal corporations, like Massey Energy, from continuing the devastating practice of Mountain Top Removal. David, himself, never faced a Goliath like Big Coal. The group argues that Mountain Top Removal-using dynamite to blast off a mountain's surface-pollutes the air and water implicit in their neighbors' deaths, eliminates traditional mining jobs and spreads pollution to other states. Despite support for their claims, Big Coal repeats Mountain Top Removal daily, amassing huge profits that allow their Washington lobbyists to wield influence in both political parties, rewrite environmental laws and avoid violations. The desire to stop Mountain Top Removal comes from a belief that we share responsibility for protecting the air and water; its what drives the group and their supporters from outside of Appalachia, like Robert Kennedy, Jr., to keep fighting. Honoring ordinary Americans fighting for what they believe in, THE LAST MOUNTAIN shines a light on our energy needs and how those needs are being met. Their fight is for a future that affects us all.
Synopsis: The cinema verite story of a real-life professional strongman named Stanless Steel--the only person in the world who can bend a penny with his fingers--as he attempts to keep the things that truly matter from slipping through his mighty grasp. Equally tender and tough, yet fundamentally hopeful and often unexpectedly funny, Strongman won the Grand Jury Prize at Slamdance and has been called one of the most hauntingly original American documentaries in years.
Synopsis: Carbon Nation is an optimistic, solutions-based, non-partisan documentary that illustrates why it's incredibly smart to be a part of the new, low-carbon economy: it's good business, it emboldens national and energy security, and it improves health and the environment. Through a cast of engaging and endearing characters from across the country, in towns big and small, Carbon Nation introduces us to the new wave of American ingenuity. From one-armed Texas cotton farmer Cliff Etheridge, who is banding together small farmers' land to create one enormous wind farm, to green jobs innovator Van Jones, who is bringing clean technology and jobs to inner cities, it's clear that the creative solutions needed to combat climate change are already being created by entrepreneurs, visionaries, scientists, and the everyday man. By bringing their innovations to light, Carbon Nation is a film that celebrates solutions and inspires action.
Synopsis: Join Storm Chasers star Sean Casey and the researchers of VORTEX 2, the most ambitious effort ever made to understand the origins and evolution of tornadoes, on this heart-pounding science adventure. Armed with a 70mm camera, a fleet of customized vehicles designed to withstand gale force winds, torrential rains and unrelenting hail, and an arsenal of the most advanced weather measurement instruments ever created, the stars of Tornado Alley take audiences on a thrilling quest to experience a tornado's destructive power at point blank range. Experience the adrenaline and the science of nature's most dramatic phenomena! Traversing the "severe weather capital of the world," Tornado Alley documents two unprecedented missions seeking to encounter one of Earth's most awe-inspiring events--the birth of a tornado. Filmmaker Sean Casey's personal quest to capture the birth of a tornado with a 70mm camera takes viewers on a breathtaking journey into the heart of the storm. A team of equally driven scientists, the VORTEX2 researchers, experience the relentless strength of nature's elemental forces as they literally surround tornadoes and the supercell storms that form them, gathering the most comprehensive severe weather data ever collected. This science adventure reveals the beauty and the power of some of our planet's most extreme--and least understood--weather phenomena.
Synopsis: The documentary – which is set to release February 4, 2011 in NYC – is a compelling story of a young clothing designer, Nary Manivong, who defied the odds of a broken childhood and homelessness to reach his ultimate dream, a show of his collection at New York Fashion Week; a truly inspiring story that unfolds against the backdrop of the fashion industry in New York. Woven within his story are accounts and commentary from leading fashion industry experts, students and designers who relate their own perspectives about what it takes to make it in the highly competitive world of fashion.
Synopsis: From the first time he performed Swimming to Cambodia - the one-man account of his experience of making the 1984 film The Killing Fields - Spalding Gray made the art of the monologue his own. Drawing unstintingly on the most intimate aspects of his own life, his shows were vibrant, hilarious and moving. His death came tragically early, in 2004; this compilation of interview and performance footage nails his idiosyncratic and irreplaceable brilliance.
Synopsis: Werner Boote presents an up-close and personal view of the controversial and fascinating material that has found its way into every facet of our daily lives: plastic. He takes us on a journey around the globe, showing that plastics have become a threat for both environment and human health.
Stars: Werner Boote, John Taylor and Peter Lieberzeit
Synopsis: Claude Lanzmann directed this 9 1/2 hour documentary of the Holocaust without using a single frame of archive footage. He interviews survivors, witnesses, and ex-Nazis (whom he had to film secretly since though only agreed to be interviewed by audio). His style of interviewing by asking for the most minute details is effective at adding up these details to give a horrifying portrait of the events of Nazi genocide. He also shows, or rather lets some of his subjects themselves show, that the anti-Semitism that caused 6 million Jews to die in the Holocaust is still alive in well in many people that still live in Germany, Poland, and elsewhere
Stars: Simon Srebnik, Michael Podchlebnik and Motke Zaidl
Synopsis: I AM, a prismatic and probing exploration of our world, what's wrong with it, and what we can do to make it better, represents Tom Shadyac's first foray into non-fiction following a career as one of Hollywood's leading comedy practitioners, with such successful titles as "Ace Ventura," "Liar Liar," and "Bruce Almighty" to his credit. I AM recounts what happened to the filmmaker after a cycling accident left him incapacitated, possibly for good. Though he ultimately recovered, he emerged a changed man. Disillusioned with life on the A-list, he sold his house, moved to a mobile home community, and decided to start life anew. Armed with nothing but his innate curiosity and a camera crew, Shadyac embarks upon a journey to discover how he as an individual, and we as a race, can improve the way we live. Appearing on-screen as character, commentator, guide, and even, at times, guinea pig, Shadyac meets with a variety of thinkers and doers--remarkable men and women from the worlds of science, philosophy, and faith--including such luminaries as David Suzuki, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Lynne McTaggart, Ray Anderson, John Francis, Coleman Barks, and Marc Ian Barasch. An irrepressible Everyman who asks many questions but offers no easy answers, he takes the audience to places it has never been before, and presents even familiar phenomena in completely new and different ways.
Stars: Marc Ian Barasch, Coleman Barks and Noam Chomsky
Synopsis: A riveting documentary of the recently assassinated Benazir Bhutto, a polarizing figure in the Muslim world. Following in her father's footsteps as a pillar for democracy, Bhutto was expected to dominate Pakistan's 2008 elections but the assassination sent Pakistan politics into turmoil. This major event sent shock waves throughout the world and transformed her from political messiah into a martyr for the common man.
Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune movie trailer (2011)
Synopsis: As our country continues to embroil itself in foreign wars and pins its hopes on a new leader's promise for change, Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune is a timely and relevant tribute to an unlikely American hero. Over the course of a meteoric music career that spanned two turbulent decades, Phil Ochs sought the bright lights of fame and social justice in equal measure - a contradiction that eventually tore him apart. From youthful idealism to rage to pessimism, the arch of Ochs' life paralleled that of the times, and the anger, satire and righteous indignation that drove his music also drove him to dark despair. In this brilliantly constructed film, interview and performance footage of Ochs is illuminated by the ruminations of Joan Baez, Tom Hayden, Pete Seeger, Sean Penn, Peter Yarrow, Christopher Hitchens, Ed Sanders, and others.
Stars: Joan Baez, Tom Hayden and Christopher Hitchens
Synopsis: Born in the jungles of Borneo, Nenette is a 40-year-old orangutan -- and the oldest (and most beloved) inhabitant at the Menagerie du Jardin des Plantes in Paris. The latest film by legendary French documentarian Nicolas Philibert (TO BE AND TO HAVE), NENETTE is a captivating study of an enigmatic animal and our relationship to her.
