Screenings
Sneak Preview Screening – For Neda
Described as “the most important documentary HBO has ever done.” For Neda has been creating a storm as it has been screened around the world. Filmed secretly with Neda Agha-Soltan’s father, mother, sister and younger brother, is an intimate portrait of a young woman who has become a potent symbol of opposition to the Iranian regime yet about whom until now little has been known.
Sunday Screening – Stalin Thought of You
By the time of his death in 2008 at the age of 109, Boris Efimov had created political cartoons on just about every world event over the past hundred years. Working for the Soviet press Efimov created images that were equally powerful and hilarious. From World War II, in which the Nazis had given order to hang Efimov on sight, through the Cold War he created thousands of images that riled those in power and created a titanic legacy we are fortunate to see Stalin Thought of You.
FULLY BOOKED Special Preview Screening – Out of the Ashes
An inspirational documentary following the extraordinary quest of the Afghan cricket team to qualify for the 2011 World Cup. Against a backdrop of war and poverty, Out of the Ashes, traces the remarkable journey of a team of young Afghans as they chase a seemingly impossible dream – shedding new light on a nation beyond burqas, bombs, drugs and devastation.
Sunday Screening – War Games and The Man Who Stopped Them
This is a story about a man whom historians consider as the most important spy of the Cold War.
A uniquely constructed portrait of the Polish Colonel Ryszard Kukliński, who provided the CIA with more than 40,000 strategic documents from the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. Was he a traitor, or the savior of Poland?
Screening – Africa Rising
A controversial and colourful one-hour documentary, Africa Rising highlights the failure of Western policies towards Africa and asks if it’s time to reconsider the role of Western aid workers on the continent.
Screening – Orphans of Burma’s Cyclone
Filmed covertly over the course of a year by Burmese cameramen, who risked an instant 30-year jail sentence if caught, Orphans of Burma’s Cyclone exposes the official intransigence of one of the world’s most brutal and secretive regimes and, for the first time, reveals what day-to-day life is like for the ordinary people of Burma.
Screening – Starsuckers
Starsuckers a darkly humourous and shocking exposé of the celebrity obsessed media, that uncovers the real reasons behind our addiction to fame and blows the lid on the corporations and individuals who profit from it.
Sunday Screening – Durakovo: Village of Fools
In 1991, it was the words “freedom” and “democracy” that excited the Russian imagination. Nineteen years later, where is Russia now?
Screening – Bhutto
Bhutto is the definitive documentary that chronicles the life of one of the most complex and fascinating characters of our time. Hers is an epic tale of Shakespearean dimension. It’s the story of the first woman in history to lead a Muslim nation: Pakistan.
Screening – Human Terrain
Seeking to understand ‘why they hate us’, the US military adopts a new strategy of cultural awareness to win over the hearts and minds of the Iraqi and Afghan people. Controversy erupts when academics embed with combat troops and the war comes home to the university.
Screening – The War is Over
The War is Over is an intimate narrative that reflects the common immigrant experience in the age of globalisation. Can a good man hold up under the excruciating pressures of war, exile and deportation? Will he be able to rebuild his life abroad and make sense of it?
Sunday Screening – Aisheen (Still Alive in Gaza)
Shot a few weeks after the end of Israel’s January 2009 offensive, this sensitively crafted doc captures the human suffering and devastation wrought on Gaza’s Palestinian residents as they struggle daily to survive.
SPECIAL EVENT: London Premiere – Media Matters Film Festival
The Frontline Club are thrilled to be hosting the London premiere of the tenth annual Media That Matters festival, a showcase of 12 short films on social issues for multiplatform distribution
Alternative View Season – The Miscreants of Taliwood
Director George Gittoes meets the locals and gets up (too) close to the clash of Fundamentalism and entertainment, virtual and real, in this off beat doc-drama, which takes us on a totally surprising, sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying journey, into the forbidden zones of Pakistan’s North West Frontier.
Screening – Shooting Robert King
Made over 15 years by club founders Vaughan Smith and Richard Parry the film is an intimate journey with war photographer Robert King, following his ambition to win the Pullitzer Prize for photography in the most dangerous warzones of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Alternative View Season – Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup
Part of our Alternative View season, Loose Change 9/11 – An American Coup is the feature-length version of the controversial series that looks into the various theories surrounding 9/11. Vanity Fair said the series “just might be the first Internet blockbuster” and millions of people have followed the films since the first installment five years ago. We want to look at whether these viewpoints have a place within mainstream media.
Sunday Screening – The Invention of Dr Nakamats
Meet Dr. NakaMats, octogenarian, demi-god in his native Japan, and the world’s most prolific inventor, holding over 3300 patents. Edison by comparison had only 1,093. Some of his most famous include: the floppy disk, the CD, the DVD, the taxi cab meter, Cinemascope and even Karaoke. Here, in a vivid, often comic tour de force, Danish filmmaker Kaspar Asrtrup Schröeder takes us through the eccentric world of the great man.
Alternative View Season – The Vice Guide to Liberia
In The Vice Guide To Liberia, VBS travels to the capital city Monrovia to meet three men who participated in the 14 years of civil war that ravaged the West African country.
Sunday Screening – 12th & Delaware
From the makers of Jesus Camp, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, 12th & Delaware plants itself on the intersection of its title which is home to the bizarre setup of having an abortion clinic on one side of the street and a pro-life facility on the other. Unfolding over one year this is truly a war film, an ideological war that has the lives and future of the young women in the film at its core.
NEW DATE: UK Premiere Screening – Fear Factory
The Fear Factory is an eye-opening look into crime in British society today, how the public perception matches the true reality and how pivotal a voting issue it is. It examines how the media portrays our safety and for what end. The film is a timely look at a major voting issue and shows where truth and reality differ in the public eye.
Screening – Shooting Under Fire
Shooting Under Fire follows Reinhard Krause, Reuters’ former chief photographer in Israel, in the last few weeks of his four-year assignment as his team of local Israeli and Palestinian photographers try to to give an objective portrayal of events in the volatile Holy Land.
Sunday Screening – Live From Bethlehem
Live from Bethlehem takes us behind the scenes of the only independent news network in the Palestinian Territories. A fast-paced, action-packed film that follows the staff of the Ma’an News Agency as they fight to provide Palestinians with a source of reliable news.
UK Premiere Screening: American Jihadist
What goes through the mind of a Jihadist from America’s capital? American Jihadist explores militant Islam through the eyes of Isa Abdullah Ali – aka Clevin Raphael Holt – who fought in Lebanon and Bosnia for six years for what he calls “the pleasure of God by taking a stand to help the ill treated and oppressed”.
Sunday Screening – Presumed Guilty
Presumed Guilty goes far beyond being a snapshot of the flaws of Mexico’s judicial system or even a simple case of injustice. Instead it draws on the conventional structure of a courtroom drama to highlight a story that is so infuriating and emotional that you want to believe it’s not true.
Screening – Afghanistan Online
“Could improving internet access really help Afghanistan break out of the vicious cycle of war and extremism?”. This film journeys through areas of Afghanistan rarely seen on camera where the hope offered by the internet age is tempered by the harsh realities of a country battered by decades of fighting.
Sunday Screening – American Radical: the Trials of Norman Finkelstein
An incredibly powerful portrait of controversial Jewish American academic Norman Finkelstein, a deeply polarising figure whose struggles arise from core questions about freedom, identity and nationhood.
Screening: Dishonourable Killings
A hard-hitting documentary with unprecedented access to Kurdish communities in Southeast Turkey, that examines violence against women in the name of “honour” and the women prepared to make a stand for independence and equality.
Werner Herzog Season – Screening: The White Diamond
The White Diamond is a film about the daring adventure of exploring a rainforest canopy with a novel flying device-the Jungle Airship. Airship engineer Dr. Graham Dorrington embarks on a trip to the giant Kaieteur Falls in the heart of Guyana, hoping to fly his helium-filled invention above the tree-tops. But this logistic effort will not be without risk.
Werner Herzog Season – Screening: Lessons of Darkness
An apocalyptic vision that hints towards science fiction, Lessons of Darkness concentrates on the aftermath of the first Gulf War – specifically on the Kuwaiti oil fires, as a world burst into flames.
Sunday Screening – Misha vs. Moscow
With exclusive access to Georgian president Mikheil “Misha” Saakashvili, his inner-circle and his most vocal critics Misha versus Moscow asks whether Saakashvili can regain his crown as the darling of international politics or whether the war has torpedoed for good any chance of peace with Russia.
