documentaries

Barbara Rick

USA | 2004| 82mins | Beta | Colour

In 1999, Rome issued the ultimatum to Sister Jeannine Gramick: condemn homosexuality as "intrinsically evil" or risk your life in the Church. For over 30 years, Gramick, in the name of God, has taken on rabid protesters, public scrutiny and the Roman Catholic Church on behalf of gays and lesbians. Early in her ministry she was posed the question, "What is the Catholic Church doing for gay and lesbian Christians?" Since that moment, this soft-spoken nun devoted her work towards the liberation of LGBT parishioners. We follow this unlikely rebel to Rome as she dares to approach those who commanded her silence.

Nitzan Gilady

Israel | 2003 | 70mins | Beta | Colour | Subtitled

It is a closed and almost unknown community, ultra-orthodox Jews that call them-selves 'Satmar' and live in America are barely noticed in their own country, but abroad they constitute an active anti-Zionist movement. In Yemen, poor Jewish families are persuaded not to emigrate to Israel but to America, where the prospect of a warm welcome is held out to them. In practice, this turns out differently, as is demonstrated by the harrowing story of Yahia and Lauza Jaradi.

These Yemenites and their children were lured to America by the Satmar community. A few years later, things go terribly wrong: their daughter Hadiyah lapses into a coma and dies, and Lauza is charged with murder. The reality turns out to be far shadier, as director Nitzan Gilady reveals in In Satmar Custody. The camera closely follows the family, especially the desperate Yahia. At other times it remains hidden in bushes and behind walls, to spy on the meetings Yahia has with different advisors.

The result is a thriller-like documentary that does not offer cut and dried answers. But, the film does make it clear how negligence and fundamentalism can be so destructive for individual victims.

Chao Gan, Zi Liang

China | 2004 | 56mins | Beta | Colour | Subtitled

Mr Jiang, my landlord, is a sixty-year-old eccentric man. According to a friend, he never married, nor worked. Every day he stays inside this big house as if he was the guardian of its many secrets.

This friend also told me that I had arrived just in time because the city's housing bureau had announced that the buildings of this area would be torn down and the residents relocated.

Mr Jiang has lived all his life in a mansion that has borne witness to the decadence of 1930's Shanghai, its liberation after the civil war, on through the storms of the Cultural Revolution, to the vast changes occurring in modern day Shanghai.

However, as he waits for the magnolia tree to blossom outside, the shadow of the wrecking ball looms as it wreaks a path of destruction leveling city block after city block. Reporter Zi Liang, who becomes a tenant of Mr. Jiang, engages in a verbal sparring match with the wily eccentric.

Sixty years of resolute steadfastness is finally breached. The night before the relocation, Mr. Jiang sings his final revelry.