Trouble the Water

OUT OF DARKNESS: THE MINE WORKERS' STORY is a documentary by Academy Award-winning director Barbara Kopple (HARLAN COUNTY, USA). Historical film footage and photographs are integrated with first-hand accounts of UMWA history and of the Pittston strike of 1989-90.

When an unidentified hiker is found deceased in the Florida wilderness, authorities release a sketch. Multiple hikers call in claiming to have met the man. There's only one problem – he never told them his name. It would take two years, thousands of devoted internet sleuths, and a miracle of science to identify him, and that's when the trouble really starts.

As co-created by environmentalists Stephan Poulle and Nicolas Koutsikas, the documentary Gulf Stream and the Next Ice Age argues and provides evidence for the idea that mankind is wreaking permanent and potentially irreversible damage on the ecosystem by interfering with the natural course of the Gulf Stream. Koutsikas and Poulle suggest that this interference, in turn, will prompt a new Ice Age that virtually destroys the modern world.

Jayson Blair is the most infamous serial plagiarist of our time. He unleashed the massive scandal that rocked the New York Times and the entire world of journalism.

Advanced Style examines the lives of seven unique New Yorkers whose eclectic personal style and vital spirit have guided their approach to aging. Based on Ari Seth Cohen’s famed blog of the same name, this film paints intimate and colorful portraits of independent, stylish women aged 62 to 95 who are challenging conventional ideas about beauty, aging, and Western’s culture’s increasing obsession with youth.

In the summer of 1953, the Canadian government relocated seven Inuit families from Northern Québec to the High Arctic. They were promised an abundance of game and fish - in short, a better life. The government assured the Inuit that if things didn't work out, they could return home after two years. Two years later, another 35 people joined them. It would be thirty years before any of them saw their ancestral lands again. Abandoned in flimsy tents, the Inuit were left to fend for themselves in the desolate settlements of Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord, where the sea was nearly always frozen and darkness reigned for months on end. Suffering from hunger, extreme cold, sickness, alcoholism and poverty, Québec's Inuit had become the victims of a government policy supposedly designed to return them to their "native state". Evidence points to the government's wish to strengthen Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic as playing a part in the decision to relocate.

Both an activist and a documentarian, Valentina Pedicini also brings her background in anthropology to this impressively captured, claustrophobic nonfiction feature. Venturing beneath sea level, From the Depths profiles the lone woman at work in the last coal mine in Sardinia, Italy.

The first film in a Seven Up-like series examining the lives of three teenage girls in South Australia during the 1970s. It looks at issues such as boys and sex, abortion, marriage, pregnancy, career paths, and education.

When the lights dim and the stage is revealed, Meschke channels life through the strings of his puppets, triggering the spiritual connection between the creator and his alter-egos: the charismatic Don Quixote, the loving Penelope, the inquisitive Baptiste, or the mysterious Antigone. THE MAN WHO MADE ANGELS FLY is a poetic story about a master of his craft that has inspired audiences to reflect upon common issues of suffering and the mortal coil. Visionary and un-biographic, imaginary tribute to the puppeteer.

Sepideh wants to become an astronaut. She spends her nights exploring the secrets of the universe, while her family will do anything to keep her on the ground. The expectations for a young Iranian woman are very different from Sepideh's ambitions, and her plans to go to university are in danger. But Sepideh holds on to her dream! She takes up the fight and teams up with the world's first female space tourist, Anousheh Ansari.

God's Girls describes life in a Sisters of Mercy convent in country New South Wales from the 1940's to present day. This courageous and clever film investigates the subtle complexities of change within a society that has been surrounded by mystery for hundreds of years. The stories from the women in the film reflect the often intricate paths of social, political and religious history, not only in Australia but also in the rest of the world.