Love. Marriage. & Sex In The City explores three distinct Asian cultures, India, Japan and Singapore, through the institution of marriage.
Love in the Time of Hate
Many young Indians are turning their backs on the tradition of arranged marriages, choosing instead to marry for love.
Those who marry for love are drawing a sharp backlash from traditionalists. A non-governmental organisation called the Love Commandos shelters couples who escape from their parents and helps them get married.
Living for the Dead
In India where millions don’t even get dignity in life, asking for dignity in death is a far cry. Every year thousands of unclaimed bodies are found in the country, with no one undertaking to give them a decent cremation or burial with due rituals. But there are a handful of people who perform an unusual social service – of giving these unclaimed bodies a dignified passage to the next life. Living for the Dead takes viewers on an emotional journey through the eyes of three individuals who perform this extraordinary service recounting their experiences and providing an insight into modern day India. Living for the Dead chronicles their struggles, hopes and seeks to uncover their lives as they continue to perform a service that few take up.
Listen to the Mountain Sages
How can important memories be conveyed to the next generation? In Japan, a country of forests and mountains, work methods that have long been at the heart of mountain life – like tree cutting, slash and burn agriculture, and roof thatching – are quietly disappearing in the course of modernisation. Recently, some Japanese high school students have gone up to the mountains to see the people who live there and possess these skills, asking them about their craft and about life itself… writing down what they hear, word for word, unchanged, just as it was spoken. This documentary takes a close look at the lives of four such masters of life in the mountains and the four high school students who learnt from them, capturing the moments when, by listening and recording, memories were transmitted from one to the other.
Kung Fu Girls
This is the story of a small school in the mountains, three girls who hail from faraway places and a tough journey of endless training. Far from their hometown, they live a life vastly different from that of other teens. Their goal is to become masters of Kung Fu.
Every day at dawn, they begin their daily routine to strengthen their bodies and minds. Every tear and every drop of sweat is part of their quest towards being experts at Kung Fu.
The romantic world of Kung Fu masters fighting for justice or survival is no more. Now, their arena is the national martial arts competition. Will they ever realize their dream and win a gold medal?
Killer Whale and Crocodile
Carvers from two of the world’s great carving traditions come together. A First Nations carver from Canada travels into the jungles of Papua New Guinea and a New Guinea carver travels to urban Canada. Together, they share each other’s cultures and learn about the myths and legends that inform their individual artistic styles. In the Spring of 2006 John Marston, a young Coast Salish carver from Vancouver Island who has already gained a strong reputation for his innovative approach to traditional Coast Salish styles, visited Teddy Balangu, a carver from the Sepik River of Papua New Guinea. Teddy returned to Canada where he was the artist in residence at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia for 5 months.
Kevin McGahern’s America
Kevin McGahern’s America features Kevin exploring various aspects of life in America – gun rights, web-cam girls (and boys) and new American ‘tribes’ and unusual social groups.
With the US presidential race in full swing, Kevin dives into trigger-happy America to meet the paranoid patriots who want smaller government and bigger guns.
Kevin then delves into the odd lives of internet sex workers who sell video intimacy from the comfort of their own homes and meets a 28-year-old humiliatrix who insults men online for a living.
Finally he travels around America meeting people who are redefining what it means to be family in surprising ways. In South Carolina, Kevin rides with an anti-fascist motorcycle club called The Bastards. Their motto: “Who needs a father when you’ve got a brother”.
Kelden
Fourteen year old Kelden Lhamo, has been selected into Bhutan’s first national women’s football team. This film is a poetic journey into the inner world of Kelden who breaks away with everything she grew up with, to live in a football academy far away from home. An intimate confession of a teenager growing up in a traditional country on the brink of modernisation.
The Jesus Guy
He looks like Jesus Christ. And preaches like St. Francis of Assisi. Some say he’s “a kook.” Others, “a blessing from God.” Barefoot, and clad in a white robe, he’s walked through 47 states [and 13 countries] on a 16-year mission that’s captured media attention from 20/20, Time and the Wall Street Journal. Yet who is this solitary figure who inspires faith – and attracts controversy?