Screenings
Shorts at the Frontline Club
Join us for an evening of short documentaries from different parts of the world, covering a wide range of topics. Shorts at the Frontline Club showcases moving, striking and funny films, exploring the diverse faces of documentary filmmaking.
Screening: Chameleon + Q&A
He’s a household name in Ghana, but few have seen his face. Investigative journalist Anas Aremewaw Anas is on a mission to ferret out corruption in every corner of his country. Despite his notoriety, Anas’ vigilante methods warrant criticism from some local police, who believe his investigations go too far in luring and catching suspected criminals to achieve sensationalist stories.
Screening: How to Change the World + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Jerry Rothwell.
In 1971, a group of friends sail into a nuclear test zone, and their protest captures the world’s imagination. Using never-before-seen archive footage that brings their extraordinary world to life, How To Change The World is the story of the pioneers who founded Greenpeace and defined the modern green movement.
Screening: Cartel Land + Q&A
In this double Sundance winner, Matthew Heineman takes us deep into the world of Mexican drug cartels by embedding himself with two vigilante groups on either side of the US-Mexico border.
Screening: Code – Debugging the Gender Gap + Q&A
At a time when the US tech sector outpaces the overall growth of the employment market, CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap asks the important question: where are all the women? This revealing and uplifting documentary examines the reasons why more girls are not seeking opportunities in computer science and explores how cultural mindsets, stereotypes, educational hurdles and sexism all play a role in widening this employment gap.
PBS Preview Screening – Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Dyanna Taylor.
Explore, through her granddaughter’s eyes, the life story of Dorothea Lange, the photographer who captured the iconic image “Migrant Mother.” Never-seen-before photos, film footage, interviews, family memories, and journals reveal the artist who challenged America to know itself.
Screening: Shades of True + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Alexandre Westphal.
Hutu women as well as men took up arms and went amok killing their neighbours during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In Shades of True eight female perpetrators, who have been imprisoned for taking part in the genocide, recount their experiences with clarity and a shocking lack of sentimentality.
Screening: Jungle Sisters + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Chloe Ruthven.
In 2008 the Indian Government launched an initiative to train 500 million of the rural poor to work in its growing industrial sector. Migrants from the rural areas of India now make up a significant percentage of the labour force in India. Seduced by the opportunity to be independent, many hopeful young women, like best friends Bhanu and Bhutu, try their luck working for garment factories, yet the women’s inexperience leaves them terribly susceptible to exploitation.
Screening: 12 O’Clock Boys + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Lotfy Nathan.
Pug, a wisecracking 13 year old living on a dangerous Westside block in Baltimore, has one goal in mind: to join the 12 O’Clock Boys, the city’s notorious urban dirt bike gang. Director Lotfy Nathan followed Pug for three years over the course of the film’s production, documenting his transition from a witty and energetic boy to a teenager eager to find comradeship in a gang that prides in its recklessness and disregard for authority.
Screening: Those Who Feel the Fire Burning + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Morgan Knibbe.
Conflict, economic crisis, and depleting environmental resources are driving increasing numbers of people to attempt the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe. Those Who Feel the Fire Burning, Morgan Knibbe‘s innovative and genre-blurring film, places viewers in the perspective of a person who has begun this dangerous and desperate journey to Europe by sea.
Screening: The Defector – Escape from North Korea + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Ann Shin.
As the leadership in North Korea changes and Kim Jong-un takes the helm, a man who goes by the name of ‘Dragon’ smuggles North Korean defectors across borders. His latest trip with two women, Sook-Ja and Yong-hee, takes an unexpected turn when they are left stranded in China. This is only the beginning of an extraordinary 5,000 km journey. Their story reflects the reality of tens of thousands of North Koreans currently in hiding in China.
Screening: Welcome to Leith + Q&A
In September 2012, the tiny prairie town of Leith, North Dakota, saw its population of 24 grow by one. Trouble had come to town. The newcomer was Craig Cobb, a notorious white supremacist. Quietly snapping up plots of land, he planned to take over the town government and establish Cobbsville, a haven for white separatists.
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with directors Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker.
Screening: Everyday Rebellion + Q&A
The reasons for the various people’s uprisings across the world may be diverse, but the creative nonviolent tactics they use in their struggles are strongly connected. So are the activists who share these strategies, new ideas and established methods. Everyday Rebellion is a story about the richness of peaceful protest, acted out everyday by passionate people from Spain, Iran, Syria, Ukraine, the USA, the UK and Serbia.
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Arman Riahi.
Preview Screening: Dead When I Got Here + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Mark Aitken and journalist Ed Vulliamy.
Compassion and self-affirmation are discovered by a man as he manages a mental asylum run by its own patients in Juárez, Mexico – the world’s most violent city. Juárez, a city that borders the United States, is at once a place of diverse culture and tradition and a site of desperation and rampant poverty.
Screening: Regarding Susan Sontag + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Nancy Kates.
Regarding Susan Sontag is an intimate and nuanced investigation into the life of one of the most influential and provocative thinkers of the 20th century. Endlessly curious, passionate and gracefully outspoken throughout her career, Susan Sontag became one of the most important literary, political and feminist icons of her generation.
Preview Screening: Food Chains + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Sanjay Rawal and producer Eric Schlosser.
There is so much interest in food today but very little interest in the hands that pick it. Featuring Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, and actress/advocate Eva Longoria, the award-winning documentary Food Chains exposes the horrific abuses farmworkers face and reveals the forces behind that exploitation: the $4 trillion global supermarket industry.
UK Premiere: This is My Land + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Tamara Erde.
This is My Land takes us inside school classrooms in Israel and the occupied West Bank, to look at how educators teach history in a contested region. Filmed in an observational style, the film presents a nuanced analysis of the core educational institutions in Israel and Palestine. Candid interviews with students reveal shocking discrepancies in perspectives of history, concepts of freedom, and definitions of nationality. The film prompts the question: how long will the past dictate the present?
Sneak Preview Screening: Warriors From the North + Q&A
Young Muslims are travelling from Europe to fight in countries such as Syria and Somalia, lured by groups like Al-Shabaab and the Islamic State (IS). Warriors From the North follows a cohort of young Al-Shabaab sympathisers in Denmark and Sweden. Directors Nasib Farah and Søren Steen Jespersen approach the subject from multiple perspectives, speaking with current Al-Shabaab members, young men who have left the group and the family of one young man who left his life behind to join Al-Shabaab.
Documenting Ukraine: Two Days of Cinema and Debate – Day Two
Open City Docs and the Frontline Club present Documenting Ukraine: Two Days of Cinema and Debate — special events and discussions exploring the realities of modern Ukraine and the depth of Ukrainian cinema — on Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 May 2015 at the Frontline Club.
Documenting Ukraine: Two Days of Cinema and Debate
Open City Docs and the Frontline Club present Documenting Ukraine: Two Days of Cinema and Debate — special events and discussions exploring the realities of modern Ukraine and the depth of Ukrainian cinema — on Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 May 2015 at the Frontline Club.
Documenting Ukraine: Two Days of Cinema and Debate – Opening Day
Open City Docs and the Frontline Club present Documenting Ukraine: Two Days of Cinema and Debate — special events and discussions exploring the realities of modern Ukraine and the depth of Ukrainian cinema — on Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 May 2015 at the Frontline Club.
Screening: A Quiet Inquisition + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Alessandra Zeka.
At a public hospital in Nicaragua, OBGYN Dr Carla Cerrato must choose between following a law that bans all abortions and endangers her patients or taking a risk and providing the care that she knows can save a woman’s life. In A Quiet Inquisition, the emotional core of the story – the experiences of the young women and girls who are seeking care — illustrates the ethical implications of one doctor’s response.
Screening: Gottland + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a discussion with author Mariusz Szczygieł.
The Frontline Club is delighted to partner with the Polish Institute and the 13th Kinoteka Polish Film Festival to bring you a screening of Gottland, directed by Viera Cákanyová, Petr Hátle, Rozálie Kohoutová, Lukás Kokes, Radovan Síbrt, and Klára Tasovská. Gottland is a cross-genre film based on selected parts of the international bestseller Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia (European book of the year 2009) by Mariusz Szczygieł.
Screening: Drone + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Tonje Hessen Schei.
Directed by Tonje Hessen Schei and produced by Flimmer Film, Drone takes an in depth look at the United States’ use of drone technology, questioning how drones are altering the psychology of war. In the midst of fast advancement of technology and international legislation struggling to keep up with it, Schei‘s film displays how drones are rapidly defining a new perception of war.
Preview Screening: We Were Rebels + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Florian Schewe.
We Were Rebels tells the story of Agel, a former child soldier who returns to South Sudan to help build his country. The film accompanies him over a period of two years – from South Sudan gaining its independence in 2011 to the renewed outbreak of civil war in December 2013.
Screening: Burden of Peace + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Joey Boink.
Burden of Peace tells the impressive story of Claudia Paz y Paz, the first woman to lead the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Guatemala. Ravaged for years by a devastating civil war, in which nearly 200,000 Mayan Indians were systematically massacred, the country today is one of the most crime-ridden in the world. Paz y Paz starts a frontal attack against corruption, drug gangs and impunity and does what everyone had hitherto held to be impossible: she arrests former dictator Efraín Rios Montt on charges of genocide against the Mayan Indians.
BBC Storyville Preview: George Blake – Masterspy of Moscow + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director George Carey. In April 1953, George Blake returned to Britain as a national hero, one of a small group of British diplomats who returned alive from three hard years as prisoner of the North Koreans. When the new Queen was crowned a couple of months later, he was among the select few invited to celebrate the day in No. 2 Carlton Gardens, a discreet building overlooking the Mall from where the men who ran Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service were watching the royal procession go by. Little did they know that during his time as a prisoner he had become a Communist and decided to work for the KGB. In The Making of a Traitor, director George Carey speaks to Blake’s close acquaintances, historians and other former spies to chronicle his curious history.
UK Premiere: The World According to Russia Today + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Misja Pekel. Its critics call it a bullhorn for Russian propaganda, Russia Today (RT) claims only to show a different perspective on world events, and presents itself as an alternative to the mainstream media. In Misja Pekel’s The World According to Russia Today, current and former employees, journalists and media analysts dissect RT’s modus operandi. What is it like to work for the channel? How much influence does the Kremlin really have? And is it possible to discern between fact and opinion when Russian interests are at stake?
Screening: AIDependence + Q&A
After many years of receiving a considerable amount of foreign aid, Haiti remains an impoverished and politically fragile state. AIDependence tells the story of the controversial relationship between the people of Haiti and international aid organisations, and exposes the negative side effects of the aid industry, including dependency, corruption, and the corrosion of solidarity and the economy. Using the example of Haiti, the country with the most NGOs per capita, Alice Smeets presents a well-informed analysis of how development projects can give rise to cycles of dependence rather than long-term solutions. This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Alice Smeets.
UK Premiere: Banking Nature + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with directors Sandrine Feydel and Denis Delestrac.
Protecting our planet has become big business, with companies like Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan Chase promoting new environmental markets. Investors buy up vast swathes of land, full of endangered species, to enable them to sell ‘nature credits’. Companies whose actions destroy the environment are now obliged to buy these credits and new financial centres have sprung up, specialising in this trade. In Banking Nature, directors Sardine Feydel and Denis Delestrac investigate the commercialisation of the natural world.