Joer 2000 - 406

VERA CRUZ is an experimental project founded on the idea of the “impossibility” of a documentary on the discovery of Brazil. Based on the contents of the famous letter by Pero Vaz de Caminha, this is the video version of an “(im)possible film” that oscillates back and forth between documentary and fiction. From the subtracted image, we see only the “film picture,” old, scratched, worn out by five hundred years of existence and overuse. The sound of the words has also been removed, seeing as the dialogue between conquistador and native, strictly speaking, did not take place. All that is left is the sound of the ocean and the wind, witnesses to the events. The account that remains takes the shape of subtitle-text.

A young man takes a break from his road trip for a jolt of caffeine only to find he's stumbled into a diner where a bottomless cup of coffee takes on a new meaning. From Columbia University.

Created at the university of Texas at Austin, this unique black and white film is an experiment with Xerox machine animation.

Between 11:10 and 11:12 you realise the symmetry of the moment, and of life itself, in Max Kisman's provocative riff on the monotony of driving through the desert.

AIDS, Discrimination. Big questions that, in the voice of the Lady of the Night - A pansexual character that mixes in unbalanced doses political consciousness with poetic extravagance - acquire originality in front of an audience frantic and thirsty for a lot of joy and some ideology.

Set in a washroom, "The Toilet Suite" is a funny look at the intersection of public and queer space. A series of washroom encounters between men looking for sex are punctuated by show tunes and disco songs.

Short by Nicole Blachon.

Col. Elmer Jamias: Barako ng Maynila: Directed by Toto Natividad. With Jinggoy Estrada, Angelu De Leon, John Regala, Jeffrey Santos.

Inept techies at a second-rate television station allow the audio track to slip back, becoming misaligned with the video of an Italian soap-film that's trying to capture the essence of old black-and-white movies, with a few mistakes.

Burador (Ang babaing sugo): Directed by Harry James. With January Isaac Bodlovic, Kier Legaspi, Jess Lapid Jr., Gabriel Romulo.

The Hooley Dooleys: Keep on Dancing

A film on medicinal plants, indigenous people and traditional medicines. India is one of the richest bio-diversity hotspots in the world, supporting over 45,000 species of plants both agricultural and medicinal.The film explores and brings out the essence of the interdependence and the way of living of tribal communities that have since time immemorial depended on the forest for all their needs, including healing. It looks into the philosophy of traditional medicinal practices and discusses what further steps and measures are required to conserve and protect the medicinal heritage that is ours.

Antonio Lorenzano was an acclaimed musician, shamanic healer and craftsman, and the leader of the Warao community of Morichito on the Winikina River, in the lower Orinoco Delta, Venezuela. The film follows anthropologist Dieter Heinen, who knew Lorenzano well, as he returns to Winikina, some six months after Lorenzano's death in November 1996 to pay his respect to his relatives. From the testimonies of his children, grandchildren and others who knew him, it becomes clear that even post-mortem, Lorenzano's view about the proper conduct of Warao cultural practices carry great weight. However the cultural tradition that Lorenzano represented was a hybrid, a fusion of the old with new ideas and practices which he introduced from outside his community.

During Mongolia's seventy years of domination by the Soviet Union, shamanism, like many aspects of Mongolian tradition, was forbidden by the Communist authorities, and went into decline. Since the early 1990s, however, it has been undergoing a revival, eager to regain its place in Mongolian cultural identity. This film explores the life of the shaman-master Tomor, at his centre in Ulaan Baatar.

The film depicts the culture, traditions and socio-economic conditions of Tibetans in India.

Walter Lee, aka Vivien, provides voice over for this short documentary. Stills, vintage footage, and re-enactments paint an amazingly vivid backdrop to exhibit the life of a "squishy" drag queen through wartime service and 1950s repression.

Katie, 16, is having fun and doing water dances with her best friend. One day while walking in the woods, she discovers her friend kissing another girl. This discovery provokes Katie's confusion, between emotional shock, incipient jealousy and incomprehension.

An audiovideo sampling of strictly news broadcasts from around the world. in collaboration with Painè Cuadrelli.

An abstract film derived from coloured inks applied onto clear super 8; sprocket holes from different gauges of film were used as stencils, leaving behind hard-edged rectangular shapes amongst the swirling patterns of ink.

The film depicts the creative instincts of tribal women of Hazaribug in Bihar through the paintings, drawings and sketches done traditionally.