Guy Hircefeld: A Guy with a Camera

"Africa Light" - as white local citizens call Namibia. The name suggests romance, the beauty of nature and promises a life without any problems in a country where the difference between rich and poor could hardly be greater. Namibia does not give that impression of it. If you look at its surface it seems like Africa in its most innocent and civilized form. It is a country that is so inviting to dream by its spectacular landscape, stunning scenery and fascinating wildlife. It has a very strong tourism structure and the government gets a lot of money with its magical attraction. But despite its grandiose splendor it is an endless gray zone as well. It oscillates between tradition and modernity, between the cattle in the country and the slums in the city. It shuttles from colonial times, land property reform to minimum wage for everyone. It fluctuates between socialism and cold calculated market economy.

The film is a controversy on democracy. Is our society really democratic? Can everyone be part of it? Or is the act of being part in democracy dependent to the access on technology, progression or any resources of information, as philosophers like Paul Virilio or Jean Baudrillard already claimed?

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In July 1988, Mizue Furui was in the Gaza Strip and West Bank with her camera as a rookie freelance journalist. Covering the Palestinian condition, she became acquainted with Ghada Ageel, a 23-year-old teacher at an elementary school, in November 1993 and started shooting her life up to when she turned 35. The 12 years Furui spent shooting still and video images has borne fruit in a documentary titled "Ghada -- Songs of Palestine," which will be released in Uplink Theater in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, in May as a rare report on women in the traditionally male-oriented Palestinian society.

Her rise was a global phenomenon. Her downfall was a cruel national sport. People close to Britney Spears and lawyers tied to her conservatorship now reassess her career as she battles her father in court over who should control her life.

An Israeli film director interviews fellow veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to reconstruct his own memories of his term of service in that conflict.

This feature length investigation by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit exposes Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip through the medium of photos and videos posted online by Israeli soldiers themselves during the year long conflict. The I-Unit has built up a database of thousands of videos, photos and social media posts. Where possible it has identified the posters and those who appear. The material reveals a range of illegal activities, from wanton destruction and looting to the demolition of entire neighbourhoods and murder. The film also tells the story of the war through the eyes of Palestinian journalists, human rights workers and ordinary residents of the Gaza Strip. And it exposes the complicity of Western governments – in particular the use of RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus as a base for British surveillance flights over Gaza.

The free, almost naive view from the perspective of a child puts the "68ers" in a new, illuminating light in the anniversary year 2008. The film is a provocative reckoning with the ideological upbringing that seemed so progressive and yet was suffocated by the children's desire to finally grow up. With an ironic eye and a feuilletonistic style, author Richard David Precht and Cologne documentary film director André Schäfer trace a childhood in the West German provinces - and place the major events of those years in completely different, smaller and very private contexts.

Montage film by Aymeric Caron, broadcast at the French National Assembly on May 29, 2024. “Is it a dream or a reality? » demands a little girl stunned by her injuries. It is a nightmare, without a doubt, and nothing can justify it, neither the crimes of October 7 nor the detention of Israeli hostages by Hamas. Condemning all the crimes of October 7, before and after, condemning anti-Semitism and all forms of racism is common sense. However, it seems that this needs to be clarified. Everyone present normally wishes that the surviving hostages can one day be reunited with their families and that the massacre in Gaza stops immediately. But to follow through with the process is to see things face to face, to see what has been happening in Gaza since October 7, what the Israeli army is doing, what the television channels are not showing.

After Hamas kidnapped 251 people from Israel on October 7, and as Israel’s war in Gaza unfolded, a conflict thousands of miles away erupted on New York’s walls. TORN captures the emotional fallout of the now-iconic “KIDNAPPED” poster campaign - a grassroots act of solidarity that quickly became a flashpoint, igniting fierce confrontations between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian New Yorkers. Through the voices of artists, activists, and hostage families, the film unpacks the motivations behind those putting up and tearing down the posters, exposing a complex proxy war fought in stickers, slogans, and torn paper. By revealing how a distant war fractured daily life in one of the world’s most diverse cities, the film forces a reckoning with identity, free speech, and empathy in an age of polarization.

An Italian cruise ship carrying passengers from all over the world is hijacked off the coast of Egypt by a Palestinian commando unit. It is the beginning of a three-day ordeal in 1985 that culminates in the murder of an American hostage and an armed clash between two NATO allies to capture his killers.

Steal This Film focuses on Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde, prominent members of the Swedish filesharing community. The makers claimed that 'Old Media' documentary crews couldn't understand the internet culture that filesharers took part in, and that they saw peer-to-peer organization as a threat to their livelihoods. Because of that, they were determined to accurately represent the filesharing community from within. Notably, Steal This Film was released and distributed, free of charge, through the same filesharing networks that the film documents.

An exhaustive explanation of how the military occupation of an invaded territory occurs and its consequences, using as a paradigmatic example the recent history of Israel and the Palestinian territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, from 1967, when the Six-Day War took place, to the present day; an account by filmmaker Avi Mograbi enriched by the testimonies of Israeli army veterans.

Letter to My Tribe started with a question: Why don’t more Jews and Israelis speak out about Palestine? Over many years my mother, who represents a more messianic perspective, and I have had numerous arguments, some recorded, some not. These form the backbone of this video essay in which Israelis and Jews, journalists, activists and a rabbi are interviewed, and in which documentation of actions on the ground, in the West Bank, are woven with more personal family histories and journeys to Iraq and to Poland.

The Israeli filmmaker Shai Corneli Polak records the building of the 'security wall' through Palestinian territory at the village of Bil'in. The villagers protest mostly peacefully, while the Israeli army doesn't react peacefully. By now the Israeli High Court has ruled that the building of the wall was illegal.

Severed tells the story of Mohamad Saleh, an 18-year-old from Gaza who has lived through five major assaults on the Gaza Strip. In those attacks, he lost his home, family members, his best friends, and, at the age of 12, his leg. Now living in exile in Egypt, Mohamad struggles to piece together the shattered fragments of his life. Through his eyes, the pain and trauma endured by thousands in Gaza are laid bare, alongside their remarkable strength, resilience, and determination to live.