It’s hard starting over in a new land with a new language and a different set of values, where even the everyday conventions seem unconventional to you. It can be harder still if you’re a child.

The Bilingual Support Unit at Shawlands Academy in Glasgow has built an international reputation through offering support to pupils with little or no English language skills. The children have come from all over the world: some fleeing persecution, others whose families are working or studying in Glasgow. Over the course of time teacher Abdellatif Faithi has filmed their stories and activities as both an archive and a learning tool. My Journey is a work in progress based on this in which the pupils share their experiences of life, of leaving home and starting over in a new and strange country.

A short film made by and featuring four young people in care about their dreams for the future.

Commissioned from mediaco-op by Who Cares? Scotland.

There are now 7 billion residents in our global village. One hundred of them come together to explore what it means to live there today.

Through conversation, reflection, dance and movement, staff and pupils of Holyrood High School in Edinburgh examine the realities of ‘what it means to be human’ in the 21st century. This film tries to capture some of their insights as they acknowledge our competing needs in this diversity of cultures, beliefs and languages.

The sequel to the award-wining ‘Punam’ shown at Document 3, ‘Big Sister Punam’ takes up the story of child labour in Nepal once again by revisiting the same family to see what happened next.

In 2005 Punam Tamang was nine, living in the Nepalese city of Bhaktapur. Since her mother died when she was only five, Punam, her last-born sister Rabina and her two-year-old brother Krishna saw little of their father, as he worked from sunrise to sundown in a rice factory in order to earn enough money for their school fees. And so during the daytime Punam assumed the role of head of the family, caregiver and homemaker.

And yet, they were lucky in a way: some of the parents of Punam’s friends did not make enough money to afford the school fees. Instead of studying, these children had to work in a stone quarry or brick-making factory to help their families get by. The poor five-grade school she attended represented Punam’s symbol of hope. She believed that education was the only opportunity for improving their situation, and dreamed of becoming a teacher and helping other children like herself.

Four years later, Punam is now thirteen and her life has changed. What she and her siblings had managed to avoid up till then has become an inevitabiity as her story takes us to the local brick-making factory…
A beautifully crafted and powerful film about the hard facts of child labour and the dignity of some of those who are enmeshed by it.

On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Five of these UN member countries are today the biggest arms dealers in the world.

An experimental montage of newsreel images set to a hard electronic score, ’War Disease’ works to an almost hypnotic climax as nearly all the filmed conflicts of the last 70 years are hammered at you like a bad acid trip of suffering. Anti-arms trade agitprop at its most intense.

What really happened at the 2001 G8 summit in Genova- and how exactly did the mass peaceful protest turn into the running street battle it became, a nightmare of violence, destruction and the tragic death of one protestor?

Intercutting broadcast news and independent media footage with the eye of an artist as much as a documentarist, the filmmaker fashions a kind of polemic from the raw material which builds into a powerfully intense and visceral experience.

A well-crafted and original piece of filmmaking, ‘On Power’ feels like a personal essay on democracy at its limits, and the role of the media in managing contradictory perceptions of the same events.

Join the Scottish Documentary Institute for an afternoon with the latest films, filmmakers and characters for a unique insight into the making of these brand new short docs. All made in Scotland and all extremely different in style and theme however all dealing with human rights issues in an extremely creative way.

Jimmy McIntosh, MBE, campaigns daily for disabled rights. Nothing can stop him, especially not his own Cerebral Palsy. A day in the life of Jimmy McIntosh, seen from his point of view.

Last summer in Dundee, eight young men took their own lives. The city was in shock as the deaths mounted, week on week. This film revisits their relatives, six months later. Giving up on asking ‘why?’ parents are trying to get on with their lives. One mother, Carol, now has something new to live for: a granddaughter.

Anne Wallace once had a dream to help Glasgow’s working women. Soon after she had a double decker bus, and the Ministry of Salt and Light.

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey was a prominent student activist in the Civil Rights and republican movements in Northern Ireland in the sixties. Her eloquence, humour and indomitable spirit over the intervening years have been an inspiration to those struggling for social justice.

She was the youngest woman MP in the British Parliament at the age of twenty one, was jailed for her part in the Battle of the Bogside, survived an assassination attempt on herself and her husband and now leads a cross-community organisation in County Tyrone.

The film follows key moments in her public life to date and her current reflections on these.
Introduction and Q&A with Director Lelia Doolan.

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey will lead a discussion on Human Rights, Class Struggle and Social Justice in the CCA Clubroom on Fri 21st Oct at 5.00pm.

“Do you read the newspapers? Do you watch news on TV or listen to it on the radio? Do you think the media offers truthful information? Do you consider yourself to be well informed?”

Starting from this basic questionnaire, Fourth Estate examines the nature of contemporary mass media- its power to form as much as inform public opinion, and what that says about the democratic health of our societies in the age of information.

A rigorous analysis of the media and its economic and ideological interests, unveiling the hidden mechanisms behind these huge machines of influence.

In 2003 The Scottish Left Review had already addressed itself to “what we might do about the abusive power that the media wields over public life”, some years before the reluctant theatre of News International’s ‘failure’ of corporate self-regulation.

In his 2005 Nobel Lecture, Harold Pinter lambasted traditional media for its unquestioning collusion in a distortion of the truth towards justifying the invasion of Iraq. The Fourth Estate was found not holding power to account but accounting for power.

In 2009 the Scottish Parliament published its report ‘Crisis in the Scottish Press Industry’ which looked to examine “pressures facing the press industry in Scotland”. What “forced the industry to dramatically restructure itself, often at great cost to staff”, was not media consolidation or off-shore ownership and forced productivity rises aimed at greater wealth extraction, but “the economic climate, diminishing advertising revenues and the explosion of alternative news sources”.

Albeit, the crisis for journalism is far from confined to Scotland.

In March 2010 Robert Jensen wrote: “There is considerable attention paid in the United States to the collapse of journalism – both in terms of the demise of the business model for corporate commercial news media, and the evermore superficial, shallow, and senseless content that is inadequate for citizens concerned with self-governance. This collapse is part of larger crises in the political and economic spheres … There has been far less discussion of the need for a journalism of collapse – the challenge to tell the story of a world facing multiple crises in the realms of social justice and sustainability. This collapse of the basic political and economic systems of the modern world, with dramatic consequences on the human and ecological fronts, demands not only new storytelling vehicles but a new story.”

Could it be that our crisis of journalism is also a crisis of democracy?

A short documentary developed and produced with young people in North & East Glasgow to raise awareness about health, wellbeing and suicide prevention.

A drama documentary exploring attitudes to drink made by a group of young people from YAIS (Youth Alcohol Information Service) in Easterhouse.

Voices From The Barras celebrates the heritage and history of Glasgow’s World Famous Market, The Barras.  The film focuses on the Barras community’s memories and stories, past and present, from traders and stallholders to family members and customers.

Peter continues his personal journey to document how bullying affects people with learning disabilities as well as their families.

Courage is a short participatory film made by asylum seekers and refugees for the 60th Anniversary of the Refugee Convention. It was commissioned by the Scottish Refugee Council.
Rosa, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, and Christian from the Democratic Republic of Congo, both arrived in the UK as children, fleeing violence and persecution in their birth countries. This film shows how The Refugee Convention, created to protect the rights of people like Rosa, is still saving lives 60 years later.

North Edinburgh Social History Group are a collective of older people who have been actively involved in the community for over 30 years. Working in partnership with Community Learning and Development, City of Edinburgh Council, they have produced a photographic exhibition and 50 page publication centred on the history of the North Edinburgh community.This documentary film, Never Give Up, telling the story of community activism in the area down the years, was also produced in partnership with Pilton Video.

A community-based, participatory documentary about women’s struggles in Govan and Greater Glasgow.

Taking its inspiration from the Govan Rent Strikes of 1915 led by Mrs Barbour’s Army, and based on the experiences of those involved in the project, this film celebrates figures such as Mary Barbour and Agnes McLean, and the campaign for equal pay in the industries and trade unions of Clydeside.

Produced and directed by Kirsten MacLeod with members of The Govan Seniors Film Group and the Platform Mental Health Group, in association with Plantation Productions & The University of the West of Scotland.

What happens to African migrants once granted political refugee status? What challenges do they face and what are their prospects for a decent life in Italy?
In Turin, an abandoned clinic has been squatted by more than 200 refugees since December 2008. All of whom are legal.

Set between a cinema and a street market in a working-class neighbourhood, this 5-story building is now inhabited by Somali and Sudanese refugees, forming a small African island in the heart of a European city, yet isolated from the rest of the world. There is running water in one room per floor- and 80 people on each floor. There is electricity- but no heating…

It was with great enthusiasm that I found out that I was expecting my first child. While I was awaiting the arrival of my bundle of joy, I never expected my labour would turn into a nightmare and that my baby and I would end up at death’s door…

Ramallah Road: malaise, hopelessness and boredom rule on this road, which used to connect Jerusalem and Ramallah, and which was the economic vein of Al-Ram on the West Bank. Now the wall put up by Israel splits the road, and the local Palestinians have lost even more land, as well as the ties to their fellow Palestinians in Jerusalem.

Meanwhile a team of young street artists are spraying a copy of a text 2.5 km long down the wall towards Ramallah till it is almost touching the infamous checkpoint of Qalandia. The text is an open letter written by Farid Esack, a South African anti-apartheid activist, who compares the Palestinian situation to Apartheid…
After 40 years of fruitless struggle, what is the right way to resist?

This is the story of a man who during World War II served in two warring armies and was a prisoner in both Nazi and Soviet concentration camps. A story about history, chance and fate…

Gabriel Belhassan is the singer and leading songwriter in the successful Israeli band ‘Aljir’. He is also Bipolar, and his condition both provides powerful material for his writing and hinders his ability to continue as a professional performer.

As his mental state deteriorates, the band breaks up and Gabriel returns to the security of his family’s farm. The film follows his attempts to restart his career, write new songs and record an album. But the pressures of returning to the public arena threaten his mental health once more.

Cutting between observation, interview and video diary in which Gabriel seems to use the camera as ‘evidence’ for himself- an objective way of examining moods he perhaps has no control over to afterwards try and better understand his own struggle- ‘Wandering Eyes’ is a warm and humane film about a talented man going through a very bad time, as he manages to turn the war with his demons into the constructive catharsis that artistic expression can sometimes be.

A chance to see that rare thing, an uplifiting film about mental health and a condition that is itself rarely examined in documentary filmmaking.

It seems like almost every day in contemporary China a new city springs up from the fields, a new industrial zone appears on what was agricultural land as the country continues to develop its economic infrastructure.

Workers are needed for this on a huge scale; some 150 million people have already set out from the underdeveloped rural provinces to earn their living in the growth centres of China.

Tokyo-based Swiss photographer Andreas Seibert has been working since 2002 on a photographic documentation of the life and work of China’s migrant rural workers. From 2006-2008, Swiss filmmaker Villi Hermann followed him from the booming southern provinces to the fallow land of the north as they visited migrant workers at their workplaces and travelled with them back to their hometowns to visit the families left behind.

With its combination of photographs and video images, ‘From Somewhere to Nowhere’ conveys a unique impression of the scale of this epic modern migration- arguably the largest in human history.

Sixteen year old Srey Leak and her two seventeen year old friends Me Nea and Cheata all had their virginities sold by their parents for what in Cambodian terms was a significant amount of money. Now that they have lost their virginity and therefore their ‘value’ as women, they are left with little choice but to work in Cambodia’s huge sex industry.

Part of the reason they do this is the pressure they have to financially support their families, and for Me Nea and Cheata, their children. They work as indirect sex workers in the form of karaoke and massage girls, and as direct sex workers, selling themselves on the streets of Phnom Penh. Contrary to what many Westerners believe, most of the demand is from local, not foreign, sex tourists.

The Girls of Phnom Penh is a story of sisterhood through adversity; a friendship that offers each girl a very simple form of support as they struggle to balance their childhood dreams and teenage expectations of life with the very adult lives they lead by night.

There is a forgotten conflict in the Western Sahara that doesn’t often excite world media interest, that has continued for decades, and that pits its indigenous inhabitants- the Saharawi people- against the Morroccan government.

Colonised by Spain then occupied by Morrocco when Spain left, the wall which the Morroccan government built across the Western Sahara is said to be second only in scale to the Great Wall of China- and may have provided a useful precedent for the Israeli ‘security fence’.

The accounts which followed outline a history of repression, struggle, secret prisons, and the strange reluctance of the United Nations to broker a solution.

Through a mixture of personal testimony, archive and sometimes highly graphic imagery, this film recaps the history of the desert war the world has chosen to look away from.

A new documentary by award-winning Scottish director Katrina McPherson about improvising dance artist Kirstie Simson. Combining specially filmed performance, documentary footage and in-depth interviews, Force of Nature reveals Kirstie’s passionate belief in the power of dance to bring people together and transform lives. The film also features top international dance artists Michael Schumacher (US/Holland) Kenzo Kusuda (Japan), Dai Jain (China/US),

Simon Ellis (UK/Australia and the dancers of Scottish Dance Theatre.
Force of Nature was completed in July 2011 and has been screened at the Universal Hall and at the Marriott centre, Salt Lake City, USA.

Sirens, screams, laughter, singing, bartering: these are the sounds sweeping into the rooms of Downtown Los Angeles’ old forgotten hotels. Their inhabitants’ stories tell of lives lived on the margins. Some residents stay for a few months. Others have lived there for as long as 40 years. According to Charlie, the desk clerk at the King Edward Hotel, “you can be anything you want; you can do anything you want – and nobody gives a damn!” After all, we’re on America’s most notorious skid row, also known to old-timers as the Nickel.

Director Alina Skrzeszewska lived in one of the hotels for a year and a half while shooting ‘songs from the nickel’. The result is a strikingly intimate portrait of people living in this largely invisible community. Their lives speak of both desperation and beauty, while subtly resisting the encroaching gentrification. A layered image of America’s diverse urban landscape unfolds, with all its fractures and traumas, as well as its potential.

In the densely forested hills above Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the Moroccan coast, 57 young Indian migrants await their fate in a shantytown community they’ve built to avoid deportation.

They protest. They play cricket. They talk to their families back home via Skype. The film accompanies them in their daily trials as they scramble to survive, waiting to cross the last 14 km that separate them from Europe. But will they make it?