The Songs of Rice

Jan 28, 2014

1h 15m

★ 5.2

Overview

In Thailand, a hymn to rice need not always be sung. A dance, or spectacular homemade fireworks can say the same thing. As can a film, as is convincingly demonstrated by this lyrical, beautifully filmed homage to this essential staple food.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

Extra Virgin

Pimpaka Toriwa

The Songs of Rice Trailers

Cast

No Cast found.

Women have always sought ways to terminate unwanted pregnancies, despite powerful patriarchal structures and systems working against them. This film provides a historical overview of how church, state and the medical establishment have determined policies concerning abortion. From this cross-cultural survey--filmed in Ireland, Japan, Thailand, Peru, Colombia, and Canada--emerges one reality: only a small percentage of the world's women has access to safe, legal operations.

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6.0

Art as a Weapon

Jun 12, 2014

Street art, creativity and revolution collide in this beautifully shot film about art’s ability to create change. The story opens on the politically charged Thailand/Burma border at the first school teaching street art as a form of non-violent struggle. The film follows two young girls (Romi & Yi-Yi) who have escaped 50 years of civil war in Burma to pursue an arts education in Thailand. Under the threat of imprisonment and torture, the girls use spray paint and stencils to create images in public spaces to let people know the truth behind Burma's transition toward "artificial democracy." Eighty-two hundred miles away, artist Shepard Fairey is painting a 30’ mural of a Burmese monk for the same reasons and in support of the students' struggle in Burma. As these stories are inter-cut, the film connects these seemingly unrelated characters around the concept of using art as a weapon for change.

4.8

Bruce Lee: Tracking the Dragon

Oct 25, 2016

Bruce Lee expert John Little tracks down the actual locations of some of Bruce Lee's most iconic action scenes. Many of these sites remain largely unchanged nearly half a century later. At monasteries, ice factories, and on urban streets, Little explores the real life settings of Lee's legendary career. This film builds on Little's earlier film, Pursuit of the Dragon, to present a comprehensive view of Lee's work that will change the way you see the films.

0.0

Moving to Mars

Nov 21, 2009

Moving to Mars charts the epic journey made by two Burmese families from a vast refugee camp on the Thai/Burma border to their new homes in the UK. At times hilarious, at times emotional, their travels provide a fascinating and unique insight not only into the effects of migration, but also into one of the most important current political crises - Burma.

4.0

After the Wave

Dec 14, 2014

The Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004 was the most devastating natural disaster in modern times, killing 228,000 people across 13 countries in just a few hours. AFTER THE WAVE tells the untold story of this epic forensic operation in Thailand to identify and return home the bodies of over 5,000 victims, both locals and holidaymakers from around the world. Led by a crack Australian team, the best forensic specialists from around the world were in a race against time to give back every victim their identity. Creating forensic history, the international team’s mantra from the outset was ‘we will take them home’, a seemingly impossible ambition but one that almost succeeded. In this film forensic science intersects with powerful stories of survival and loss, attempting to make some sense out of a tragedy so bewilderingly complete that nearly a decade out it still seems far-fetched to most of us.

7.5

A.W. A Portrait of Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Mar 19, 2018

Canadian actor and filmmaker Connor Jessup (Closet Monster, Falling Skies) profiles Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a maverick of Thai cinema who explores the slippery nature of time and consciousness with a sublimely idiosyncratic, often surreal approach to film form.

8.1

Love & Bananas: An Elephant Story

Apr 22, 2018

Ashley Bell and a team of elephant rescuers led by world renowned Asian elephant conservationist Lek Chailert, embark on a daring 48-hour mission across Thailand to rescue a 70-year old captive blind Asian elephant and bring her to freedom.

0.0

Edward Prince of Wales' Tour of India: Madras, Bangalore, Mysore and Hyderabad

Jan 13, 1922

This official travelogue of a royal tour follows the Prince on a series of regimental displays and a tiger hunt.

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0.0

Víťazstvo na pustatine

Jan 1, 1949

No overview available.

0.0

6 Weeks to Mother's Day

Nov 16, 2017

150 underprivileged and orphaned students in the remote jungle of Thailand attending the country's first democratic school prepare a special celebration to honor their remarkable adoptive mother on Mother's Day.

8.0

The Rescue

Oct 8, 2021

The enthralling, against-all-odds story that transfixed the world in 2018: the daring rescue of twelve boys and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in Northern Thailand.

6.4

Mysterious Object at Noon

Nov 8, 2000

A camera crew travels through Thailand asking villagers to invent the next chapter of an ever-growing story.

6.6

Farrebique, or the Four Seasons

Feb 11, 1947

Farrebique, the first feature-length effort of French documentary filmmaker Georges Rouqier, is widely regarded as his finest film. Rouqier concentrates on a single French farm family, following them through the four seasons. As in the works of Robert Flaherty, the human characters and the land surrounding them are "one", and Rouqier never misses an opportunity to parallel their lives with the eons-old phases of nature. The final symbolic images of Spring, achieved through time-lapse photography, are almost unbearably beautiful. The winner of several festival awards, Farrebique nonetheless did not immediately result in an outpouring of financing for Rouqier's follow-up films (this was a common problem in the financially strapped French film industry of the 1940s). Perhaps as a result, Rouqier did not make his sequel, Biquefarre (filmed in the same region, with some of the same "actors"), until 1983.

0.0

Gohan

Jan 21, 2017

A film about rice cultivation that depicts the most beautiful rice field landscape in Japanese cinema history and the most realistic depiction of modern rice farmers.

1.0

The Third Gender

Apr 23, 2013

A short documentary chronicling the personal lives and narratives of Thai "ladyboys," who are born men but present themselves as women, living openly in Thai society. The film interviews ladyboys from all walks of life-- performers, filmmakers, activists-- to learn what it's like to live in a society with visible gender fluidity, and to explore if Thailand is really as open to and accepting of sexual diversity as it seems.

6.8

Whores' Glory

Sep 9, 2011

In Bangkok, Thailand, women punch a clock and wait for clients in a brightly lit glass box; in the red-light district of Faridpur, Bangladesh, a madam haggles over the price of a teenage girl; and in the border town of Reynosa, Mexico, crack-addicted women pray to a deity named Lady Death.

7.8

Thailand's Wild Cats

Nov 17, 2021

The mysterious jungles of Thailand are home to some of the rarest wild cats on earth - the Clouded Leopard, The Asian Leopard, The Indian Fishing Cat and the Indo Chinese Tiger. In one of the last truly wild corners of the world this extraordinary collection of secretive predators defend their last remaining stronghold. As their territories intertwine and continuously shift, these cats must cheat death on a daily basis if they are to survive and thrive out in these tangled lands

6.0

Moon Child

Oct 12, 2018

A movie about two women who are mothers to the same child, and a child who belongs to two different worlds.

6.0

Die Rückkehr der Sextouristen: Deutsche Männer in Pattaya

Feb 27, 2023

Prostitution is banned in Thailand, yet every year about 400,000 men from Germany travel to the Asian country. The so-called sex tourists spend a few nice days in the coastal city of Pattaya with bought "girlfriends" and thus circumvent the prostitution ban. Besides seemingly harmless sex meetings, however, there is also child prostitution, which has worsened especially since the Corona lockdown and also poses major problems for the police.