Here is Your Life

An angel is sent from Heaven to help a desperately frustrated businessman by showing him what life would have been like if he had never existed.

Swedish artist Anna Odell invites us to a grim class reunion with a twist. What happens when old hierarchies and truths are questioned from an unexpected voice? Återträffen investigates how far, too far reality is. It traverses the border between fiction and reality with Odell playing the main character, using her own identity and life story to go into unspoken and invisible hierarchical structure. By processing the story in multiple layers, the complexity of power and exclusion is revealed and the dynamics of the group is exposed.

This exclusive video collection is jam-packed with the gritty best from noted New York filmmaker Richard Kern. His sexually-charged work has been alternately dismissed as “violent” and “offensive” by the mainstream press, but embraced by the underground as the perverse standard. Says Kern, “I've tried it all: crime thrills, drug thrills, sex thrills. Nowadays, I get most of my thrills by offending people with my films. I don't even have to be there. I can sit far away and think, “Someone's watching my video right now and thinking, Yeeughh!”

The World Science Festival is an annual highlight, bringing together a just-right mix of star power from various scientific disciplines and further-flung fields. Our mission is to cultivate a general public informed by science, inspired by its wonder, convinced of its value, and prepared to engage with its implications for the future.

George Bailey is a small-town man whose life seems so desperate he contemplates suicide. He had always wanted to leave Bedford Falls to see the world, but circumstances and his own good heart have led him to stay. He sacrficed his education for his brother's, kept the family-run savings and loan afloat, protected the town from the avarice of the greedy banker Mr. Potter, and married his childhood sweetheart. As he prepares to jump from a bridge, his guardian angel intercedes, showing him what life would have become for the residents of Bedford Falls if he had never lived.

Hidden away below stairs an army of people were once the vital cogs that kept the homes of the wealthy running smoothly. For little reward these men and women toiled from before dawn until after dusk. A century ago, 1.5 million British people worked as servants – astonishingly, more than worked in factories or farms. But while servants are often portrayed as characters in period dramas, the real stories of Britain's servants have largely been forgotten.
From Upstairs, Downstairs to Gosford Park and Downton Abbey, TV dramas and films have made us care about the characters below stairs.

Animation Express is a compilation of recent auteur animation from the National Film Board of Canada, the world’s leading public producer of animated films. Its 2009 release coincides with the NFB’s 70th anniversary. The collection features 26 films from both established and emerging filmmakers, includes multi-award winners such as Sleeping Betty and Madame Tutli-Putli.