Ali Kazimi

"An investigative documentary that takes viewers inside the high-stakes business of boxing. It is an unprecedented look at the inner workings of the fight game from both sides of the ropes with access to the FBI's investigation of the International Boxing Federation and a ringside seat at the contract negotiation for the most lucrative deal in the sport's history."

Narmada: A Valley Rises is beautifully photographed, inspiring film. It documents a 200 kilometer non-violent Gandhian march involving 6000 participants. The film offers a compelling and intimate portrait of a unique movement while raises critical and universal issues of human-rights, social justice, and development within a democracy.

Shadowed by the death of her mother, Julie Kumagai's life with her widower father is marked by pained, turbulent exchanges. Indifferent to a break-up with her boyfriend and the lure of a long-planned trip, she finds some refuge in her workplace where she meets Tetsuro, a young Korean man newly emigrated from Japan who is obsessed with all things American. But together they discover no easy resolutions.

Continuous Journey is an inquiry into the largely ignored history of Canada's exclusion of the South Asians by a little known immigration policy called the Continuous Journey Regulation of 1908. Unlike the Chinese and the Japanese, people from British India were excluded by a regulation that appeared fair, but in reality, was an effective way of keeping people from India out of Canada until 1948. As a direct result, only a half-mile from Canadian shores, the Komagata Maru was surrounded by immigration boats and the passengers were held incommunicado virtual prisoners on the ship. Thus began a dramatic stand-off which would escalate over the course of two months, becoming one of the most infamous incidents in Canadian history.

Silas Fung, a Chinese-American, was a sign designer and painter for Sears in Chicago in the 1930’s. Born into a creative family, he was also an avid painter, musician, church-goer, documentarian and father. After he was married (to Edythe) and had children, he decided to continue his passion for filming by documenting their lives. Over the next two or three decades, he amassed his family’s whole life as they became part of the middle class of America. Meanwhile, in the early 21st century, Ali Kazimi was bidding on an online auction for some 16mm nitrate film cans with Silas’ name on them. After winning them and starting the process of cleaning them up, he was contacted by a lady who was bidding on another lot of Silas’ films and wanted to know who had won the second lot. From there, Kazimi began to interview Silas’ daughter, Irena Lam, and other Chinese-American people who grew up at the same time as Irena as well as experts in Sino-American culture.

Fair Play opens a window to the past and allows viewer to feel as if they are in the presence of materially fathomable, historically accurate, life-sized peoples. With the immediacy and presence that only stereoscopic 3D moving images can evoke, Kazimi asks the viewer to rethink history and immerse themselves into the spaces and lives of the characters.

In 1915, two Sikh mill-workers, Dalip Singh and Naina Singh, were entrapped by undercover cops and accused of sodomy. Their story becomes a fascinating case study of Vancouver power relations: how police corruption, racism, homophobia, and a covert "whites-only" immigration policy, conspired to maintain the status quo of this colonial port city. Told in four parts, by three separate directors, the film is a hybrid of film forms including drama, documentary and musical.

Director Barry Greenwald takes his camera into a place we never thought we'd see so intimately: a high-risk parole office and the people whose lives it touches--prisoners guilty of everything from murder to white-collar crime; officers desperate to keep their clients out of prison and their failures off the files. What you see on-screen is the real thing: raw, revealing and utterly fascinating. Over a 10-month period, we follow six high-risk offenders and the parole officers and therapists whose job is to make sure they stay clean, stay out of trouble and stay out of jail. The offenders put up with urine tests for drugs, random curfew checks and therapy sessions. Most work at it, some feel hopeless, others just go through the motions. Their stories are at turns bizarre, tragic, disturbing and endearing. Frightening and funny, sad and troubling, High Risk Offender is a stunning documentary.