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The night witch

4 minutes

Take the Five

3 minutes

EXCLUSIVE

Sundays with Riki

19 minutes

Random events

31 minutes

Las del diente

5 minutes

Aeon for Friends

Find out more

They came in the night – the all-female bomber regiment of the Soviet Air Force

During the Second World War, the Soviet Air Force initially barred women from serving in combat. That was until October 1941 when the pilot Marina Raskova personally convinced Joseph Stalin to deploy the world’s first all-female air force units to fight against Axis powers. Primarily made up of volunteers in their late teens and early 20s, these regiments flew wood-and-canvas Polikarpov U-2 biplanes, aircraft originally intended for crop-dusting and hardly equipped for warfare, lacking guns, radio, radar and even parachutes. In this short animated documentary, the US filmmaker Alison Klayman recounts the story of Nadezhda Popova (1921-2013), a pilot in the notorious 588th Night Bomber Regiment – known by fearful German soldiers as ‘Nachthexen’ (‘night witches’), for their sudden, nearly soundless approaches before devastating bombardments. In The Night Witch, Popova’s experiences – from her childhood to old age – represent the complex intersection of 20th-century warfare with women’s growing empowerment.

Director: Alison Klayman

Director of animation: Dustin Grella

Aeon for Friends

Find out more

Chase rolling hills and windmills on a jazzy ride through the California countryside

Interstate 5, the primary highway on the West Coast of the United States, runs for more than 1,000 miles between Mexico and Canada, through California, Oregon and Washington. In this experimental short film, the US filmmaker Conner Griffith takes the Californian stretches of the highway, and flips, spins, intercuts and speeds them up to exhilarating effect, set to a vigorous rendition of Take the ‘A’ Train, performed by the US jazz pianist Richard Tee. The video cleverly juxtaposes quintessentially East Coast urban music with West Coast rural imagery but, more than anything, it’s a wildly fun ride.

Video by Conner Griffith

Score: Richard Tee – Take the A Train

Aeon for Friends

Find out more

‘You wanna get rid of me?’ When the time comes to move mom into assisted living

During their weekly Sunday breakfast together, Ivy discovers that her octogenarian mother Riki is losing her memory. Soon after, Ivy decides that Riki would be better off moving out of the cozy Brooklyn apartment where she lives alone, and into an assisted living community in the Bronx, closer to Ivy’s own home. But, of course, when it comes to big family decisions, nothing is ever quite that easy. Ivy is making the request out of love, but Riki – resistant every step of the way – thinks her daughter is being controlling. When the time for a trial run at the community arrives, Ivy’s siblings start to question whether the move is premature, while Riki’s neighbours suggest that she’ll never be back. These delicate interpersonal dynamics are skilfully explored in this short documentary by New York-based filmmaker Brandon Barr. A tender and intimate portrait of ageing and the complexities of familial love, Sundays with Riki is likely to resonate with anyone who has helped to care for – or just cares about – an elderly relative.

Director: Brandon Barr

Producer: Max Mooney

Colourist: Anthony Riso

Aeon for Friends

Find out more

A classic film finds order in randomness with the aid of some improbably elaborate sets

The Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) was formed in 1956 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with the mission to create science-education materials for US high-school classrooms. In this PSSC film from 1961, the physics professors J N Patterson Hume and Donald Ivey of the University of Toronto deploy their expertise – as well as some seriously elaborate sets – to demonstrate how, with enough data, highly predictable patterns can emerge from unpredictable events. This version of Random Events has been visually and aurally enhanced by the Aeon Video team. For more elaborate educational wizardry from the PSSC, watch Frames of Reference.

Director: John Friedman

Visual restoration: Tamur Qutab

Audio restoration: Adam D’Arpino

Aeon for Friends

Find out more

A magical mystery trip through the complex connections in women’s bodies

‘Girls are weird. Babies are weird. Bodies are extra weird,’ says the Spanish animator Ana Pérez López. In Las del Diente, she uses excerpts from candid conversations with three women as a canvas for a refreshingly honest and unapologetic meditation on modern womanhood. The anecdotes are enriched with hallucinatory animated sequences and percussive interludes, transforming their conversations about social pressure and biological anomalies into a surreal celebration of being female, in all its multitudes – from having your body treated like a business to contending with deeply conflicted feelings about having children.

Video by Ana Pérez López

Aeon for Friends

Find out more

They came in the night – the all-female bomber regiment of the Soviet Air Force

During the Second World War, the Soviet Air Force initially barred women from serving in combat. That was until October 1941 when the pilot Marina Raskova personally convinced Joseph Stalin to deploy the world’s first all-female air force units to fight against Axis powers. Primarily made up of volunteers in their late teens and early 20s, these regiments flew wood-and-canvas Polikarpov U-2 biplanes, aircraft originally intended for crop-dusting and hardly equipped for warfare, lacking guns, radio, radar and even parachutes. In this short animated documentary, the US filmmaker Alison Klayman recounts the story of Nadezhda Popova (1921-2013), a pilot in the notorious 588th Night Bomber Regiment – known by fearful German soldiers as ‘Nachthexen’ (‘night witches’), for their sudden, nearly soundless approaches before devastating bombardments. In The Night Witch, Popova’s experiences – from her childhood to old age – represent the complex intersection of 20th-century warfare with women’s growing empowerment.

Director: Alison Klayman

Director of animation: Dustin Grella

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Essay/
Thinkers and theories
Impossible choices

Learning from his family, his animals and his work with tribal people, Gregory Bateson saw the creative potential of paradox

Tim Parks

Essay/
Religion
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Master Nissho Inoue and his band of assassins teach some uncomfortable truths about terrorism, for those who will hear

Brian Victoria