At the 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival, a series of films documented foreign farmers driven to suicide by their failure to pay off their debts. Watching wealthy Americans handle debt only reaffirms the rigged system.

Starring Freida Pinto as a poor, young Indian woman working at a hotel whose physical beauty catches the eye of the spoiled, wealthy son of an Indian businessman, Trishna rests on a painful foundation of rigid caste distinctions, male privilege, and the limited opportunities.

A collection of shorts from this year's San Francisco International Film Festival demonstrates what can happen when people steer their thoughts in a positive, rather than negative direction.

Has YouTube become the new porn?

Most people recall the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as they celebrate Independence Day. Some, however, think of what individual freedom means when it comes to defying the expectations of others.

What happens to children who have figured out that nothing can stop them from making music for the sheer fun of it? In 2001, a group of Swedish musicians produced a deliciously droll short film entitled Music For One Apartment and Six Drummers.

During the recent San Francisco International Film Festival, two animated shorts stood so far above the others in terms of imagination, structure, and artistic brilliance that I was left speechless by their cinematic beauty.

Despite the tendency of many Americans to think that the whole world revolves around them, the phenomenon of bullying takes place in any society where power games lead to one person attempting to dominate another.

Isamu Hirabayashi's animation short 663114 puts a fascinating twist on the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake, the tsunami and the core meltdown at the nuclear plant.