Pussy Riot make a comeback after a long absence to stand with Ukraine. Their story and their struggle are told through archival footage and interviews with the group’s members.
Social & External
County Durham, England, 1984. The miners' strike has started and the police have started coming up from Bethnal Green, starting a class war with the lower classes suffering. Caught in the middle of the conflict is 11-year old Billy Elliot, who, after leaving his boxing club for the day, stumbles upon a ballet class and finds out that he's naturally talented. He practices with his teacher Mrs. Wilkinson for an upcoming audition in Newcastle-upon Tyne for the royal Ballet school in London.
Can a secret change who you are? Mysterious events unfold and reveal how Martha, a Polish holocaust survivor, managed to lead a double life in Australia. The vivacious Jewish artist and doting mother, died without ever revealing her secret. The film follows Martha’s daughter Eve, over a decade, as she unlocks the mystery behind the streets named Eve and Martha. Clues are found in old recordings and Martha’s home movies revealing a mystery man gazing into the lens. Eve’s investigation leads her to the Sobieski castle in the Ukraine, the site of a massacre where her grandmother died, and the Eichmann trial as she explores her parents’ holocaust survival and her father’s heroic escape from a concentration camp. When a ‘doppelgänger’ contacts Eve, her life is forever altered, as she uncovers lies, tracks down her mother’s young lover and reveals the family secret that led her to rewrite her entire life.
A film portrayal of a pioneering aviator and best-selling author whose extraordinary public life had a deep impact on her inner world.
“El apagón: Aquí vive gente” is a 23-minute film that explores the socio-economic challenges in Puerto Rico, focusing on the effects of power outages and gentrification driven by the real estate and energy sectors. Through visuals and personal stories, the documentary highlights the experiences of Puerto Rican communities facing these issues.
An intimate portrait of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov — once Deputy Prime Minister and “an heir of President Yeltsin”, later an uncompromising adversary of Putin — that was assassinated near the Kremlin in February 2015. Election campaigns and hotel beds, protest rallies and office routine, train compartments and courtrooms, night walks and police vans – you have never seen any politician so close. This is a story how a journalist assignment turns into a genuine friendship.
Diane di Prima (1934-2020) was a poet, writer, publisher and playwright whose work has been associated with the Beat movement. Born and raised in New York City, she associated with poets such as Amiri Baraka, Jack Kerouac and Frank O’Hara, co-editing The Floating Bear magazine with Baraka in the 60s and co-founding the Poets Press and the New York Poets Theatre. Throughout her life in New York and later out West, both her sense of anarchic limitlessness and her zeal for collaboration guided her work.
Gary's Story is part of a collective filmmaking project that looks at relationships between teenagers and their grandparents in families that have recently immigrated to the US from the former Soviet Union. Gary's family is from Moscow.
Klaira presents a surprising vision of assimilation and a loving depiction of San Francisco. She and her grandparents explore how the experience of immigration changed their sense of self and altered the fabric of their relationship.
This Ukrainian-Jewish teenager immigrated to San Francisco as a young child. Now on the brink of adulthood, she interviews her grandparents about their new lives yearning to see her American world through their eyes. Yelena understands that life in the US has changed her profoundly.
Elizabeth Windsor tells the story of the girl who was never supposed to be Queen. Born the first daughter of 'the spare', the Duke of York, Princess Elizabeth's life was destined to be nothing more than a bit part in the privileged shadows of the British Royal family.
The documentary team follows two happiness agents in their forties who spend a month and a half on the road twice a year, going door-to-door with their questionnaires in isolated villages in the Himalayas. The filmmakers undertake to provide an intimate insight into the daily lives and desires of Bhutanese people, and also seek the answer to the universal question of whether happiness can really be measured. Gross National Happiness promises a heart-warming journey into a mysterious, fairytale-like world, which is the exact opposite of the social order dominated by consumption and desires.
The sinking of the RMS Titanic remains one of the most enduring and mysterious tragedies of the 20th century. For decades, investigators and amateurs alike have floated theories for why it occurred and who was to blame for the extraordinary loss of life, but no one answer could fully explain what happened. Until now. To mark the 100th anniversary of the infamous disaster, Smithsonian Channel will premiere Titanic's Final Mystery. The two-hour special investigates a century of theories and uncovers astonishing new forensic evidence that proves the most likely theory for the case.
It’s Chicago in the 1980s and ‘90s, and Kevin Matthews has it all as one of the nation’s most recognized on-air radio personalities. He’s partying with celebrities, rubbing shoulders with famous athletes, and the world is at his fingertips. Then everything changes – he’s diagnosed with a debilitating illness and the spotlight gradually slips away. At the height of his anguish, he stumbles upon a broken statue of the Virgin Mary, and his life takes an unexpected turn. In this moment of spiritual awakening, Kevin finds his true purpose and calling, discovering what matters most. Calling himself “Mary’s Roadie,” he offers his fans something deeper: inspiration and hope.
Citizen Film worked closely with The California Nurses Foundation (CNF) to identify nurses who are strong storytellers, and engage them in creating first-person documentaries. These intensely personal narratives emblemize strategies for providing healthcare in an increasingly diverse State. Citizen Film collaborated with CNF to curate those stories into a digital curriculum that provides cultural-competency training to CNF’s very large constituency of healthcare providers around the state.
Low-level narcotics offenders too often cycle in and out of jail, re-offending soon after they hit the streets. District Attorney Kamala D. Harris has convened City leaders to answer this problem and, along with key partners, has launched Back on Track, an innovative education and employment reentry initiative focusing on young adult drug offenders. Designed to increase community safety by reducing recidivism, Back on Track couples strict accountability and close supervision with education, employment support and health care. The purpose of Back on Track is to prevent young people from committing crimes by leading them to make life changing choices.
A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.
In 1977, a book of photographs captured an awakening - women shedding the cultural restrictions of their childhoods and embracing their full humanity. This documentary revisits those photos, those women and those times and takes aim at our culture today that alarmingly shows the need for continued change.
As anger and resentment grow in the face of social inequalities, many citizens-led protests are being repressed with an ever-increasing violence. In this documentary, David Dufresne gathers a panel of citizens to question, exchange and confront their views on the social order and the legitimacy of the use of force by the State.
In the winter of 2011, after a controversial election, Vladimir Putin was reinstalled as president of Russia. In response, hundreds of thousands of citizens rose up all over the country to challenge the legitimacy of Putin’s rule. Among them were a group of young, radical-feminist punk rockers, better known as Pussy Riot. Wearing colored balaclavas, tights, and summer dresses, they entered Moscow’s most venerated cathedral and dared to sing “Mother Mary, Banish Putin!” Now they have become victims of a “show” trial.
When a feminist filmmaker sets out to document the mysterious and polarizing world of the Men’s Rights Movement, she begins to question her own beliefs. Chronicling Cassie Jaye’s journey exploring an alternate perspective on gender equality, power and privilege.
As the Russian invasion begins, a team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting the war's atrocities.
A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice– whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
In near-future New York, ten years after the “social-democratic war of liberation,” diverse groups of women organize a feminist uprising as equality remains unfulfilled.
We live in a world where the powerful deceive us. We know they lie. They know we know they lie. They do not care. We say we care, but we do nothing, and nothing ever changes. It is normal. Welcome to the post-truth world. How we got to where we are now…
The remarkable story of The Weather Underground, radical activists of the 1970s, and of radical politics at its best and most disastrous.
When the Chinese Communist Party backtracks on its promise of autonomy to Hong Kong, teenager Joshua Wong decides to save his city. Rallying thousands of kids to skip school and occupy the streets, Joshua becomes an unlikely leader in Hong Kong and one of China’s most notorious dissidents.
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
This documentary focuses on the actors and their journey over two summers to create the remake to the original IT, by Stephen King. The documentary originally released as bonus material, bundled with IT: Chapter Two.
A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.
While The Rolling Stones rehearse "Sympathy for the Devil" in the studio, an alternating narrative reflects on 1968 society, politics and culture through five different vignettes.
In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.
A documentary shot by filmmakers all over the world that serves as a time capsule to show future generations what it was like to be alive on the 24th of July, 2010.
The film is based on interviews with 2,000 women from 50 countries, and covers the status of women all over the world. The topics covered include forced marriages, sexual assault, female genital mutilation, acid attacks, motherhood, sexuality, menstruation, education and the professional success of women.
Over seven decades, actor and activist George Takei journeyed from a World War II internment camp to the helm of the Starship Enterprise, and then to the daily news feeds of five million Facebook fans. Join George and his husband, Brad, on a wacky and profound trek for life, liberty, and love.