After surviving a violent assault by a serving soldier who was convicted but walked free with a suspended sentence, Natasha O'Brien refused to stay silent.
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“It ain’t easy…being green” is the favorite expression of Stormé DeLarverie, a woman whose life flouted prescriptions of gender and race. During the 1950s and '60s she toured the black theater circuit as a mistress of ceremonies and the sole male impersonator of the legendary Jewel Box Revue, America’s first integrated female impersonation show and forerunner of La Cage aux Folles.
In February 2005, YouTube was launched and forever changed our relationship to moving images, both as viewers and producers. But even well before then, the web had made a large variety of new materials accessible to see and to download, as well as upload. “From the Cloud” is a video program that looks at found footage “films” in the Internet Age. The proliferation of archived photographs, digital images, and videos made available to everyone online as well as an exponential increase in production has changed the way artists interact with pre-existing material. The artists in this program both pull material from the cloud and implicitly comment on the cloud by doing so.
Chick Strand's SOFT FICTION is a personal documentary that brilliantly portrays the survival power of female sensuality. It combines the documentary approach with a sensuous lyrical expressionism. Strand focuses her camera on people talking about their own experience, capturing subtle nuances in facial expressions and gestures that are rarely seen in cinema. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2015.
Initially airing on HBO's "America Undercover" series, this riveting documentary focuses on three families shattered by the psychiatric disorder of schizophrenia. Subjects "Bob," "Missy" and "Steven" have lived for over a decade with schizophrenia. The film documents the difficult day-to-day existence of both those afflicted with this order and the families searching for answers to their loved ones' suffering. This film also shows the varied and variably successful treatment methods for each of the subjects—one is placed in a group home, one is placed in an institution, and one is cared for at home. The documentary was critically acclaimed for its compassionate treatment of mental illness.
The author Jurga Ivanauskaitė (1961-2007) was considered a pioneer of contemporary Baltic literature well beyond the borders of Lithuania. Her work deals intensively with the tension between religion, sexuality and emancipation. Film documents and interviews serve to reconstruct the life of this independent and willful woman - from her childhood to her artistic breakthrough as a companion of the Lithuanian rock and punk scene, but also depicting her spiritual side, which brought her all the way to India, where she turned to Buddhism. She is shown as fighting for the Dalai Lama and a "free Tibet", shown as a literary mind, but first and foremost she is shown as a woman who stood bravely in the face of inconvenience, pain and inner demons.
Documentary looking at a century of cycling. Commissioned to mark the arrival of the 2014 Tour de France in Yorkshire, the film makes full use of stunning British Film Institute footage to transport the audience on a journey from the invention of the modern bike, through the rise of recreational cycling, to gruelling competitive races. Award-winning director Daisy Asquith artfully combines the richly-diverse archive with a hypnotic soundtrack from cult composer Bill Nelson in a joyful, absorbing watch for both cycling and archive fans.
The Beastie Boys are among the most influential groups of the last two decades. As their music has opened hip-hop to a wider audience and changed the parameters of its sound, their ambitious music videos have carried the medium to new levels of artistic expression. This groundbreaking two-disc anthology showcases eighteen videos containing alternate visual angles and multiple audio tracks. Loaded with never-before-seen footage and unreleased music tracks, this special edition also contains a trove of rare still photos and exclusive audio commentary by the band and the video directors.
Ydessa Hendeles' exhibition entitled "The living and the Artificial" (consisting of works of art all comprising a photograph of living persons in the company of one or several teddy bears) had puzzled Agnès Varda so much that she decided to go to Toronto where the artist lives and interview her. In front of Agnes Varda's DV camera, Ydessa tells about the singularity of her artistic approach. She also expresses herself about the Holocaust, which both her parents survived.
In 1984-85, people at Lake Tahoe fell ill with flu symptoms, but they didn't get better. Medical literature documents similar outbreaks: in 1934 at LA county hospital, in 1948-49 in Iceland, in 1956 in Punta Gorda, Florida. The malady now has a name, chronic fatigue syndrome, and filmmaker Kim Snyder, who suffered from the disease for several years, tells her story and talks to victims and their families, and to physicians and researchers: is it viral, it is psychosomatic, is it one disease or several (a syndrome) ; what's the CDC doing about it; what's it like to have a disease that's not yet understood? Her inquiry takes her to Punta Gorda and to a high-school graduation.
Seven young women from Berlin discuss their experiences with the pill in a studio setting and react to the ideas that young men of the same age have about this contraceptive. The film is based on the work of the women's group "Brot und Rosen" and their book "Frauenhandbuch Nr.1 Abtreibung und Verhütung".
For over 30 years, Martin Bisi has been recording music from his studio in Gowanus, Brooklyn. He has worked with many influential musicians, including Sonic Youth, Swans, Herbie Hancock, Brian Eno and the Dresden Dolls. Now though, he finds himself squeezed in by the approaching gentrification of his neighborhood.
Every five years hundreds of thousands of international visitors come to Kassel, Germany, to be part of the documenta, one of the world's most important exhibitions in modern and contemporary art. For the duration of 100 days, the small town changes its face and becomes the centre of international art. The documentary team of Katrin and Susanne Heinz tries to capture the atmosphere - letting artists, visitors and of course the artworks speak for themselves.
Shot with stunning elegance and clarity, NAKED SPACES explores the rhythm and ritual of life in the rural environments of six West African countries (Mauritania, Mali, Burkino Faso, Togo, Benin and Senegal). The nonlinear structure of NAKED SPACES challenges the traditions of ethnographic filmmaking, while sensuous sights and sounds lead the viewer on a poetic journey to the most inaccessible parts of the African continent: the private interaction of people in their living spaces.
Prof. Petr Vopěnka is a worldwide famous Czech mathematician, author of many books concerning history of Maths, geometry above all. He is an original thinker, connecting mathematics with philosophy. He has become recognized by public because of invention of the biggest number (the so-called Vopěnka's cardinal) and thanks to being active in politics for two years - he was the first Minister of Education after 1989 revolution in Czechoslovakia. His portrait works mostly with non-synchron images trying to find the abstract qualities in the pieces of prof. Vopěnka's everyday reality, that should inspire the spectator for concentrated interpretation of the words that are mapping personality of Vopěnka - mathematician.
Made entirely of Scottish film archive, a journey into our collective past, the film explores universal themes of love, loss, resistance, migration, work and play. Ordinary people, some long since dead, their names and identities largely forgotten, appear shimmering from the depth of the vaults to take a starring role. Brilliantly edited together, these silent individuals become composite characters, who emerge to tell us their stories, given voice by King Creosote's poetic music and lyrics
Alison Murray travels as a hobo on freight trains across Canada and the US. She gets to know the community of train riders, especially the many girls riding the rails.
Susan Sontag scrutinizes the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict and the growing divisions within Jewish thought over the question of Palestinian sovereignty. Shot in Israel during the final days of the Yom Kippur War. Promised Lands is less straight documentary than visual collage. There are images of combat zones and soldiers, but also everyday street life, desert landscapes, funerals, supermarkets, the Wailing Wall. The soundtrack is snatches of radio, bursts of church bells and gunfire, and an extended voiceover from two politically opposed Israeli thinkers.
The story of the short life, and brutal gang rape and murder in Delhi in December 2012 of an exceptional and inspiring young woman. The rape of the 23 year old medical student by 6 men on a moving bus, and her death, sparked unprecedented protests and riots throughout India and led to the first glimmers of a change of mindset. Interwoven into the story line are the lives, values and mindsets of the rapists whom the film makers have had exclusive and unprecedented access to interview before they hang. The film examines the society and values which spawn such violent acts, and makes an optimistic and impassioned plea for change.
Journalist Shiori Ito embarks on a courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Her quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country's outdated judicial and societal systems.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg now 84, and still inspired by the lawyers who defended free speech during the Red Scare, Ginsburg refuses to relinquish her passionate duty, steadily fighting for equal rights for all citizens under the law. Through intimate interviews and unprecedented access to Ginsburg’s life outside the court, RBG tells the electric story of Ginsburg’s consuming love affairs with both the Constitution and her beloved husband Marty—and of a life’s work that led her to become an icon of justice in the highest court in the land.
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.
Vanessa Guillen was 20 years old when she was found murdered at a US Army base. Rather than submit to silence, her family fought for justice and change.
In the early-morning hours of July 23, 2007, in Cheshire, Conn., ex-convicts Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky broke into the family home of William Petit, his wife, Jennifer, and their daughters, Michaela, 11, and Hayley, 17. Dr. Petit was beaten and tied to a pole in the basement. The three women were bound in their bedrooms while the men ransacked the house. The brutal ordeal continued throughout the morning, ending with rape, arson and a horrific triple homicide.
This real-life look at FBI counterterrorism operations features access to both sides of a sting: the government informant and the radicalized target.
A documentary that resurrects the buried history of the outrageous, often brilliant women who founded the modern women's movement from 1966 to 1971.
Investigative journalist Rae de Leon travels nationwide to uncover and examine a shocking pattern: Young women tell the police they’ve been sexually assaulted, but instead of finding justice, they’re charged with the crime of making a false report, arrested, and even imprisoned by the system they believed would protect them.
Unravel the case of Utah therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, whose child abuse arrest with parenting YouTuber Ruby Franke exposed a twisted tale of manipulation.
At a 2012 pre-season high-school football party in Steubenville, Ohio, a young woman was raped by members of the beloved high school football team. The aftermath exposed an entire culture of complicity—and Roll Red Roll maps out the roles that peer pressure, denial, sports machismo, and social media each played in the tragedy.
A documentary film about three cases of rape, that includes the stories of two American high school students, Audrie Pott and Daisy Coleman. At the time of the sexual assaults, Pott was 15 and Coleman was 14 years old. After the assaults, the victims and their families were subjected to abuse and cyberbullying.
Fox Rich, indomitable matriarch and modern-day abolitionist, strives to keep her family together while fighting for the release of her incarcerated husband. An intimate, epic, and unconventional love story, filmed over two decades.
The film MISS REPRESENTATION exposes how American youth are being sold the concept that women and girls’ value lies in their youth, beauty and sexuality. Explores the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence in America, and challenges the media's limited portrayal of what it means to be a powerful woman. It’s time to break that cycle of mistruths.
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.
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.
Unprecedented access to Muhammad Ali's personal archive of "audio journals" as well as interviews and testimonials from his inner circle of family and friends are used to tell the legend's life story.
Lyrical and powerfully personal essay film that reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother, her beloved dog, and such diverse subjects as family memories, surveillance, and Buddhist teachings.
A documentary on the modeling industry's 'supply chain' between Siberia, Japan, and the U.S., told through the experiences of the scouts, agencies, and a 13-year-old model.
Dubbed “The Cannibal Cop,” former NYPD officer Gilberto Valle was charged with conspiring to kidnap and eat women but argued it was all a fantasy. His story made headlines both for its disturbing details and its potential to kick off a trend of thought-policing across the nation. Featuring intimate interviews with Valle and insights from experts, Thought Crimes explores if someone can be found guilty for their most dangerous thoughts.
