Remarkable life story of Henri Diamant-Berger, a director and screenwriter whose devotion to cinema led him to collaborate with some of the greatest actors and filmmakers of his time.
Social & External
The people behind it
Jérôme Diamant-Berger
Self
Henri Diamant-Berger
Self (archive footage)
Sarah Bernhardt
In the documentary, Melanie Spitta accompanies survivors and their children to Auschwitz. The film powerfully illustrates how the horrors of the concentration camps have shaped the survivors and their descendants across decades and generations—and why the victims’ trust in the Gadjé remains broken to this day.
This film recounts the murder of Vincent Chin, an automotive engineer mistaken as Japanese who was slain by an assembly line worker who blamed him for the competition by the Japanese auto makers that were threatening his job. It then recounts how that murderer escaped justice in the court system. Restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation, in association with the Museum of Chinese in America. Restoration funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, with additional support provided by Todd Phillips.
A humorous and provocative examination of one artist's dynamic work and its relevance within the cultural biography of America, documenting one man's journey as he traveled each of the 50 states to ask Americans of all races, shapes and body sizes to take off their clothes and pose in public, before his camera all for the sake of art. Artist Spencer Tunick's subjects are not paid models, but ordinary citizens. The film exposes America's current attitudes towards nudity, sexuality, body image, and all the other baggage that comes up when we take off our clothes.
Based on the memoir of Nicaraguan writer and revolutionary Omar Cabezas, this documentary traces his journey from student activist to guerrilla fighter during the Sandinista revolution.
Documentary about the Radium Dial Company and the aftereffects experienced by its workers from repeated exposure to radioactive paint.
Kaminah and Kusdalini, met as Indonesian political detainees in 1965, when both were on the cusp of adulthood. After being rejected by her hometown, Kaminah went to live with Kusdalini. Since then, they have been inseparable, living together in Surakarta, Central Java. Now, in their 70s, they survive on the kindness of their neighbours, and the crackers that they sell. Growing old hand in hand, You and I charts a delicate moment in time when the pair are faced with the heartbreaking realities of growing old.
“Sardar Gurcharan Singh was the father of studio pottery in India. "Daddyji" as most called him lovingly was very close to my father. I often tagged along to visit his home studio where pottery wheels were lined up under the big neem trees in his old brick house. My father wanted me to make a film on Daddyji, who was then 95. He was afraid that Daddyji's wonderful story would be left untold. He not only introduced studio pottery in India but due to his longevity, mentored many potters. So despite not knowing anything about films, I made the documentary, Imprint in Clay with a classmate of mine, which was mostly funded by my father.”
The story of one woman's mission to defeat cancer and help others do the same.
As Hollywood biographies go, Judy Garland's story is one of the saddest success stories you'll ever hear. The sanitized studio version of her life presented a smiling kid with the big voice, who, alongside Mickey Rooney, just wanted to put on a show. But drugs, overwork, even psychological abuse at the hands of the studio is now part of the Garland legend. But despite the number of Garland books and documentaries, one account has always been missing -- Garland herself never managed to write a memoir. She did make several attempts at an autobiography, often recording stories on a tape recorder. Judy Garland: By Myself (2004), finally fills in the blanks - using Judy's personal recordings to tell the story in her own words.
A Montreal girl takes a disastrous trip inside the porn industry.
Sarah Kanney races motocross, hiding a port wine birthmark under her helmet. Jayne Waithera's mother abandoned her over a genetic condition that makes her a pariah. Enter Rick Guidotti, a top fashion photographer, who will transform the way both women see themselves, irrefutably turning the convention of fashion photography on its head.
Like many Japanese Americans released from WWII internment camps, the young Omori sisters did their best to erase the memories and scars of life under confinement. Fifty years later acclaimed filmmaker Emiko Omori asks her older sister and other detainees to reflect on the personal and political consequences of internment. From the exuberant recollections of a typical teenager, to the simmering rage of citizens forced to sign loyalty oaths, Omori renders a poetic and illuminating picture of a deeply troubling chapter in American history.
Born on Cambodian New Year in a Thai refugee camp, Socheata never knew how she got there. After her birth, the family left the past behind and became American. Her parents hid the story of surviving the Khmer Rouge genocide. In NEW YEAR BABY, she journeys to Cambodia and discovers the truth about her family. She uncovers their painful secrets kept in shame which also reveal great heroism.
A portrait of a dedicated filmmaker who is a charming yet elusive figure in thrall to cinema and the constant perfection of his craft.
An intimate portrait of a Chinese-European couple in New Zealand, and their journey to get a blessing for marriage from traditional Chinese parents. The story that led to the film, My Wedding and Other Secrets.
This heartbreaking documentary depicts the extreme poverty of an African-American family and their Mississippi Delta school district. LaLee's Kin takes us deep into the Mississippi Delta and the intertwined lives of LaLee Wallace, a great-grandmother struggling to hold her world together in the face of dire poverty, and Reggie Barnes, superintendent of the embattled West Tallahatchie School System. The film explores the painful legacy of slavery and sharecropping in the Delta.
The film is a portrayal of Zanele Muholi, a lesbian photographer working in the South African GLBT community. This thin, combative person is already a world-wide famous artist. They define themselves as a "visual activist" in order to highlight their commitment to politics, to communicating ideas and to art. Their work includes: provocative nudes (like a female Mapplethorpe); young Zulu couples, dressed in traditional costumes, embracing each other; a homeless socially excluded lesbian couple; a dignified portrait of Victor Mukasa, the gay human rights leader from Uganda; wonderful shots of Zanele with their white partner. Beautiful and poetic pictures which are "militant" in nature since they condemn homophobia, poverty, and the public and private conflicts of a country divided between tradition and modernity.
A documentary concerning the detention of Muslim-Americans in the wake of 9/11.
Of Two Minds explores the extraordinary lives, struggles and successes of three unique and compelling people living with bipolar disorder in America today. Through a combination of intimate verité and revealing interviews, we experience what it feels like to be bipolar - from exquisite feelings of grandiosity and sensuality to the depths of despair and depression. A journey from the painful to the painfully funny, Of Two Minds puts a human face on the illness, opening an engaging, harrowing and perception-changing view on those all around us who live in bipolar's shadows...our sisters and brothers, parents and friends, and ourselves.
A theatrically-released compilation of three Varda shorts: "Salut les Cubains," "Ulysse" and "Ydessa, les ours et etc."
The history of cinematic sound, told by legendary sound designers and visionary filmmakers.
As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.
The epic life story of Alice Guy-Blaché (1873–1968), a French screenwriter, director and producer, true pioneer of cinema, the first person who made a narrative fiction film; author of hundreds of movies, but banished from history books. Ignored and forgotten. At last remembered.
An intimate portrait of the small shops and shopkeepers of the Rue Daguerre in Paris, a picturesque street that has been the filmmaker’s home for more than 50 years.
An unpredictable documentary from a fascinating storyteller, Agnès Varda’s last film sheds light on her experience as a director, bringing a personal insight to what she calls "cine-writing," traveling from Rue Daguerre in Paris to Los Angeles and Beijing.
American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999), one of the greatest in history, but also one of the most reserved, gave few interviews throughout his long career, and none of them were filmed. A first-person journey through his life and work, based on a recorded conversation with French film critic Michel Climent.
Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
An account of the extraordinary life of film pioneer Georges Méliès (1861-1938) and the amazing story of the copy in color of his masterpiece A Trip to the Moon (1902), unexpectedly found in Spain and restored thanks to the heroic efforts of a group of true cinema lovers.
This revealing documentary honors the legendary Sidney Poitier—iconic actor, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Featuring interviews with Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Halle Berry, and more.
From its distinctive neighborhoods to its architectural homes, Los Angeles has been the backdrop to countless movies. In this dazzling work, Andersen takes viewers on a whirlwind tour through the metropolis' real and cinematic history, investigating the myriad stories and legends that have come to define it, and meticulously, judiciously revealing the real city that lives beneath.
Using the book 'Fragments', which collects Marilyn Monroe's poems, notes and letters, and with participation from the Arthur Miller and Truman Capote estates who have contributed more material, each of the actresses will embody the legend at various stages in her life.
14-year-old Laura Dekker sets out on a two-year voyage in pursuit of her dream to become the youngest person ever to sail around the world alone.
“The Soviet Story” is a story of an Allied power, which helped the Nazis to fight Jews and which slaughtered its own people on an industrial scale. Assisted by the West, this power triumphed on May 9th, 1945. Its crimes were made taboo, and the complete story of Europe’s most murderous regime has never been told. Until now...
A tribute to Italian filmmaker Sergio Corbucci (1926-90), presented by American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.
Diaries, audiotapes, videotapes and testimonials from friends and colleagues offer insight into the life and career of Gilda Radner -- the beloved comic and actress who became an icon on Saturday Night Live.
In 1974, Chilean-French director Alejandro Jodorowsky embarked on the quixotic project of adapting Frank Herbert's influential novel Dune (1969) for the big screen. After investing two years, and millions of dollars, the gigantic project ended in failure; but the artists Jodorowsky brought together to carry it out continued to work together, and ended up laying the foundations for modern science fiction cinema.
Hidden in the heart of Russia, there is a Soviet-era city where thousands of people live and work behind barbed-wire fences monitored by armed guards. It is Ozyorsk (Ozersk), located in the Chelyabinsk Oblast, one of the most polluted places on the planet and home to the largest stockpiles of nuclear material. Its code name: City 40.
In 1972, a seemingly typical shoestring budget pornographic film was made in a Florida hotel: "Deep Throat," starring Linda Lovelace. This film would surpass the wildest expectation of everyone involved to become one of the most successful independent films of all time. It caught the public imagination which met the spirit of the times, even as the self-appointed guardians of public morality struggled to suppress it, and created, for a brief moment, a possible future where sexuality in film had a bold artistic potential. This film covers the story of the making of this controversial film, its stunning success, its hysterical opposition along with its dark side of mob influence and allegations of the on set mistreatment of the film's star.
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.
An unprecedented and intimate look at the life, work and enduring legacy of British actress Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993).