The purpose of Rise Above the Mark, narrated by Peter Coyote, is to educate the general public about the “corporate takeover” of Indiana public schools and what parents, community members and educators can do to protect their local public schools. Legislators are calling the shots and putting public schools in an ever-shrinking box. WLCSC Board of School Trustees and Superintendent of Schools, Rocky Killion, want to secure resources and legislative relief necessary to achieve the school district’s mission of creating a world-class educational system for all children. The school district’s strategic plan will introduce a model of education that puts decision making back into the hands of local communities and public school teachers, rather than leaving it in the hands of legislators and ultimately lining the pockets of corporations.
An international tech entrepreneur with a fondness for architecture asks Rem Koolhaas to build a house on an impossibly small piece of mountainside in Zell am See in Austria. The architect of the celebrated book S,M,L,XL seizes the challenge: how to draw light into a house less than four metres wide that is mostly underground? Photographer and filmmaker Frans Parthesius followed the building process and offers insight into Koolhaas’s way of working and the special relationship with his client.
The story of Jadav Payeng, an Indian man who single-handedly planted nearly 1400 acres of forest to save his island, Majuli.
10 May 2007 - China's staggering economic growth has overshadowed a more subtle shift in Chinese society. In domestic life, many women are now ignore the advice of their mothers and grandmothers, turning instead to counselling hotlines and, increasingly, divorce.
Filmed in September 1993, this documentary is about young boys starting boarding prep school. It features Nick Duffell of Boarding School Survivors talking about surviving boarding school and his work with former boarders. It is the earliest example of a TV documentary about “modern” boarding, and was for many the first impetus to recognise and seek help to overcome the legacies of the boarding experience.
Cafeteria Man is the true story of rebel chef Tony Geraci and his mission to radically reform Baltimore's public school food system with a recipe for change.
"Bulletproof" observes the age-old rituals that take place daily in American schools: homecoming parades, basketball practice, morning announcements, and math class. Unfolding alongside these scenes are an array of newer traditions: lockdown drills, teacher firearm trainings, metal detector inspections, and school safety trade shows. This documentary weaves together these moments in a cinematic meditation on fear, violence, and the meaning of safety, bringing viewers into intimate proximity with the people self-tasked with protecting the nation's children while generating revenue along the way, as well as with those most deeply impacted by these heightened security measures: students and teachers.
a poem. trees. fragments of fritz. love—and nothing besides!
During the three weeks of Justice's March 2008 North American tour, Romain Gavras, So Me and the band themselves tape every second of their escapades across the country and the chaos that ensued.
My parents were real estate developers and dealers in the 1980s. They achieved the ‘middle class dream’ thanks to the development boom. However, the Asian financial crisis swept everything away.
Four children enter a high-stakes lottery. If they win, they can attend one of the best schools in New York. A look at the crisis in public education, The Lottery makes the case than any child can succeed.
Having lost her memory, A. could barely recall glimpses of her childhood in Argentina. After her death, her son visits the empty house for the last time. A sensory journey through a house without objects but filled with memory.
Documentary about Field Marshal P. Phibunsongkram (Plaek Khittasangka), a story about dreams that influence the lives of Thai people in many aspects. Until the peak of power with things you may not have known before!
In this two-hour special, NOVA captures the turmoil that tore apart the community of Dover, Pennsylvania in one of the latest battles over teaching evolution in public schools. Featuring trial reenactments based on court transcripts and interviews with key participants, including expert scientists and Dover parents, teachers, and town officials, "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" follows the celebrated federal case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District.
Brooklyn Castle is a documentary about I.S. 318 – an inner-city school where more than 65 percent of students are from homes with incomes below the federal poverty level – that also happens to have the best, most winning junior high school chess team in the country. (If Albert Einstein, who was rated 1800, were to join the team, he’d only rank fifth best.) Chess has transformed the school from one cited in 2003 as a “school in need of improvement” to one of New York City’s best. But a series of recession-driven public school budget cuts now threaten to undermine those hard-won successes.
In the early 1900s commercial loggers cut down an old growth spruce tree growing on a small island surrounded by tide pools on the coast of Maine. Out of the trunk of this ancient tree grew two new trees, side by side.
Living in an ancient redwood tree for more than two years to prevent the tree from being clear-cut, Julia Butterfly Hill captured our hearts and minds by showing us that one person can make a difference. Through interviews with Hill, filmmaker Doug Wolens paints a portrait of an intensely spiritual and articulate woman who encountered both beauty and horror (she was assaulted by lumber company helicopters at one point) during her time above ground.
14-part special in which botanist Francis Hallé explains forest science and processes. Part of the "Once Upon a Forest" physical release.
An ancestral house builds itself, comes to life, and shows us its story spanning one hundred fifty years. Through the ages, it allows us to perceive the passage of time.
A group of determined moms band together to create the first public dyslexic school in the largest school district in America, New York City.