A look at NYC’s gentrification and growing inequality in a microcosm, Class Divide explores two distinct worlds that share the same Chelsea intersection – 10th Avenue and 26th Street. On one side of the avenue, the Chelsea-Elliot Houses have provided low-income public housing to residents for decades. Their neighbor across the avenue since 2012 is Avenues: The World School, a costly private school. What happens when kids from both of these worlds attempt to cross the divide?
A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.
Portrait of the last year of the life of famous New York drag queen Consuela Cosmetic.
A review of the wild New York City nightlife of the 90s. The cast of characters who made up the infamous Club Kids speak candidly about that era, culminating with Alig's release from incarceration.
This film is a portrait of New York in the 1980s by famed photographer Steven Siegel, including footage of the subways, the parks, Times Square and other neighborhoods. The film is narrated by teenagers of that era.
The film is a controversy on democracy. Is our society really democratic? Can everyone be part of it? Or is the act of being part in democracy dependent to the access on technology, progression or any resources of information, as philosophers like Paul Virilio or Jean Baudrillard already claimed?
The Police Tapes is a 1977 documentary about a New York City police precinct in the South Bronx. The original ran ninety minutes and was produced for public television; a one-hour version later aired on ABC. Filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond spent three months in 1976 riding along with patrol officers in the 44th Precinct of the South Bronx, which had the highest crime rate in New York City at that time. They produced about 40 hours of videotape that they edited into a 90-minute documentary.
A dramatic minute-by-minute account of the superstorm that brought New York State to its knees. Using satellite imagery, CGI mapping and the powerful personal testimony of those who lived through it, this is a forensic analysis of the meteorological, engineering and human devastation wreaked by Sandy.
Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant's PBS documentary tracks the rise and fall of subway graffiti in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Artist Taylor Denise sets out to make her first painting, which also happens to be her largest work to-date. As she embarks on this creative process of making shit because it looks cool, she's met with comradery, debauchery, and people's brains interrupting art whatever way they want to-ery.
At the twenty-year apex of their career, the Japanese quartet add another captivating live release to their extensive catalog. Shot ‘in the round’ at le Poisson Rouge in NYC, DOKU-EN-KAI delivers the band completely absorbed by their element in a kinetic, impassioned and frenzied set that brings toe's renown and allure into sharp, unmistakable focus.
An oral history of Artists Space, the legendary New York artists organization. Told through the voices of the artists, critics and curators who formed it, the film is narrated by voiceover culled from 30 hours of archival cassette tape interviews over a 45 year period. Artists such as Laurie Anderson, Mike Kelley, Hito Steyerl and David Wojnarowicz walk us through the decades. A formally-experimental and raucously-told chronology composed of rare archival documentation, The Business of Thought... is a reminder of the radical potential of the arts and the importance of collective, cultural spaces.
Beat Goes On is an impressionistic portrait of the activist Keith Cylar (1958–2004), co-founder of Housing Works and a central figure in the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT UP) NY. Cylar spoke clearly, frequently and with moral force about the struggles of people living with HIV/AIDS in New York City, many of whom were impoverished and struggling with multiple social and medical problems. His openness about his own drug use and the centrality of the fight against the criminalization of drugs for AIDS activism make Cylar's legacy especially resonant and relevant at this time.
In 1892, Ellis Island, in New York Bay, became the main gateway to the United States for immigrants arriving increasingly from Europe. The story of immigration to the United States from 1892 to 1954, an enthralling polyphonic narrative that embraces both small and great history.
Every weekend for six years, Jessica takes a bus from NYC, where she lives and works as a set decorator, to Boston, her hometown, where she cares for her dad, Aloysius, who is 87 and has advanced Alzheimer's disease.
Lloyd Daniels was one of the most gifted basketball players ever to emerge from New York City. He was born in Brooklyn in 1967 and grew up in the poorest neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens. His mother died when he was three, and his father deserted the family, leaving Lloyd an orphan to be raised by his two grandmothers. Virtually unsupervised, Lloyd learned early-on how to hustle to survive. Hustling came easy for him because he was a charming and likable kid. He still hustles to this day.
The morning of September 11, 2001 is shown through multiple video cameras in and around New York City, from the moment the first WTC tower is hit until after both towers collapse.
Global soccer hero Thierry Henry stars in this up-close sports documentary that covers his 2010 move from Barcelona to the New York Red Bulls.
On February 4, 1999, 19 of the 41 shots fired in 10 seconds by 4 NYPD Street Crimes Unit cops hit Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo as he stood in the vestibule of the building where he lived in the Bronx…. This video essay seizes on the grotesque factual precision of this numerical data, proceeding with an intense contemplation of how police violence is produced and then addressed by other forces on the city streets.
This documentary by Leo Regan follows the life of his friend, photographer Lanre Fehintola, as he becomes part of the hard drug scene through researching it for his book ("Charlie Says: Don't Get High On Your Own Supply"). It shows Lanre as he becomes a character in his own book through his heroin addiction.