The Grand Canyon is a breathtaking natural monument. It's one of the planet’s best-known landscapes, yet we often forget that it tells two billion years of the Earth's history. Geologists Karl Karlström and Laurie Crossey are the leading experts on this. Over the course of 8 days, they descend the Colorado river and tackle hundreds of rapids to unveil the mysteries held in the Grand Canyon, and the place that humans occupy within it.
Two filmmakers journey to Arizona's Sonoran Desert to find bufo alvarus, a psychedelic toad. TOAD TO NOWHERE is a documentary about healing, hallucinogens, and looking within to explore the unknown.
Out of State is the unlikely story of native Hawaiians men discovering their native culture as prisoners in the desert of Arizona, 3,000 miles, and across the ocean, from their island home.
Documentary about Alex Maier's experience through-hiking the Hayduke Trail, an 800-mile route across Utah and Arizona.
On November 4th, 2008, three states - California, Florida and Arizona - voted to amend their constitutions, denying and revoking the rights of same-sex couples to marry. On May 26, 2009, with Canadian allies, gay American families rally at a Vancouver demonstration to protest these amendments that persecute the LGBTQ community. Demonstration organizer Roger Chin relays the California Supreme Court's infamous decision on Prop 8. Subsequent speakers talk about couples living in exile. Weaving elements of public protest and intimate interviews, four families share their stories of how they met, their decision to escape to freedom in Canada, their Canadian experience and their dreams of returning to their home country, family and friends. In the end, the organizer celebrates the freedoms to marry that exists in Canada.
From PBS: Arizona's enforcement-led policy, which grew out of its unique position as a frontline border state, is reshaping the national conversation around immigration reform. With dozens of states considering a similar approach, THE STATE OF ARIZONA holds up a mirror, asking Americans who they are, and who they want to be.
Documentary chronicling the government relocation of 10,000 Navajo Indians in Arizona.
"Through the Great Southwest" is a documentary film about the Arizona Trail, an 800-mile path that spans across the state from Mexico to Utah. The trail, which showcases amazingly beautiful and diverse terrain, has an equally significant impact on the lives of many of the people who hike, ride, run, and support it across the state of Arizona. Outdoor Evolution Founder Darwin Rakestraw makes his directorial debut with this Film Project inspired by the History, Geography, Community, Association, and Users of the 800 mile National Scenic Trail.
Filmed during the hottest days of Phoenix, Arizona’s summer heatwave, A New Inferno follows paramedics as they race to save the lives of heatstroke victims using a radical new treatment: ice immersion therapy.
Hacking at Leaves documents artist and hazmat-suit aficionado Johannes Grenzfurthner as he attempts to come to terms with the United States' colonial past, Navajo tribal history, and the hacker movement. The story hones in on a small tinker space in Durango, Colorado, that made significant contributions to worldwide COVID relief efforts. But things go awry when Uncle Sam interferes with the film's production.
The story of the Yuma Crossing, the place where centuries of travelers crossed the Colorado River as told in a series of reenacted vignettes by colorful characters from the Quechan tribe, the conquistadores, Father Kino, Olive Oatman and others up until the first bridge was built in the 1920's.
Documents the cultural and ecological impacts of coal stripmining, uranium mining, and oil shale development in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona – homeland of the Hopi and Navajo.
“Keep Sweet” concerns the conflicts in two towns on opposite sides of a state line. The area of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., was settled by members of a breakaway faction of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that continued to practice polygamy after the church had banned it.
In the Mexican state of Michoacán, Dr. Jose Mireles, a small-town physician known as "El Doctor," shepherds a citizen uprising against the Knights Templar, the violent drug cartel that has wreaked havoc on the region for years. Meanwhile, in Arizona's Altar Valley—a narrow, 52-mile-long desert corridor known as Cocaine Alley—Tim "Nailer" Foley, an American veteran, heads a small paramilitary group called Arizona Border Recon, whose goal is to halt Mexico’s drug wars from seeping across our border.
The parents of 9-year-old Katherine Figueroa are arrested when America’s Toughest Sheriff raids a Phoenix carwash suspected of hiring illegal workers. As young Kathy fights to save her parents from deportation, a community group succeeds in pressuring the County Board to investigate Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s spending priorities. When the sheriff retaliates against his political foes, his actions spark outrage, and a federal investigation.
With neither narration nor people, DESERT DREAMS dispels the notion that deserts are uninspiring and "deserted." This cinematic experience will immerse you in an unexpected world filled with life and beauty year-round--in Dry Summer, Wet Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring. Four years in the making and created by a filmmaker intimately acquainted with the Sonoran Desert, this multi-media production showcases 182 species of plants and animals. The sound track combines natural sounds with a kaleidoscope of flute and percussion vignettes.
On the evening of February 9th, 1918 three local lawmen and one federal officer rode into the Arizona wilderness to apprehend four men on counts of draft evasion and murder. The violence that followed has been so steeped in legend, lies, and hearsay, that the facts of what occurred at that remote cabin and why were almost lost to history. Contemporary interviews with historians and family members, archival footage, and original artwork tell the story of the events leading up to and following the deadliest shootout in Arizona's history.
A group of African American students at the University of Arizona reveals the importance of political spaces within Universities in times of intolerance.
Many people have Route 66 on their bucket list: To ride it once, from Chicago to Los Angeles, on a Harley. Or in an old American road cruiser. And experience what we know from the movies: the endless expanse of the plains, the endless deserts with their shimmering red mesas, the small-town USA. Even after 100 years, Route 66 stands for freedom and adventure, the promise of happiness in the USA. But it also stands for the many people who live along Route 66 but are not part of its history. And thus for the USA itself and its contradictions.
A documentary about the impacts of climate change on the Republic of the Marshall Islands and its people. Most parts of the Marshall Islands are less than 5.9 feet above sea level. Forecasts predict the uninhabitability of the country by 2050.