Outraged by the controversial January, 1988 article in Cosmopolitan magazine, the women in the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, (Act Up, New York), organized the first AIDS demonstration focused on women. Doctors, Liars and Women:AIDS Activists Say No To Cosmo not only documents the efforts of the Women's Committee to organize this protest, it also serves as a how-to-guide for direct action.
A documentary film about AIDS and one unconventional woman's efforts to educate her small, Southern community. DiAna DiAna is a local hairdresser who transformed her beauty parlor into a center for AIDS and safe sex information.
This film is a poetic composition of recorded history and non-recorded memory. Filmmaker Rea Tajiri’s family was among the 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans who were imprisoned in internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor. And like so many who were in the camps, Tajiri’s family wrapped their memories of that experience in a shroud of silence and forgetting. This film raises questions about collective history – questions that prompt Tajiri to daringly re-imagine and re-create what has been stolen and what has been lost.
A collection of film clips from horror movies and interviews with the actors and directors who made them.
The Devil's Playground is a fascinating and moving documentary about a little-known aspect of Amish life. Amish are not permitted to join the church until their late teens, and have to do so of their own volition. The film explores Rumspringa, wherein young Amish are given the opportunity to explore the "English" way of life.
By the People: The Election of Barack Obama is a documentary film produced by Edward Norton broadcast in November 2009 on HBO, which follows Barack Obama and various members of his campaign team, including David Axelrod, through the two years leading up to the United States presidential election on November 4th, 2008.
This searing British thriller follows Flash (Dylan Duffus), who's safeguarding his buddy Angel's (Yohance Watson) cash until his release from prison. Now Angel is out -- and Flash is 100 pounds short. He turns to a lowlife named Evil (Tobias Duncan) for help, the first in a series of mistakes. Now, Flash has more than just Angel hunting him down. Directed by Penny Woolcock (Mischief Night), the film co-stars Ohran Whyte and Chris Wilson
Reporter Clay Pigeon interviews New Yorkers in October, 2008.
An undercover investigation of Martin Creek Kennel is carried out by the animal rights group Last Chance for Animals. The film documents the efforts of a young animal rights activist named "Pete" to both get hired by the Martin Creek Kennel and secure enough evidence to shut down owner C.C. Baird's violation-filled kennel.
The eight-year Iran-Iraq War was one of the most brutal conflicts to devastate the region in the 20th century. Zahed was 13 years old when he enrolled in the Iranian army. Najah was 18 when he was conscripted into the Iraqi army, and he fought against Zahed in the Battle of Khorramshahr. Fast forward 25 years, a chance encounter in Vancouver between these two former enemies turns into a deep and mutually supportive friendship. Expanded from the 2015 short film by the same name.
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.
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.
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.
London 1976: Between economic crises and the Silver Jubilee, something is brewing in the squats and basement clubs of West London: Punk. A promise, a new beginning. Punk meant self-empowerment, especially for the women in the scene. For the first time, women picked up guitar, bass and drums, formed bands and wrote their own songs.
You Can't Be Neutral documents the life and times of the historian, activist and author of the best selling classic "A People's History of the United States". Featuring rare archival materials, interviews with Howard Zinn as well as colleagues and friends including Noam Chomsky, Marian Wright Edelman, Daniel Ellsberg, Tom Hayden and Alice Walker.
Hugo Chavez was a colourful, unpredictable folk hero who was beloved by his nation’s working class. He was elected president of Venezuela in 1998, and proved to be a tough, quixotic opponent to the power structure that wanted to depose him. When he was forcibly removed from office on 11 April 2002, two independent filmmakers were inside the presidential palace.
A documentary exploring the "respectable" and "immoral" stereotypes of women in Indian society told from the point of view of 2 strip-tease dancers in a cabaret house in Bombay.
A documentary exploring the rise and fall of 80s skateboard legend Mark "Gator" Rogowski.
A sensitive portrait of Sabine Bonnaire, the autistic sister of the french actress Sandrine Bonnaire.
This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with New York Women in Film & Television in 2004.