FLYIN' CUT SLEEVES, completed in 1993, portrays street gang presidents in the Bronx. Their world was the streets, set against a backdrop of uprooted families, cultural alienation, drugs and violence. Neighborhood teenagers responded by organizing into street groups known to the members as "families", but labeled in the most alarming terms as violent gangs by the press. The documentation of these lives over a twenty-year period offers a remarkable perspective on life in the ghetto (spanning four generations), and the means that people devise to cope from the time that they are children to when they serve as parents and role models for a new generation.
The poor may always have been with us, but attitudes towards them have changed. Beginning in the Neolithic Age, Ben Lewis's film takes us through the changing world of poverty. You go to sleep, you dream, you become poor through the ages. And when you awake, what can you say about poverty now? There are still very poor people, to be sure, but the new poverty has more to do with inequality...
The Man Who Saved the World is a feature documentary film about Stanislav Petrov, a former lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces.
Blowing Up Paradise uses color archival footage to chronicle France's explosion of various nuclear devices, in violation of the international test ban treaty, from the first test in 1966 to the last in 1995. Interviews with former and current French government officials, scientists, and nuclear advisors.
"The United States and Britain are preparing to wage war on Iraq, for its undisclosed weapons of mass destruction. Israel's nuclear, biological and chemical capabilities have remained un-inspected. Meanwhile Mordechai Vanunu has been imprisoned for 16 years for exposing Israel's secret nuclear bomb factory to the world. Vanunu is seen as a traitor in his own country. He has been abandoned by most of his family and has spent 11 years in solitary confinement. Today only an American couple, who have legally adopted him, are among the few visitors he is permitted. This film is the story of the bomb, Vanunu and Israel's wall of silence."
Zambia's copper resources have not made the country rich. Virtually all Zambia's copper mines are owned by corporations. In the last ten years, they've extracted copper worth $29 billion but Zambia is still ranked one of the twenty poorest countries in the world. So why hasn't copper wealth reduced poverty in Zambia? Once again it comes down to the issue of tax, or in Zambia's case, tax avoidance and the use of tax havens. Tax avoidance by corporations costs poor countries and estimated $160 billion a year, almost double what they receive in international aid. That's enough to save the lives of 350,000 children aged five or under every year. For every $1 given in aid to a poor country, $10 drains out. Vital money that could help a poor country pay for healthcare, schools, pensions and infrastructure. Money that would make them less reliant on aid.
Documentary filmmaker Zhou Hao examines the complicated relationship between two drug addicts who become dealers over the course of three years. Shot in the city of Guangzhou, the film offers a rare look into China's unknown heroin subculture.
In this deeply personal film, director Roger Ross Williams sets out on a journey to understand the complex forces of racism and greed currently at work in America's prison system.
She is one of the last shepherdesses who still lives with her flock in the heights of the Gya-Miru valley in Ladakh. At the age of 50, Tsering is the youngest in her village to drive her 350 goats and sheep at the expense of transhumance in this region of the Himalayas, located between 4000 and 6000 meters above sea level. A harsh and precarious life, often solitary, mishandled by difficult climatic conditions and a sometimes hostile nature, which does not prevent this tiny bit of woman to sing, laugh and ... philosophize.
Three working-class teenage girls in a port city in Bangladesh escape daily hardships and stifling family lives by riding waves on their surfboards and grabbing hold of the fleeting and thrilling sense of freedom that brings.
Documentary feature film that follows the personal stories of families struggling in the aftermath of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Filmed over the course of one winter in one American city, the film presents an intimate snapshot of the state of the nation's economy as it is playing out in millions of American families, and highlights the human consequences of the decline of the middle class and the fracturing of the American Dream
A democracy should protect its most vulnerable citizens, but increasingly the United States is failing to do so. This investigation blends the insights of experts with the experiences of citizens of the Rust Belt in the Midwest where the steel industry once flourished, but where closures and outsourcing have left urban areas desolate. It is here where Donald Trump finds some of his most fervent supporters.
A deeply human portrait of the chaotic reality of the US - Mexico border. Full of stunnig images and crafted like a classic city-symphony where the sum of the pieces add up to a larger whole, Purgatorio, a Journey Into the Heart of the Border brings together a universe of small stories to create a compelling and visceral cinematic experience that takes audiences into the very soul of life on the border.
In 1985 a picturesque Argentinian holiday town was completely flooded, not to re-emerge until 2009. Now only Pablo remains in this modern day Atlantis.
A documentary that focuses on two young male inhabitants of Recife (statistically, the fourth worst city in the world to live in) who have both reacted strongly to their situation. One has become a drummer in a rap/rock band. The other has killed forty-four people and is now in jail. Both use the term "Wicked Souls" to describe their enemies.
North Korea has nuclear weapons. How did it manage to get them quietly? Donald Trump is under the impression that as US president he could convince Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, to disarm his nuclear weapons and make peace with South Korea. But how was it possible that one of the poorest countries in the world could acquire the knowledge to produce nuclear-tipped rockets?
In the summer of 1959, as a magazine correspondent, writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-75) traveled along the Italian coast. In 1963, he documented the sexual behavior of the Italians. In the winter of 1970-71, he witnessed the hardships of the most impoverished Italian population suffering from the boot of state power. After these three trips, he came to the conclusion that Italian society had changed drastically for the worse over the years.
Fists of Pride follows Little Tiger and his fellow fighters as their Thai coaches prepare them for the annual Water Festival competition. In a boxing camp on the Thai-Burmese border the children of mostly illegal migrant workers fleeing Burma live and train for prize fights. In a region where combat sports have always been a matter of honor and money, the film reveals their daily struggles. Bets are open and as the hope of prize money rizes, the young boxers contemplate what it could mean for them and their families
These are the future leaders of their communities. Ever wonder what it’s like to walk a day in their shoes? How the world looks through their eyes? We were curious. So, we asked them.
In the mountains of Northern Thailand lies a boarding school. The students come from different tribes in the area and live together with their Thai teacher, grow their own crops and cook their own meals while continuing their education. The biggest question on their mind, having spent all their lives in the mountainside, is where the rivers running down the hills end. If they pass the final exams their reward is a trip to the end of the river, to the ocean itself. The children are poor, some orphans, and most of them only speak their tribe's language, but all try their best to pass the exams to be able to take the long-awaited trip. This trip is not only a journey from the children's villages to the ocean but also a journey that symbolizes the change from childhood to adulthood.