When six-year-old Ruby Bridges is chosen to be the first African-American to integrate her local elementary school, she is subjected to the true ugliness of racism for the first time.
Internationally acclaimed ventriloquist Nina Conti takes the bereaved puppets of her mentor and erstwhile lover Ken Campbell on a pilgrimage to "Venthaven" the resting place for puppets of dead ventriloquists. She gets to know her latex and wooden travelling partners along the way, and with them deconstructs herself and her lost love in this ventriloquial docu-mockumentary requiem. Ken Campbell was a hugely respected maverick of the British theatre, an eccentric genius who would snort out forgotten artforms. Nina was his protégé in ventriloquism and has been said to have reinvented the artform. This film is truly unique in genre and style. No one has seen ventriloquism like this before.
Inspired by a letter by Friedrich Engels and a 1974 account of two militant Marxist writers who had been imprisoned by the Nasser regime, Straub-Huillet filmed this film in France and Egypt during 1980. They reflect on Egypt’s history of peasant struggle and liberation from Western colonization, and link it to class tensions in France shortly before the Revolution of 1789, quoting texts by Engels as well as the pioneering nonfiction film Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895).
It is an autobiographical fiction starring Ivens as an old man who has spent his life trying to "tame the wind and harness the sea" by capturing them on film.
Gerhard Richter has spent over half a century experimenting with a tremendous range of techniques and ideas, addressing historical crises and mass media representation alongside explorations of chance procedures. This first glimpse inside his studio in decades is exactly that: a thrilling document of the 79-year-old's creative process, juxtaposed with rare archival footage and intimate conversations with his critics and collaborators.
Sisters doing it for themselves in Amsterdam's Red Light District. Louise and Martine Fokkens are identical twins. For over fifty years they were working as prostitutes. They freed themselves from the control of their pimps, ran their own brothel, and set up the first informal trade union for prostitutes. They are familiar faces in Amsterdam's Red Light District, but soon they will bid their farewells. The Ladies Fokkens is a portrait of these remarkable women, as well as a history of the Red Light District over the past fifty years.
Mixes documentary interviews of memories of lesbian adolescence with the story of the 12-year-old girl Lou discovering her sexuality in 1960s America.
Women (many of them lesbian) artists, writers, photographers, designers, and adventurers settled in Paris between the wars. They embraced France, some developed an ex-pat culture, and most cherished a way of life quite different than the one left behind.
Epic story about two families and their friendship and common destiny in Sweden's Gothenburg in the 1940s and 1950s. Told from the perspective of young Simon Larsson, who learns that he's an adopted child who has a Jewish father from Germany. After WWII Simon travels to explore his roots - a journey that leads to the basic mysteries of the human life. After the bestselling novel by Marianne Fredriksson.
A biographical study of legendary actress Charlotte Rampling, told through her own conversations with artist friends and collaborators, including Peter Lindbergh, Paul Auster, and Juergen Teller. Intercut with footage from some of Rampling's most famous films, this "self-portrait through others" is a revealing look at one of our most iconic screen stars.
During the late 60s and early 70s, and decades before Nirvana, Microsoft and Starbucks put Seattle on the map, Seattle's African American neighborhood known as the Central District was buzzing. The soul sounds filled local airwaves and packed clubs seven nights a week. As many of the bands began breaking out nationally via major record deals, television appearances, and gigs with the likes of Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder, the public demanded disco and the scene slipped into obscurity. Narrated by Seattle's own Sir Mix-A-Lot.
Veterans of the Vietnam War tell about their experiences. The disasters but also the glorious moments of war. The central figure in the documentary is the scenario writer of Full Metal Jacket, Michael Herr. The veterans describe how it felt to kill for the first time and how those feelings still haunt them.
In 2008, a clip posted on YouTube featuring an emotional reunion between a young lion and his owners became an internet sensation. Overnight people wanted to know more about what lay behind this clip. The two men in question, Anthony 'Ace' Bourke and John Rendall, have published an updated best-selling version of their account of how they came to buy Christian the lion from a London department store in the late 60s. They explain how they lived with the lion whilst working in a furniture shop down the King's Road in what was then the tail end of the swinging 60s and how they eventually came to introduce their lion into the wild under the watchful eye of lion expert, George Adamson.
This intimate and loving portrait of the legendary arbiter of fashion, art and culture illustrates the many stages of Vreeland's remarkable life. Born in Paris in 1903, she was to become New York's "Empress of Fashion" and a celebrated Vogue editor.
Documentary on Bayard Rustin, best-remembered as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.
If Carol Channing didn't exist, no one could have made her up. One in a billion, Carol , at 89, remains an unstoppable, megawatt dynamo. Broadway diva extraordinaire is just the icing. Carol Channing hovered at the pinnacle of the entertainment world from the late-1950's through the 1960's and beyond, living life sensationally large. As Carol has observed, '...if you're lucky enough to have two hit shows, the world passes through your dressing room'. At 89, she remains irrepressible.
ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway is an American documentary film, directed by Dori Berinstein, a Broadway Producer, Writer and Filmmaker. Berinstein filmed each principal musical on Broadway for her project during the 2003-2004 season, for about 600 hours of initial film footage. She focused the film on four musicals, through the difficulties of pre-production, their openings, attendant publicity around the shows, and their reviews, through the 2004 Tony Award competition. The four musicals documented for the film were: Wicked, Taboo, Caroline or Change, Avenue Q.
This documentary looks at the conception, design and live shows of The Wall performed by Pink Floyd in 1980 and 1981. It features in-depth 1980s era interviews with Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Richard Wright and Nick Mason and shows footage of The Wall performed at Earl's Court in 1980. It also features archival footage of the Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd and discusses how David Gilmour was brought into the band to initially augment their live shows when Syd became unreliable due to his drug problem and how Gilmour ultimately replaced him.
POSTER GIRL is the story of Robynn Murray, an all-American Apple pie high-school cheerleader turned tough-as-nails machine gunner in the Iraq War and a “poster girl” for women in combat, distinguished by Army Magazine’s cover shot. Now Sgt. Robynn Murray comes home from Iraq, to face a new kind of battle she never anticipated. Her tough-as-nails exterior begins to crack, leaving Robynn struggling with the debilitating effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Shot and directed by first-time filmmaker Sara Nesson, POSTER GIRL is an emotionally raw documentary that follows Robynn over the course of two years as she embarks on a journey of self-discovery and redemption, using art and poetry to redefine her life.
An inside look at polygamist teens who have become religious refugees in mainstream America.