Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. This first half of her two-part film opens with a renowned introduction that compares modern Olympians to classical Greek heroes, then goes on to provide thrilling in-the-moment coverage of some of the games' most celebrated moments, including African-American athlete Jesse Owens winning a then-unprecedented four gold medals.
Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. Where the two-part epic's first half, Festival of the Nations, focused on the international aspects of the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin, part two, The Festival of Beauty, concentrates on individual athletes such as equestrians, gymnasts, and swimmers, climaxing with American Glenn Morris' performance in the decathalon and the games' majestic closing ceremonies.
Learn the origins and rise of modern day hula-hooping through eight extraordinary stories of hoop devotees who have embraced it as an art form, a teaching aid, and even an instrument of redemption. From the streets, to intimate clubs, to giant arenas, we alternate between self-filmed video diaries, verité documentary footage, and spectacularly filmed performances in an attempt to celebrate the healing power of movement and the spirit of human inventiveness.
Climbers Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell set out on a daring expedition to tackle Alaska's formidable Devils Thumb. Battling harsh conditions and daunting peaks, they push their physical and mental limits, while their deep friendship faces its toughest trial yet.
At 14 Rabha El Haimer was an illiterate child bride, beaten, raped and then rejected. Ten years later, she is a single mother, fighting to legalise her sham marriage and secure a future for her illegitimate daughter. With unprecedented access to the Moroccan justice system, “Bastards” follows Rabha’s fight from the Casablanca slums to the high courts.
A look at the state of the global environment including visionary and practical solutions for restoring the planet's ecosystems. Featuring ongoing dialogues of experts from all over the world, including former Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev, renowned scientist Stephen Hawking, former head of the CIA R. James Woolse
A chronicle of the production problems — including bad weather, actors' health, war near the filming locations, and more — which plagued the filming of Apocalypse Now, increasing costs and nearly destroying the life and career of Francis Ford Coppola.
When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.
This documentary tells two stories simultaneously: it's a profile of Bernard Tapie, a wealthy man who rises and falls spectacularly in French society and may be on the rise again; and, it's a look at Marina Zenovich's fascination with Tapie, behaving oddly in spite of her awareness that she's being irrational. Politicians, athletes, friends, companions, and journalists comment on Bernard's charm, his rise to prominence in sports and politics, and his subsequent trouble with the law. Zenovich becomes fixated on her need to interview Tapie, becoming virtually a stalker in her quest.
This work documents a segment of Singapore’s education history –– the survival of the nation’s first Catholic missionary Chinese girls’ school through adversities during her formative years. It is a tribute to the arduous efforts and contributions of a generation of admirable educators who persevered in delivering the education of love with resilience and steadfastness.
Harry Schein was an anomaly in Swedish cultural society. Equal parts playboy, intellectual, and political visionary, his life story could very well be the foundation of a Hollywood film. Citizen Schein is a film about a refugee who refused to look back, a film about powerful men, and the myths that fuel them.
The everyday life of a Belo Horizonte lower class neighborhood.
In the minutes that it takes for a day to lose itself to darkness, we see a house that has suddenly become empty. It is the home of Maria, who has recently passed, and who has left her mark in every corner of every room. A portrait of absence is also an attempt to resurrect the dead, perhaps even a moment of magical thinking. The winter outside is well settled, snow accompanies each thought. Based on a poem by Zofia Bohdanowiczowa.
This black-and-white film is a loving portrait of Santiago de Cuba and its people. It provides a view of Cuba as a picturesque country, the product of an earthy mix of black and criollo cultures. The film uses historical images which portray the end of the eighteenth century when Haitian slave owners fled with their slaves to Cuba after the Haitian Revolution.
Using images shot in Russia and Armenia from World War I to the 1930s and retrieved from a Soviet film archive, Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi constructed a meditative film about the status of Armenians as a people without a state. Inspired by the diary of Gianikian’s father, People, Years, Life uses rare footage depicting the region’s major historic events: the end of Tsarist Russia, violence in the Caucasus during World War I, the 1918 Armenian exodus from Azerbaijan. Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi’s treatment of the material manipulates the speed of the images, adds color and music, and magnifies various parts of the image, so that the movement of bodies across the frame begins to carry the weight of exile, mourning, dispossession.
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.
In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.
Documentary depicting the lives of child prostitutes in the red light district of Songachi, Calcutta. Director Zana Briski went to photograph the prostitutes when she met and became friends with their children. Briski began giving photography lessons to the children and became aware that their photography might be a way for them to lead better lives.
The film describes the microcosmos of the small village Wacken and shows the clash of the cultures, before and during the biggest heavy metal festival in Europe.
You’d never know this is your home away from home. The surveillance camera outside shows a drab reception area and an unremarkable street in Mexico City; inside, the lights flash, but the tables are empty. Yet preparations are soon underway and fixed categories cease to apply: stubble is removed, make-up applied and strands of hair are teased into place; the camera is trained not on the men themselves, but what they see in the mirror.