James Franco interviews three experts on the poet Hart Crane, whose life was the subject of his feature The Broken Tower (2011).
Iggy Pop reads and recites Michel Houellebecq’s manifesto. The documentary features real people from Houellebecq’s life with the text based on their life stories.
Based on real near-death experiences, the afterlife is explored with the guidance of New York Times bestselling authors, medical experts, scientists and survivors who shed a light on what awaits us.
The Bridge is a controversial documentary that shows people jumping to their death from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco - the world's most popular suicide destination. Interviews with the victims' loved ones describe their lives and mental health.
Angdu is no ordinary boy. Indeed, in a past life he was a venerated Buddhist master. His village already treats him like a saint as a result. The village doctor, who has taken the boy under his wing, prepares him to be able to pass on his wisdom. Alas, Tibet, Angdu’s former homeland and the centre of his faith, lies far away from his current home in the highlands of Northern India. On top of that, the conflict between China and Tibet makes the prospect of a trip there even more daunting. Undeterred by these harsh facts, the duo set off for their destination on foot, accompanied by questions of friendship and the nature of life. With its narrative approach steeped in a serene sense of concentration, this documentary film, composed over a period of eight years, stands as a fundamental experience in its own right.
As a teenager in the '90s, Soleil Moon Frye carried a video camera everywhere she went. She documented hundreds of hours of footage and then locked it away for over 20 years.
A documentary about the singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt
Filmmaker Jonathan Caouette's documentary on growing up with his schizophrenic mother -- a mixture of snapshots, Super-8, answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, and more -- culled from 19 years of his life.
The Richardson Olmsted Campus, a former psychiatric center and National Historic Landmark, is seeing new life as it undergoes restoration and adaptation to a modern use.
A core group of architects embraced the West Coast from Vancouver to LA with its particular geography and values and left behind a legacy of inspired dwellings. Today, architects celebrate the influence established by their predecessors.
2012/HD/Color/19min/
Traces the life and mental illness of New York artist and photographer Ruth Litoff, and her sister's struggle to come to terms with her tragic suicide.
A collection of death scenes, ranging from TV-material to home-made super-8 movies. The common factor is death by some means.
The third installment of the infamous "is it real or fake?" mondo series sets its sights primarily on serial killers, with lengthy reenactments of police investigations of bodies being found in dumpsters, and a staged courtroom sequence.
In search of the lucrative matsutake mushroom, two former soldiers discover the means to gradually heal their wounds of war. Roger, a self-described 'fall-down drunk' and sniper in Vietnam, and Kouy, a Cambodian refugee who fought the Khmer Rouge, bonded in the bustling tent-city known as Mushroom Camp, which pops up each autumn in the Oregon woods. Their friendship became an adoptive family; according to a Cambodian custom, if you lose your family like Kouy, you must rebuilt it anew. Now, however, this new family could be lost. Roger's health is declining and trauma flashbacks rack his mind; Kouy gently aids his family before the snow falls and the hunting season ends, signaling his time to leave.
On the night of Oct. 2, 2005, Hart and Dana Perry's 15-year-old son Evan jumped to his death from his New York City bedroom window. This moving film is the story, told by his filmmaker parents and others who knew him, of Evan’s life and death, and his life-long struggle with bipolar disorder. It delves into the complexity of Evan's disease, sharing his family's journey through the maze of mental illness. In showing how one family deals with generations of loss and grief, the film defies the stigma related to mental illness and suicide and tells a human story that touches everyone.
El estigma del silencio
Describing herself as a 'street queen,' Johnson was a legendary fixture in New York City’s gay ghetto and a tireless voice for LGBT pride since the days of Stonewall, who along with fellow trans icon Sylvia Rivera, founded Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), a trans activist group based in the heart of NYC’s Greenwich Village. Her death in 1992 was declared a suicide by the NYPD, but friends never accepted that version of events. Structured as a whodunit, with activist Victoria Cruz cast as detective and audience surrogate, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson celebrates the lasting political legacy of Johnson, while seeking to finally solve the mystery of her unexplained death.
A film about a theatre performance and four very notable people behind it: writer and director D. Jovanović, actress M. Zupančič and actors R. Polič and B. Cavazza. This is a story of a love triangle and of a multi-layered, entirely overt intertwining of protagonists’ public artistic personas and their personal lives. The film documents a 4-month process of the making of a theatre piece from the first rehearsal to the opening night, at the same time uncovering the intimate lives of the artists and telling a universal story of the relationship between the real and the imagined, a story of personal and public perceptions of art.
Seventy years after his grandfather escapes from Nazi Germany to Palestine, Israeli documentary director Tomer Heymann returns to the country of his ancestors to present his film "Paper Dolls" at the Berlin International Film Festival, and there meets a man who will change his life. This 48-hour love affair, originating in Berghain Panorama Bar, develops into a significant relationship between Tomer and Andreas Merk, a German dancer.