Ryan's Capitol Tour

Documentary film interviews leading African Americans on race, identity, and achievement.

Each year in the United States, over 200,000 prisoners face a parole board that must make the difficult judgment of whether these convicted criminals are ready to gain their freedom and return to society. This documentary focuses on three inmates in Louisiana, Nevada, and Massachusetts with a range of chilling crimes - a father's murder by his troubled son, a crime of passion by a respected NASA scientist, and a shooting/robbery on the streets of Las Vegas. Incorporating interviews of key characters with extensive testimony footage and reenactment sequences that explore the life and crime of the inmate, the film vividly examines the conflicting needs of the victim, the criminal, and the community while testing our own notions of justice.

RAISING RENEE is the story of a family's remarkable response to being broken apart and rearranged after nearly 50 years. The film explores deep themes of family, race, class and disability through the interplay of painting, cinema and everyday life. Produced and directed by Oscar nominees Jeanne Jordan and Steven Ascher, RAISING RENEE is the third part of a trilogy about resilient families that includes their acclaimed feature documentaries So Much So Fast and Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Troublesome Creek. RAISING RENEE is about a unique group of women, the tenacity of family bonds and the power of art to transform experience into something beyond words.

This documentary observes the conversations, primping and camaraderie that take place in the women's bathroom of a nightclub over the course of a night.

This investigation into the layers of mass incarceration and its shaping of the modern black American family is seen through the eyes of a single mother in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Featuring new, previously unseen footage documenting the bizarre and unsettling things that happened to filmmakers David Farrier and Dylan Reeve as Tickled premiered at film festivals and theaters in 2016. Lawsuits, private investigators, disrupted screenings and surprise appearances are just part of what they encounter along the way. Amidst new threats, the duo begins to answer questions that remained once the credits rolled on Tickled, including whether the disturbing behavior they uncovered will ever come to an end.

Devir

Edith and Eddie, ages 96 and 95, are America's oldest interracial newlyweds. Their unusual and idyllic love story is threatened by a family feud that triggers a devastating abuse of the legal guardianship system.

An in-depth look at Dirty Harry (1971), featuring interviews with such film artists as Michael Madsen, 'Hal Holbrook', John Milius, 'Shane Black' and John Badham.

Hedda Hopper plays hostess at a party for her (grown) son William (DeWolfe Jr.). Hopper, attends the dedication of the Motion Picture Relief Fund's country home and goes to the Mocambo. There is also a sequence dedicated to the Milwaukee, Wisconsin world premiere of the first short in this series attended by more that a few film stars.

Sound progression of two opposite landscapes.

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Shots of Turin, deserted because of the pandemic, interweave with images of the movies that have been shot in the city ever since the dawn of cinematography.

Puentes de Salud is a volunteer-run clinic that provides free medical care to undocumented immigrants in south Philadelphia. Here, doctors and nurses work for free to serve people who would otherwise fall through the cracks. Clinica de Migrantes, a potent film by Maxim Pozdorovkin, follows the workers and patients of Puentes through months of routine care and growth. Along the way, the film puts a face to the millions of people who exist on the margins of society: people displaced from their homelands, separated from their families, unfamiliar with the customs, unable to obtain health insurance and terrified to come forward to seek medical help. Along with revealing these patient stories, Clinica is also a look at the heroic doctors and nurses who work pro bono to ensure these people receive care, offering a deeply moving look at the limitless potential of humanity.

This short celebrates the 20th anniversary of MGM. Segments are shown from several early hits, then from a number of 1944 releases.

Burn victims get to enjoy a family day at the beach thanks to an outing organized by the Association des grands brûlés.

A location tour of the Rocky filming locations in Philadelphia.

Filmmaker Carol Nguyen interviews her own family to craft an emotionally complex and meticulously composed portrait of intergenerational trauma, grief, and secrets in this cathartic documentary about things left unsaid.

When internationally renowned Haida carver Robert Davidson was only 22 years old, he carved the first new totem pole on British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii in almost a century. On the 50th anniversary of the pole’s raising, Haida filmmaker Christopher Auchter steps easily through history to revisit that day in August 1969, when the entire village of Old Massett gathered to celebrate the event that would signal the rebirth of the Haida spirit.

Gil Cardinal searches for his natural family and an understanding of the circumstances that led to his becoming a foster child. An important figure in the history of Canadian Indigenous filmmaking, Gil Cardinal was born to a Métis mother but raised by a non-Indigenous foster family, and with this auto-biographical documentary he charts his efforts to find his biological mother and to understand why he was removed from her. Considered a milestone in documentary cinema, it addressed the country’s internal colonialism in a profoundly personal manner, winning a Special Jury Prize at Banff and multiple international awards.