Seven Songs for a Long Life

A film that captures the portraits and stories of extraordinary women around the world who are coming together to heal the injustices against the earth, weaves together poetry, music, art, and stunning scenery to create a hopeful and collective story that inspires us to work for the earth. The list of impassioned, indefatigable female environmental activists featured in this film includes Winona LaDuke, a Native American who has championed the use of solar and wind power on reservations; Theo Colborn, head of The Endocrine Disruption Exchange, who fights against toxic chemicals in our water supplies; Beverly Grant, who’s created a vibrant farmer’s market in a black neighborhood of Denver, Colo.; Dana Miller, who spearheads an “urban agriculture movement” in the same city; and Vandana Shiva, who champions organic farming in India.

As artists and visual architects, husband and wife Massimo and Lella Vignelli have been producing unique and groundbreaking work as brand designers. This up-close documentary reveals their major influence in reshaping our visual environment.

Shut Up and Sing is a documentary about the country band from Texas called the Dixie Chicks and how one tiny comment against President Bush dropped their number one hit off the charts and caused fans to hate them, destroy their CD’s, and protest at their concerts. A film about freedom of speech gone out of control and the three girls lives that were forever changed by a small anti-Bush comment

The Battle of The Alamo

It’s not uncommon for a film to have a moving love story at its core. Yet this particular set-up is unusual. The lovers here are Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan, both important representatives of post-war German-language poetry. The story of the relationship between the Austrian and the Jew from Czernowitz is told through their nearly 20-year correspondence (1948–1967). Or, more precisely, by a young woman and a young man reading from their letters in a studio in Vienna’s venerable Funkhaus.

Jakub, The Old Believers, and Piemule are three documentaries about forgotten people by director Jana Sevciková. All three are distributed on the same DVD under the name Old Believers. Piemule offers a close look at the descendants of Czech immigrants in Romania.

Homeless since the age of nine, South African skateboarder Thalente Biyela travels to the US to pursue his dream of becoming a professional skateboarder. Through his eyes, we experience what it takes to rise up out of circumstance and escape a lifetime on the streets.

Six adult siblings and the vicissitudes of fertility, infertility, and the desire - met and unmet - for a baby. Focusing on one couple's attempt to become pregnant, and the inevitable highs and lows of a year of hope and disappointment.

The central song and dance ensemble of the Soviet military stationed in East Germany goes on a tour of the country. The dancers and musicians talk about their experiences in East Germany and their admiration for German classical music, which includes not only Richard Wagner, but also newer talents such as Arthur Honegger and Paul Hindemith.

In Oct. 2006, the U.S. government decided to build a 700-mile fence along its troubled 2000-mile-plus border with Mexico. Three years, 19 construction companies, 350 engineers, thousands of construction workers, tens of thousands of tons of metal and $3 billion later, was it all worth it? When Arizona recently enacted one of the most extreme immigration laws in the country, the Obama administration responded by filing a lawsuit against the state. This dispute was merely the latest symptom of a greater national problem: the lack of a comprehensive, workable U.S. immigration policy. In its place, lawmakers have resorted to a series of half-measures, the most expensive of which — the U.S.-Mexico border fence — extends through the desert 150 miles south of the Arizona state capital.

InRealLife takes us on a journey from the bedrooms of British teenagers to the world of Silicon Valley, to find out what exactly the internet is doing to our children.

The monks were 5 American GIs in cold war Germany who billed themselves as the anti-Beatles; they were heavy on feedback, nihilism and electrical banjo. They had strange haircuts, dressed in black, mocked the military and rocked harder than any of their mid-sixties counterparts while managing to basically invent industrial, kraut rock, heavy metal, punk and techno music.

This documentary, set in the Lower East End of Vancouver's downtown core, is a pretty honest account of life on the streets in urban Canada. It is aimed at educating high school kids on the dangers of addiction to hard drugs and is the brainchild of a group of city police officers who videotape their interactions with local homeless personalities.

Money & Life is an inspirational essay-style documentary that asks a provocative question: can we see the economic crisis not as a disaster, but as a tremendous opportunity? This cinematic odyssey connects the dots on our current economic pains and offers a new story of money based on an emerging paradigm of planetary well-being that understands all of life as profoundly interconnected.

Aztec romance and the dream of love. The anthropologist’s most human desire, the ultimate contact with the informant. The denial of intellectualism and the acceptance of the romantic heart, and a soul without innocence. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2011.

When President Abdoulaye Wade wanted to run for office yet again in 2011, a resistance movement formed on the streets. Shortly afterwards, a group of school friends, including rappers Thiat and Kilifeu, set up "Y'en a marre" ("We Are Fed Up"), with filmmaker Rama Thiaw soon coming on board to start documenting events – meetings, campaigns, arrests, concerts, states of exhaustion, trips – from an "insider" perspective. Over several years, a stirring portrait emerged of a youth protest movement to whom independent observers were not the only ones to ascribe the role of "kingmaker" in the last elections. Rama Thiaw shows the rappers and their environment with an intimacy whose cinematographic finesse provides space and context for the thorny conflicts between music and politics, street and state.

An experimental documentary about the intertwining of bodies and lives in a cattle ranch in Les Avins, Belgium, with cattle of the breed Blanc Bleu Belge, known for its fascinating musculature.

Filmed during a media workshop for Syrian girls in Jordan's Za'atari Refugee Camp, 17-year-old Khaldiya meditates on how the camp has opened up new horizons and given her a sense of courage that she lacked in Syria.

In “Vital Signs” (1991), Barbara Hammer demonstratively transforms the horror of death into its opposite. She tenderly cares for a human skeleton, feeding it, dressing and caressing it, taking it for walks in the dark cabaret of an intimate relationship beyond death. She confronts pain and fear rather than repressing them.

The National Ballet of Portugal is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Since its foundation, it has aimed to present the great classics, as well as to always welcome contemporary creations. Day-to-day life is demanding for dancers, choreographers, musicians, répétiteurs, seamstresses, light technicians, sound technicians, and other elements of a large staff that make it possible for dance to travel through the rehearsal rooms and linger in the hallways before making it onto the stage. This film follows not only the company’s creations and premieres, but mainly each dancer’s silent and structural work.