Récréations

This is the story of Val and Clare: a mother and a daughter. After the tragic death of her eldest daughter, Val left her kids and family behind and escaped into the Colombian jungle in order to search for her identity. Clare was only 11 years old when her mother left and couldn't understand what she was looking for. A son who became an addict, three break-ups and a fractured family remained behind. Now Clare is pregnant and decides to confront her mother, heal the wounds of the past and try to define motherhood on her own terms. Together they go on an intimate journey exploring the boundaries between responsibility and freedom, the power of love and the meaning of family.

A follow-up to the 2008 documentary "Roman Polanski: Wanted And Desired", focusing on the filmmaker's successful battle to avoid extradition in to the U.S. in 2010.

In 1996, Marcello Mastroianni talks about life as an actor. It's an anecdotal and philosophical memoir, moving from topic to topic, fully conscious of a man "of a certain age" looking back. He tells stories about Fellini and De Sica's direction, of using irony in performances, of constantly working (an actor tries to find himself in characters). He's diffident about prizes, celebrates Rome and Paris, salutes Naples and its people. He answers the question, why make bad films; recalls his father and grandfather, carpenters, his mother, deaf in her old age, and his brother, a film editor; he's modest about his looks. In repose, time's swift passage holds Mastroianni inward gaze.

She came to the New York City Ballet as a teenager from Ohio and captured the heart and soul of the great Mr. B, inspiring the seminal ballets of her era and setting off a star-crossed love triangle as fevered and bizarre as anything in THE RED SHOES. As the greatest ballerina of her time looks back on her amazing career in Anne Belle and Deborah Dickson's intimate portrait, the on-stage triumphs and backstage turmoil come to vivid life.

El Sistema is a network of childrens and youth orchestras, music centres and workshops in Venezuela, in which more than 250,000 children and young people are currently learning to play an instrument. It was set up over thirty years ago by José Antonio Abreu, who was driven by the utopian vision of a better future. In the dangerous and poverty-stricken shanty towns of Caracas, Abreu lifts children out of poverty through music, changing both people and structures. The film El Sistema shows how Abreus astonishing ideas have led the way out of the vicious circle of poverty - and how the power of music has been able to change the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people.

From 1972 until 1974, Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan, along with a Chinese film crew, documented the last days of the Cultural Revolution, marking the end of an era. The vast amount of footage they shot was edited into 14 films of varying lengths. Focusing on ordinary people spread over a wide geographic area—many of whom were living and working in collectives—the filmmakers recorded a unique moment in history, and also captured some of the more enduring aspects of Chinese culture.

Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was openly shot to death on a February evening 1986 on the streets of Stockholm. In one night, the country of Sweden was transfigured. “Palme” is about his life, his time, and about the Sweden he had created. About a man who altered history.

This hour-long documentary is a provocative look at a historical event of which few Americans are aware. In mid-January, 1893, armed troops from the U.S.S Boston landed at Honolulu in support of a treasonous coup d’état against the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen Lili‘uokalani. The event was described by U.S. President Grover Cleveland as an "act of war."

Coverup: Behind the Iran Contra Affair is the third feature-length documentary produced by the Empowerment Project. The shadow government of assassins, arms dealers, drug smugglers, former CIA operatives and top US military personnel who were running foreign policy unaccountable to the public, revealing the Reagan/Bush administration's plan to use FEMA to institute martial law and ultimately suspend the Constitution. Strikingly relevant to current events.

Canned Dreams shows the multi-branching network of the modern food industry. The Finnish consumer buys a can in the grocery store, but where from far away do the raw materials and packaging materials for the preserves come from - and through how many hands? The film not only traces the various stages of the production process, but gives a voice to the people who work as part of it.

This film recounts the murder of Vincent Chin, an automotive engineer mistaken as Japanese who was slain by an assembly line worker who blamed him for the competition by the Japanese auto makers that were threatening his job. It then recounts how that murderer escaped justice in the court system. Restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation, in association with the Museum of Chinese in America. Restoration funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, with additional support provided by Todd Phillips.

David Attenborough returns to the island of Madagascar on a very personal quest. In 1960 he visited the island to film one of his first ever wildlife series, Zoo Quest. Whilst he was there, he acquired a giant egg. It was the egg of an extinct bird known as the 'elephant bird' - the largest bird that ever lived. It has been one of his most treasured possessions ever since. Fifty years older, he now returns to the island to find out more about this amazing creature and to see how the island has changed. Could the elephant bird's fate provide lessons that may help protect Madagascar's remaining wildlife? Using Zoo Quest archive and specially shot location footage, this film follows David as he revisits scenes from his youth and meets people at the front line of wildlife protection. On his return, scientists at Oxford University are able to reveal for the first time how old David's egg actually is - and what that might tell us about the legendary elephant bird.

Privilege is an intelligently conceived, boldly anarchic, and wickedly insightful exposition on the culturally ingrained and socially divisive malaise of isms that artificially define and characterize empowerment in contemporary society: ageism, sexism, economic elitism, and racism. Yvonne Rainer conveys texture through the intercutting of archival footage, video, and film - as well as compositional layering through the film-within-a-film structure, elliptical (and self-referential) fusion of past and present, and the filmmaker's idiosyncratic penchant for superimposed typed text.

Through a series of twenty six short stories, a girl describes the childhood events that shaped her ideas about fatherhood, family relations, work and play. As the stories unfold, a dual portrait emerges: that of a father who cared more for his career than for his family, and of a daughter who was deeply affected by his behavior. Working in counterpoint to the forceful text are sensual black and white images that depict both the extraordinary and ordinary events of daily life. Together, they create a formally complex and emotionally intense film.

An indelible portrait of the complex relationship between playwright and actor Sam Shepard and his close friend Johnny Dark as they prepare forty years of their correspondence for publication, stirring up old memories both good and bad.

Although the mountain volcano Mauna Kea last erupted around 4,000 years ago, it is still hot today, the center of a burning controversy over whether its summit should be used for astronomical observatories or preserved as a cultural landscape sacred to the Hawaiian people. For five years the documentary production team Nā Maka o ka 'Āina ("the eyes of the land") captured on video the seasonal moods of Mauna Kea's unique 14,000-foot summit, the richly varied ecosystems that extend from sea level to alpine zone, the legends and stories that reveal the mountain's geologic and cultural history, and the political turbulence surrounding the efforts to protect the most significant temple in the islands: the mountain itself.

The gripping story of legendary American actor John Travolta: his rise to stardom in the 1970s; his agonizing fall in disgrace in the 1980s; and his stunning artistic rebirth in the 1990s.

Well done, personal documentary of one family's fight to save their land.

A collection of live performances and a glimpse of the road from the American leg of Bill Callahan's 2011 Apocalypse tour.

Art Kane, now deceased, coordinated a group photograph of all the top jazz musicians in NYC in the year 1958, for a piece in Esquire magazine. Just about every jazz musician at the time showed up for the photo shoot which took place in front of a brownstone near the 125th street station. The documentary compiles interviews of many of the musicians in the photograph to talk about the day of the photograph, and it shows film footage taken that day by Milt Hinton and his wife.