Snow Job: The Media Hysteria of AIDS

German iconoclast filmmaker and gay-rights activist Rosa vonPraunheim examines his own life and career in the documentary Phooey Rosa! With a quickly paced editing style, the film is a mix of personal banter, candid interviews, and clips from his filmography. It also includes footage from his early film Bed Sausage to his later work Neurosia. At the age of 60, vonPraunheim reveals intimate details about his past relationships and his childhood growing up after WWII. He also implicates some of his friends and inspirations, including Luzi Kryn and Rainer Kranach.

In a quiet corner, far removed from big money, celebrity status and drug scandals lies the true value of sport. This is a film about friendship and purpose in masters athletics, a place where every five years, getting older means becoming the youngest. Younger follows a group of female athletes in their 60s, 70s and 80s over the course of a year as they prepare to compete in masters competitions. In these competitions, athletes compete in age groups that span five years, 60-64, 65-69 etc. When an athlete moves up an age group they are then the youngest, and this means they are more likely to win or break records. So, as they approach the top end of their classification, they look forward to being a year older and moving up to the next group where they will be the new kid on the block again.

With an off beat sense of humour, the film looks at the politics and glamour of lipstick and the dilemmas of the modern woman in a marketed world.

A group of filmmakers shadow some glamour photographers in order to discover the skill involved in getting 'magic' to appear on the photos.

A documentary behind the scenes of Peter Bogdanovich's 'The Cat's Meow' (2001).

In interviews, various actors and directors discuss their careers and their involvement in the making of what has come to be known as "cult" films. Included are such well-known genre figures as Russ Meyer, Curtis Harrington, Cameron Mitchell and James Karen.

Through one woman's experience as an adopted person and also as a mother who relinquished her child in 1971, this documentary highlights the many complex issues associated with adoption.

Short documentary about the making of the 1938 film "Jezebel."

Documentary film about Catholic Church teachings about homosexuality. Describes the "third way", the lifestyle lead by orthodox gay Catholics practicing celibacy out of personal choice, an often overlooked demographic in the debates about homosexuality in the Church.

Sir Ian McKellen and Richard Loncraine talking about making the film.

A fond farewell to London's trams - whose peculiarly endearing qualities were discovered only at the threat of their disappearance.

"Happy Tweet: A Digital Revolution" is a compelling short documentary that chronicles the inspiring journey of K.M. Nahidul Islam, a visionary tech entrepreneur from Bangladesh. From coding in a small room with minimal resources to founding Happy Tweet, a platform that reaches millions, this film captures the essence of innovation, perseverance, and digital transformation. Directed by Islam himself, the documentary offers an intimate look into the struggles and breakthroughs that shaped his path—serving as a testament to what’s possible when ambition meets purpose in the digital age.

Joan Bakewell visits Haworth in Yorkshire, home of the Brontës, to see the setting in which the novelists worked.

Comments from composers Richard and Robert Sherman.

Narrated by Linda Hunt, this documentary examines the life of the late author and gay rights activist Paul Monette. Born in 1945 to a well-off Massachusetts family, Monette grows up unable to accept his homosexuality, for years hiding it from his loved ones while struggling to develop as a writer. In 1978, Monette publishes his first novel, which allows him to come out to his parents. After losing one lover to AIDS in 1986, he becomes a ferocious advocate for awareness of the disease.

"Panic Bodies is a 70-minute, six-part exploration of the ways we experience the body's betrayals: disease, decline and death. The film is a panorama of emotionally charged recollections of strange relatives and estranged siblings, staged recreations of fast-fading pasts and personal mythologies, and reflections on the anxious states created by the body's fragile claims on time and space. It's about being a stranger in your own skin. Panic Bodies perfects the phantom quality of any good work about mourning, but it is not reducible to that. It is also enlivened by the intimacy that comes from having made a spectacle of personal secrets." (Kathleen Pirrie Adams, Xtra)

A short documentary about a female truck driver in the United Kingdom.

Chris Renfro doesn’t just grow and harvest grapes on a hillside high above San Francisco’s Highway 280 to make delicious local wine. He is dedicated to building a sustainable food community that nourishes every member of the local economy and ecosystem. With the 280 Project’s mission to reclaim space, realize opportunity and revitalize community, Renfro brings both passion and vision to the notion that land ownership is a powerful path to self-determination.

In Uganda, AIDS-infected mothers have begun writing what they call Memory Books for their children. Aware of the illness, it is a way for the family to come to terms with the inevitable death that it faces. Hopelessness and desperation are confronted through the collaborative effort of remembering and recording, a process that inspires unexpected strength and even solace in the face of death.

At once exaltation and elegy, this documentary profiles the natural history of North Carolina's Outer Banks, a seascape of transitory barrier islands doomed to disappear.