For Jimmy Smith, Jr., life is a daily fight just to keep hope alive. Feeding his dreams in Detroit's vibrant music scene, Jimmy wages an extraordinary personal struggle to find his own voice - and earn a place in a world where rhymes rule, legends are born and every moment… is another chance.
55 years ago, on October 1 1968, the first brand advertising spot appeared on the French television screen. Over the next three decades, thousands of creative little films would seduce and build our collective memory. Kitschy or cult spots, humor, slogans, music, stars, gimmicks, grand spectacle or sex appeal: during its golden age, how did advertising convince? Thierry Ardisson has brought together almost 400 advertising clips to relive the era of the conquest of minds and wallets.
In 1965, passionate musician Glenn Holland takes a day job as a high school music teacher, convinced it's just a small obstacle on the road to his true calling: writing a historic opus. As the decades roll by with the composition unwritten but generations of students inspired through his teaching, Holland must redefine his life's purpose.
This 135-minute documentary offers to reopen this magical parenthesis which has seen the birth of a whirlwind of artists with very different styles. From Chantal Goya to Annie Cordy, from Pierre Perret to Carlos. They knew how to bring each in their own way generations of children into their poetic universe.
In the 1970s, Strange Fruit were it. They lived the rock lifestyle to the max, groupies, drugs, internal tension and an ex front man dead from an overdose. Even their demise was glamorous; when lightning struck the stage during an outdoor festival. Twenty years on, these former rock gods they have now sunk deep into obscurity when the idea of a reunion tour is lodged in the head of Tony, former keyboard player of the Fruits. Tony sets out to find his former bandmates with the help of former manager Karen to see if they can recapture the magic and give themselves a second chance.
In depth look at the life and death of INXS frontman Michael Hutchence (1960-1997), who took his own life at an Australian hotel room at the age of 37 on November 22, 1997. Featuring interviews with his family, bandmates and friends such as Bono.
In 1999, teenage sisters Celeste and Eleanor survive a seismic, violent tragedy. The sisters compose and perform a song about their experience, making something lovely and cathartic out of catastrophe — while also catapulting Celeste to stardom. By 2017, the now 31-year-old Celeste is mother to a teenage daughter of her own and struggling to navigate a career fraught with scandals when another act of terrifying violence demands her attention.
What happened in Rwanda in 1994 was not simply the spontaneous eruption of inter-ethnic hatred. It was planned genocide, on an industrial scale. Something that was prepared for at least a year in advance. Lists were made. Weapons were collected. RTLM radio spent months conditioning their audience to believe that one sector of their population represented a threat.
This documentary examines the Seattle scene as it became the focus of a merging of punk rock, heavy metal, and innovation. Building from the grass roots, self-promoted and self-recorded until break-out success of bands like Nirvana brought the record industry to the Pacific Northwest, a phenomenon was born.
Tony was the exclusive photographer and video director for Ocean Colour Scene from Moseley Shoals to Marchin' Already, publishing his book 'Soul Driver' in 2014, releasing his feature documentary film 'SCENE' in 2017 and is currently launching his new coffee table 'book of the film' 'Behind the Scene' due for release in Summer 2022.
The voices of five gay men who cruised for sex at the World Trade Center in the 1980s and 1990s haunt the sanitized, commerce-driven landscape that is the newly rebuilt Freedom Tower campus.
An in-depth look at the culture of Los Angeles in the ten years leading up to the 1992 uprising that erupted after the verdict of police officers cleared of beating Rodney King.
VH1 and SPIN magazine teamed up to present 'VH1 News Special: Grunge', an in-depth look at the Seattle-born movement that transformed popular music and the major players who made it happen.
Follow Robbie Williams' journey from childhood, to being the youngest member of chart-topping boyband Take That, through to his unparalleled achievements as a record-breaking solo artist – all the while confronting the challenges that stratospheric fame and success can bring.
A young mother’s mysterious death and her son’s subsequent kidnapping blow open a decades-long mystery about the woman’s true identity, and the murderous federal fugitive at the center of it all.
On the stormy night of July 5th, 1995, Trick Stuart works the graveyard shift with his plus-sized pal Meathead at the Delta Kream, a 24HR fast food joint. As they practice their brass band routine, a very unexpected visitor arrives.
The story of the highs and lows in the career of Britney Spears. Based on the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir.
A cinematic portrait of the homeless population who live permanently in the underground tunnels of New York City.
A friendsbook was like Facebook during the Soviet times. Many had one. Russian kids called it a Form. Classmates were asked to write in it and say what they thought love is, what they wanted to be when they grow up, what their favourite food was. It was mostly girls who had friendsbooks, of course. Twenty-five years later, Alyona Surzhikova browses her 6th grade friendsbook and decides to go and find her then classmates to ask whether their dreams have come true. She travels to Russia and Germany and even Cambodia and puts together a thought-provoking aggregate portrait of the Russian generation that grew up during the restoration of Estonia’s independence. Many of them have left Estonia by now, with half of Surzhikova’s classmates living abroad. Why did they do that? What do they think about Estonia? And what would they write into the Form now?
In the 1980s, Algeria experienced a tumultuous social context which reached its peak during the riots of October 88. This wave of protest, with youth as its figurehead, echoed the texts of raï singers. Thirst for freedom, misery of life and the aspirations of youth are among the main themes of their works which will inspire an entire generation. More than music, raï celebrates the Arabic language and becomes a vector of Algerian culture, thus providing the cultural weapons of emerging Algerian nationalism With Cheb Khaled, Cheb Mami and Chaba Fadela as leaders of the movement, raï is also a way of telling and reflecting the essence of Algeria in these difficult times. While the threat weighs on artists in Algeria, their exile allows raï to be exported internationally and thus, to bring the colors of Algeria to life throughout the world.