1994 at the Ambassador Hotel, 55 Mason Street in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, California. From 1978 to 1996, the hotel was managed by Hank Wilson, a San Francisco LGBT activist who made the hotel a model for harm reduction housing. 134 run-down and exhausted rooms populated by homeless men and women, sometimes even children. All of them in urgent need of care, compassion and humanity. Nobly provided by voluntarily working professional health care and social workers staff, various benefactors, volunteers, neighbors, and community contributions.
A homeless musician finds meaning in his life when he starts a friendship with dozens of parrots.
Would you fall in love with a homeless person? Six years after Occupy Wall Street, Jehan is 42 years old and homeless on the streets of New York City. As she works to save money, get an apartment and return to a "normal" life, she decides that she would also like to get married. Would someone willing to put a dollar in her begging bag also be willing to fall in love with her? Can she find true love with a "normal" person?
A short documentary examining the consequence of time within the fragility of memory, exposing a sense of self, trapped within materiality and fantasy. We observe Chrystalla in her safe place, her home, reflecting on her childhood, her successful beauty business in 70s Cyprus and her deeply troubled marriage. Loneliness, abandonment and regret are prevailing themes within cycles of reflection, jest and contradiction.
In January 2011 Paul Crane discovered a tent city in downtown St. Louis, along the Mississippi River. He was curious as to who these people were, how they ended up there, and what life was like for them each day. He initially thought he would simply go down during the day and capture footage when possible, but he quickly realized that if he wanted to truly capture how these people lived and the full reality of their collective and individual existence, he would have to be there full time and become a part of the place, so he moved in with them.
Poignant stories of homelessness on the West Coast of the US frame this cinematic portrait of a surging humanitarian crisis.
Det Vita Snittet
Explores the lives of Sara, Gigi and Giovanna, three Latino transvestites who for years have lived on the streets of Manhattan supporting their drug addictions through prostitution. They made their temporary home inside broken garbage trucks that the Sanitation Department keeps next to the salt deposits used in the winter to melt the snow. The three friends share the place known as "The Salt Mines".
For almost half of his life, Kenneth Viken has been in prison, and he does not know how many times he has been released, only to soon return . In January 2016 he is released again.
At the age of 10, Natascha Kampusch was kidnapped and held captive for eight years by a deranged man. In 2006, she managed to escape, and the world discovered an astonishingly articulate and intelligent young woman. Not only did Peter Reichard film 14 hours of conversations with Kampusch, but he was also the very first filmmaker to obtain exclusive access to the house where she was imprisoned. This is the most complete, explicit and revealing documentary in which Kampusch has participated.
This documentary about teenagers living on the streets in Seattle began as a magazine article. The film follows nine teenagers who discuss how they live by panhandling, prostitution, and petty theft.
Valery Liashkevich is a homeless artist who lives at a railway station and for over twenty years has painted pictures in the streets of the town of Gomel in Belarus. For the natives he is no more than a local attraction. For art critics he is a phenomenon worth close attention.
What if democracy fails citizens by not serving them all equally? What if inequality becomes the norm and the most vulnerable citizens are left behind with no money, no home, no rights, and no country of their own? In Hungary, the government has slashed social benefits and criminalized homelessness, but a group of activists, homeless and middle class, is confronting authorities to defend social justice and their right to be citizens. After the tragic death of two of its founding members, the group feels that Hungary is growing more hostile and their struggle is more important than ever. Despite all odds, their own community keeps them going—a mini-society with democracy and solidarity at its heart, an island of hope, belonging and dignity in a society gradually shifting the other way.
For over 50 years, British undercover police officers have infiltrated activist groups, specifically targeting and manipulating women, forming romantic relationships and even having children with them. Now, three women don animal masks and revisit scenes from their past as animal-rights activists who were taken advantage of by spycops in order to reclaim their power, agency and narrative.
Survivors of violent crimes and prisoners incarcerated for murder connect to undergo astonishing transformations, liberating themselves from the debilitating constraints of trauma, and shattering preconceptions of "us and them."
Seven strangers are interviewed to talk about the relationship they have with their mother.
Uncovers the system of abuse and denial that killed a 14-year-old boy in a Florida Boot Camp.
AMERICAN REFLEXXX is a short film documenting a social experiment that took place in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Alli Coates filmed performance artist Signe Pierce as she strutted down a busy oceanside street in stripper garb and a reflective mask. The pair agreed not to communicate until the experiment was completed, but never anticipated the horror that would unfold in under an hour. The result is a heart wrenching technicolor spectacle that raises questions about gender stereotypes, mob mentality, and violence in America.
Every year in Quebec, 25,000 reports of children being beaten, sexually abused or abandoned are retained by the Directorate of Youth Protection. And nearly 40% of babies who die in the province to die because of the violence of their parents. This explains the fact that nearly 30,000 children are supported by the DPJ until the age of 18. But this government agency is in a position to meet the needs of young people? Journalist and documentary filmmaker Paul Arcand presents the testimonies of children and adult victims of abuse of all kinds, and interviews politicians, social workers and members of the judiciary on their perception of the problem. In addition, Arcand denounces the carelessness of a bureaucratic system that does not always seem to be concerned about the well-being of those for whom they are responsible.
Filmmaker Amy Berg sheds light on the sexual, financial and spiritual abuses heaped upon members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by their former leader, Warren Jeffs.