Brick by Brick: A Civil Rights Story

“In Gaza you have to get there in the evening, in spring, lock yourself in your room and from there listen to the sounds coming in through the open window.... It's 2018. I am 25 years old and a foreign traveler. I meet young Palestinians my age..”

Can a tree be racist? A few years ago, debate on this issue reached as far as Fox News. The focus was a row of tamarisk trees along a huge golf course in Palm Springs, which screened off the neighborhood of Crossley Tract. This is a historically Black neighborhood, named after its founder Lawrence Crossley, who was one of the first Black residents to settle in the largely white tourist paradise, established on indigenous land over a century ago.

A documentary juxtaposing the events of the 20th century with the commentary of stand-up comedians.

For over 85 years, steamship Ste. Claire transported generations of Detroiters to Boblo Island, an amusement park nestled in the waters between the US and Canada. When the vessel comes under threat of ruin, a doctor, psychic and amusement park fanatic unite to save their beloved steamship from the scrapyard. Interweaving local lore and mythology, "Boblo Boats" explores the whitewashed history of amusement parks and one crew's crusade to bring back the memories.

Three intrepid women battle for Indigenous women's treaty rights.

Plano B

Stories and music of Black artists who relied on an underground travel guide to navigate the injustices of racial segregation while on the road. The Negro Travelers’ Green Book was a directory of lodgings, restaurants, and entertainment venues where African Americans were welcomed. Features performances and interviews with vocalists, musicians, activists, historians, and others.

Since her debut at the age of 18, musician, civil rights campaigner and activist Joan Baez has been on stage for over 60 years. For the now 82-year-old, the personal has always been political, and her friendship with Martin Luther King and her pacifism have shaped her commitment. In this biography that opens with her farewell tour, Baez takes stock in an unsparing fashion and confronts sometimes painful memories.

Never-before-seen testimony is included in this documentary on Emmett Louis Till, who, in 1955, was brutally murdered after he whistled at a white woman.

"Africa Light" - as white local citizens call Namibia. The name suggests romance, the beauty of nature and promises a life without any problems in a country where the difference between rich and poor could hardly be greater. Namibia does not give that impression of it. If you look at its surface it seems like Africa in its most innocent and civilized form. It is a country that is so inviting to dream by its spectacular landscape, stunning scenery and fascinating wildlife. It has a very strong tourism structure and the government gets a lot of money with its magical attraction. But despite its grandiose splendor it is an endless gray zone as well. It oscillates between tradition and modernity, between the cattle in the country and the slums in the city. It shuttles from colonial times, land property reform to minimum wage for everyone. It fluctuates between socialism and cold calculated market economy.

The film is a controversy on democracy. Is our society really democratic? Can everyone be part of it? Or is the act of being part in democracy dependent to the access on technology, progression or any resources of information, as philosophers like Paul Virilio or Jean Baudrillard already claimed?

Information Violence

In 2007 Mobile, Alabama, Mardi Gras is celebrated... and complicated. Following a cast of characters, parades, and parties across an enduring color line, we see that beneath the surface of pageantry lies something else altogether.

July, 1949: four young black men are wrongly accused of rape by a 17-year-old farm wife in rural Lake County, Florida. The case of “The Groveland Four” included a race riot, torture, multiple murders, two trials and a Supreme Court reversal. Though widely covered by the national press, the case has been largely forgotten... even though it helped lay a foundation for the Civil Rights Movement.

50 years on, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy is the oldest continuing protest occupation site in the world. Taking a fresh lens this is a bold dive into a year of protest and revolutionary change for First Nations people.

A documentary on the late American entertainer Dean Reed, who became a huge star in East Germany after settling there in 1973.

Down the road from Woodstock in the early 1970s, a revolution blossomed in a ramshackle summer camp for disabled teenagers, transforming their young lives and igniting a landmark movement.

Exploring the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini's startling discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and her journey to push for the first-ever legislation in the U.S. to govern against bias in the algorithms that impact us all.

When Georgia Tech came to Michigan in 1934, the Wolverines were forced to bench their best play, Willis Ward, because he was an African-American. The incident infuriated Ward’s best friend on the team, a future president by the name of Jerry Ford, who threatened to quit the team in response. The friendship that began in the Big House lasted all the way to the White House. This is the story of two schools, two friends, and a game that changed everything.

David Jones investigates how 1960s council housing came to be built so poorly that thousands later needed to be demolished.