Tina Turner overcame impossible odds to become one of the first female Black artists to reach a mainstream international audience. Her road to superstardom is an undeniable story of triumph over adversity. It’s the ultimate story of survival – and an inspirational story of our times.
Adventurer, filmmaker, inventor, author, unlikely celebrity and conservationist: For over four decades, Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his explorations under the ocean became synonymous with a love of science and the natural world. As he learned to protect the environment, he brought the whole world with him, sounding alarms more than 50 years ago about the warming seas and our planet’s vulnerability. In BECOMING COUSTEAU, from National Geographic Documentary Films, two-time Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus takes an inside look at Cousteau and his life, his iconic films and inventions, and the experiences that made him the 20th century’s most unique and renowned environmental voice — and the man who inspired generations to protect the Earth.
Explore the filmmaker’s life and career in interviews with colleagues, friends and Burns himself. The importance of place emerges as a theme as he reflects on his own geographic touchstones, from the Brooklyn Bridge to small-town New Hampshire.
The incredible story of the mythical Russian-American actor and filmmaker Yul Brynner (1920-85), the most exotic sex-symbol since Rudolph Valentino; the story of the atypical destiny of an international nomad: from the Parisian cabarets to the stages of Broadway and the Hollywood studios. The rise to fame of a multidisciplinary genius who became a king of the screen.
Tras la pista de Billy Wilder
Beethoven privat
A portrait of Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), a genius of modern architecture, whose life passed between glory, scandal and tragedy.
Benjamina Miyar Díaz (1888-1961) led an unusual life in her house on calle del Agua in Corao, Asturias, at the foot of the Picos de Europa mountain range in northern Spain: she was a photographer and watchmaker for more than forty years, but she also fought in her own humble and heroic way against General Franco's dictatorship.
Giscard - De vous à moi, les confidences d'un président
Children and childhood fascinated Benjamin Britten throughout his life and inspired some of his greatest music. John Bridcut's compelling film sheds light on the composer's own inner child throiugh interviews with several of Britten's former companions and muses.
Takeshi Kitano is an international icon. We know the actor, the multi-award-winning filmmaker, but many ignore his double personality: the crazy TV star, the street kid from Tokyo close to the Yakuza, and the political satirist who blasted taboos! Can we dream of a better guide to introduce us to the cultural history of Japan?
Thirteen years after the unexpected death of his one time best friend, filmmaker tries to reconstruct his life and their relationship, using just the photographs and video materials which his friend shot back then. A film about the lost generation of Croatian youth in the end of the 90's, who are trying to find their identity in the aftermath of a devastating war.
Documenting the world of the famous Spanish poet Antonio Machado, including the places where he lived and worked.
The story of America's first astronauts, known as the Mercury 7, told through archival news & radio reports, newly transferred & previously unheard NASA mission audio recordings, and more rare & unseen material.
On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Matisse's birth and of the exhibition at the Center Pompidou which will be dedicated to him in 2020, this art documentary brings us back to life of the journeys made by Matisse that influenced his art. And particularly his last trip to Polynesia in 1930 which will bring him to the threshold of contemporary art with the invention of his gouache cut-out papers.
The prodigious genesis of a monument of world literature, too often reduced to its popular success, also recounts the tormented conversion of its author, Victor Hugo, to the ideal of social progress.
The story of the cross destiny of George Orwell (1903-50) and Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), the genius authors of the two most groundbreaking novels of anticipation of the 20th century: 1984 and Brave New World; two lucid witnesses of the maledictions of the modern world whose novels have found a considerable echo with our time.
Nothing destined this child born in Marseille in 1921, and from a modest background, to become an avant-garde artist. At 12 years old, the one who is still called César Baldaccini works to help his father, but also studies drawing. In 1943, he moved to Paris and enrolled in the Beaux-Arts. He chose sculpture, an expensive art for this penniless student. From the 1950s, he shaped fine animals from metal debris collected in factories. This alloy between his Mediterranean imagination and these industrial materials earned him the attention of Picasso. But in 1960, this instinct, now in vogue, brought about a radical change. Fascinated by hydraulic presses, he presented three compressed cars at the Salon de Mai. The artist stands aside in front of the machine, and the morbid aesthetic of the breakage radiates the sculpture. Outcry!
When he arrives in Saint Petersburg, at the age of 29, Marius Petipa is just an obscure dancer who fled western Europe to escape his debts. He is far from imagining that his engagement in the troupe of the Russian Imperial Ballet, then rather mediocre, will reveal him, forty years later, as one of the greatest choreographers in the history of dance. It is within the Bolshoi Kamenny theaters, then Mariinsky, in a still provincial capital where three productions a year are enough to satisfy an undemanding audience, that this native of Marseille will invent a new art of ballet, over the course of sixty of creations, between 1862 (La fille du pharaon) and 1895 (Le lac des cygnes).
Hearing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for the first time changed Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser’s life forever, and in this inspiring documentary, we see him—the first openly gay Black conductor in Canada and a regular conductor with the San Francisco and Vancouver symphonies—using his passion to bring live classical music to people identifying as “different,” like he does. Having struggled with his own sexuality, Bartholomew-Poyser believes music can help unite and uplift everyone beyond race, class, and gender. This unorthodox film chronicles his concerts in a women’s prison and teaming up with Thorgy Thor (from RuPaul’s Drag Race and also a classically trained violinist) to create the first orchestral drag show in Canada.