Is That Jazz: A Mug-Shot Afterthought

This documentary presents clips from black films from 1929 through 1957.

Black Is the Color highlights key moments in the history of Black visual art, from Edmonds Lewis’s 1867 sculpture Forever Free, to the work of contemporary artists such as Whitfield Lovell, Kerry James Marshall, Ellen Gallagher, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Art historians and gallery owners place the works in context, setting them against the larger social contexts of Jim Crow, WWI, the civil rights movement and the racism of the Reagan era, while contemporary artists discuss individual works by their forerunners and their ongoing influence.

A look back at the last fifty years in African American art, Colored Frames is an unflinching exploration of influences, inspirations and experiences of black artists. Beginning at the height of the Civil Rights Era and leading up to the present, it is a naked and truthful look at often ignored artists and their progenies.

Zakarya Diouf, winner of the San Francisco Foundation 2005 Community Leadership Awards (Helen Crocker Russell Award) - for his vision in unifying the African cultural arts community, for serving as a mentor and educator of young artists, and for his artistic contributions to the development of African-based performing arts.

Under the Trump administration, USA is a deeply divided country. One side feeds populism and religious rectitude in a monochromatic landscape, painted white, lamenting for a past that never will return. The other side fuels diversity and multiculturalism, a biased vision of a progressive future, quite unlikely. Both sides are constantly confronted, without listening to each other. Only a few reasonable people gather to change this potentially dangerous situation.

Don Letts's hilarious and colourful profile of the godfather of funk, whose 50-year career has defined the genre. From his 1950s days running a doo-wop group out of the back of his barber store, through the madness of the monster Parliament/Funkadelic machine of the 70s to his late 90s hip-hop collaborations with Dre and Snoop, George Clinton has inspired generations of imitators. Contributors include Outkast's Andre 3000 and Macy Gray.

Husband and wife music producers Ray Chew and Vivian Scott Chew embark on an ambitious two week journey to Cuba to create a collaboration of sounds which originated from Afro-Caribbean roots that has evolved into what we now consider modern day Salsa music. Bringing together multiple artists from the U.S. and Cuba, the film shines a light on Cuban culture and takes the viewer through the creative process and challenges of producing an album while providing an auditory sensation that touches the soul. Featuring Eric Benét, Louie Vega and Sergio George-who has produced albums for Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony and more. Audiences will walk away feeling the passion, positive energy, triumph and love that keeps this musical marriage strong.

The film explores the role of photography, since its rudimentary beginnings in the 1840s, in shaping the identity, aspirations, and social emergence of African Americans from slavery to the present. The dramatic arch is developed as a visual narrative that flows through the past 160 years to reveal black photography as an instrument for social change, an African American point-of-view on American history, and a particularized aesthetic vision.

Blaxploitation Matters is a bold and stylish web series that shines a spotlight on the greatest films of the Blaxploitation era—honoring the groundbreaking actors, visionary directors, and iconic stories that forever changed the face of Black cinema.

David Hammons’ singular career covers life in LA during a turbulent 1960s through to his prominence within the global art world today. Key to his work has been an analysis of African American society and its representation within US life. Featuring interviews with eminent artists, curators and critics; a wealth of archival footage; an evocative soundscape by Ramachandra Borcar that includes Marshall Allen, Idris Ackamoor and Shabaka Hutchings; and a reading by The Last Poets member and hip-hop forefather Umar Bin Hassan, The Melt Goes on Forever is a revelatory journey through six decades of art and culture.

A little-known adaptation of Jaroslav Vrchlický's play is returning to the television screen, full of humorous plots, telling the story of the courage of two women in love who, because of their love, infiltrated Karlštejn Castle, where women are forbidden to enter by order of the monarch. It was created with a number of star actors eight years before the now legendary film adaptation by Zdeněk Podskalský. When it premiered in 1965, it aroused a stormy, positive and negative response. Quite naturally, because Filip's concept of this classic play, albeit in the authentic setting of Karlštejn Castle, was completely new and unconventional at the time. This adaptation of the classic original uses the melodies of popular Czech and foreign hits with lyrics by P. Kopta. For example, the ruler's arrival at the castle was announced by the melody of the popular song Jó, třešné zrály. However, professional singers mostly sing for the actors here.

In Venezuela, amidst a backdrop of poverty, murder, and corruption, the El Sistema youth orchestra offers children hope and the opportunity to pursue a life of art in spite of the harshness of the society around them. Yet the country’s spiraling collapse and political repression threatens the musicians’ dreams of a better life.

Performed like a series of vaudeville scenes that overlap, Antic Meet consists of ten playful and comedic numbers. The curtains opened with Cunningham moving among the other dancers as a clown-like figure "who falls in love with a society whose rules he doesn't know," and concludes much in the same way, as he attempts to keep up with the dancers, each with their own movements, as they dance diagonally across the stage. Cage provided the musical accompaniment, using a version of Concert for Piano and Orchestra, and Rauschenberg designed the costumes, which included fur coats and parachute dresses over black leotards.

Short documentary on the use of the V-1 Flying Bomb during the German bombings of London.

Mark Knopfler - Milano 2019

Alan Peterson • Karma • Ryan Wilburn • Steve Bailey • Jesse Paez • Seth McCallum • Roberto Aleman • Gary Collins • Jeremiah Babb • Jub • Brian Heck • Tim Garner • Richard Paez • Jose Noro

1989 MTV Rockumentary episode about alternative rock band, R.E.M.

There is no shortage of words to define the actress, screenwriter and director Monica Vitti: Intense, beautiful, sensual, eclectic, intelligent, muse... She was a shining star during the golden age of Italian cinema. She is a legendary figure who served as example for generations of young filmmakers. Monica Vitti’s story is the story of Italian cinema; her life is inextricably linked to the medium. This documentary shows the sheer physicality of her acting; her visceral style which demanded that everything, personality defects included, was integrated into her unique performances.

In Nevada’s remote Thacker Pass, a fight for our future is playing out between local Indigenous tribes and powerful state and corporate entities hellbent on mining the lithium beneath their land. Vancouver-based Lithium Americas is developing a massive lithium mine at Thacker Pass, but for more than two years several local tribes and environmental organizations have tried to block or delay the mine in the courts and through direct action.

Making The Flash: Worlds Collide