Describing herself as a 'street queen,' Johnson was a legendary fixture in New York City’s gay ghetto and a tireless voice for LGBT pride since the days of Stonewall, who along with fellow trans icon Sylvia Rivera, founded Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), a trans activist group based in the heart of NYC’s Greenwich Village. Her death in 1992 was declared a suicide by the NYPD, but friends never accepted that version of events. Structured as a whodunit, with activist Victoria Cruz cast as detective and audience surrogate, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson celebrates the lasting political legacy of Johnson, while seeking to finally solve the mystery of her unexplained death.
When Sarah accidentally proposes to her girlfriend in Provincetown, the mixup turns their loving relationship into a minefield of marital exploration.
In the early nineties, before the massive gentrification of many of New York's then slums, several young people from very disparate backgrounds left their broken homes and ventured onto the brutal streets of the city. United by their love of skateboarding, they formed a family and built a unique lifestyle that eventually inspired Kids, a groundbreaking and outrageous film directed by photographer Larry Clark and released in 1995.
THE STORY WON’T DIE, from Award-winning filmmaker David Henry Gerson, is an inspiring, timely look at a young generation of Syrian artists who use their work to protest and process what is currently the world’s largest and longest ongoing displacement of people since WWII. The film is produced by Sundance Award-winner Odessa Rae (Navalny). Rapper Abu Hajar, together with other creative personalities of the Syrian uprising, a post-Rock musician (Anas Maghrebi), members of the first all-female Syrian rock band (Bahila Hijazi + Lynn Mayya), break-dancer (Bboy Shadow), choreographer (Medhat Aldaabal), and visual artists (Tammam Azzam, Omar Imam + Diala Brisly), use their art to rise in revolution and endure in exile in this new documentary reflecting on a battle for peace, justice and freedom of expression. It is an uplifting and humanizing look at what it means to be a refugee in today’s world and offers inspiring and hopeful vantages on a creative response to the chaos of war.
Charismatic and resourceful, seducer and daredevil, Jean-Paul Belmondo has always played his roles as he lived, at a thousand miles an hour. He had only one passion: to entertain the public with his smile, his naturalness, his energy, his stunts. But contrary to appearances, his destiny was full of pitfalls. This film lifts the veil on a founding childhood that allowed him to overcome many obstacles throughout his life thanks to the tutelary figures of his father and mother. Told from the inside with the help of his autobiography, interviews and unpublished archives, this epic story traces the career of this turbulent young actor who launched the New Wave in Breathless before becoming the popular Bebel, an indestructible and provocative vigilante. From film to film, this documentary paints an intimate portrait of a man who built himself up to reach the top: his triumphs but also his trials, his doubts, his secrets, his angers, his clowning, his disappointments or his personal dramas.
Reporter Clay Pigeon interviews New Yorkers in October, 2008.
Les chiens-loups
A powerful portrait of Africa's most widely acclaimed contemporary artist El Anatsui. It gives an insider's view of the artist's practice, the ingenious steps and thousands of hours of labor that convert used bottle tops into huge, opulent wall hangings.
Blind Skateboard's 2nd video since the release of the 1991 film "Video Days"
This documentary brings alive a remarkable artist’s passionate journey through a turbulent century. Both epic and surprisingly intimate, the film presents a classic American immigrant saga, an inspiring search for artistic independence, and a great romance. Along the way, Biberman's growing commitment to social justice and struggle against McCarthy-era repression (his brother, director Herbert Biberman, went to prison as one of The Hollywood Ten) combine with his efforts to create both a loving family life and a groundbreaking body of work. With its grand scope, rich personalities, and vast array of breathtaking artwork, Brush With Life connects us in a deeply personal way to a brilliant artist who lived by the same high standards he set for his paintings.
Rave Culture is one of Britain’s great cultural exports, but after its first wave in the late eighties and early nineties, it was soon forced into the underground by stringent new laws and superclubs. But forward 25 years into in the midst of a nationwide purge on the nation’s nightlife, where nearly half of all British clubs have shut down in the last decade, and a new kind of scene has emerged. Clive Martin investigates this 21st century version of Rave, where young people break into disused spaces with the help of bolt-cutters and complicated squatting laws, to suck on balloons and go hard into the early morning. But with the police using increasingly extreme tactics to clamp down on these parties, and more than one fatality causing nationwide media panic, can the scene survive?
Adolf Hitler's Nazi megalomania knew no limits. The most daring of his plans World War II involved German fighter planes crashing into Manhattan's skyscrapers as living bombs, like the Japanese kamikazes. Hitler understood the huge symbolic power of Manhattan's skyscrapers. He believed suicide bombing would have a devastating psychological impact on the American people and the U.S. war effort.
Michael Cockerell sheds new light on the tragi-comedy of the 1970s by focusing on some of its most controversial characters. With fresh filming and new interviews, along with a treasure trove of rare archive, the film presents the inside story of giant personalities who make today's public figures look sadly dull in comparison. The well-known journalist revisits some of his films on the big characters who helped shaped the 1970s in Britain. Both tragic and comic, it highlights just how much our world has changed in four decades.
Alma W. Thomas lived a life of firsts: the first Fine Arts graduate of Howard University (1924), the first Black woman to mount a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1972), and the first Black woman to have her paintings exhibited in the White House (2009). Yet she did not receive national attention until she was 80.
A documentary about the confluence of Christianity and mixed martial arts, including ministries which train fighters. The film follows several pastors and popular fighters in their quest to reconcile their faith with a sport that many consider violent and barbaric. Faith is tried and questions are raised. Can you really love your neighbor as yourself and then punch him in the face?
This award-winning, thrilling story is about a group of discarded kids who revolutionized skateboarding and shaped the attitude and culture of modern day extreme sports. Featuring old skool skating footage, exclusive interviews and a blistering rock soundtrack, DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS captures the rise of the Zephyr skateboarding team from Venice's Dogtown, a tough "locals only" beach with a legacy of outlaw surfing.
C1RCA Footwear presents it's full length video with team members Adrian Lopez, Jon Allie, Colt Cannon, Peter Ramondetta, and others.
The documentary accompanies Irish-born artist Sean Scully as he works on his piece “Grey Wolf”.
A documentary that follows the life of photographer Daido Moriyama in the present, which has never been revealed before. Even though his charismatic presence has reigned over the world of photography since the late 60’s, his true persona had been hidden behind a veil of mystery, since he had refused any major appearances in front of any media in the past. Follow the charismatic photographer Daido Moriyama as he takes his first digital photos and observe his style of quick snapshots without looking in the finder. His stark and contrasting black and white images symbolize his fervent lifestyle.
Taking its lead from French artists like Renoir and Monet, the American impressionist movement followed its own path which over a forty-year period reveals as much about America as a nation as it does about its art as a creative power-house. It’s a story closely tied to a love of gardens and a desire to preserve nature in a rapidly urbanizing nation. Travelling to studios, gardens and iconic locations throughout the United States, UK and France, this mesmerising film is a feast for the eyes. The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism features the sell-out exhibition The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887–1920 that began at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and ended at the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut.