Life in Hot, Dry Lands (California)

Riding Giants is story about big wave surfers who have become heroes and legends in their sport. Directed by the skateboard guru Stacy Peralta.

Two unhoused men turned community leaders— John and LaMonté —organize their neighbors in the face of displacement, addiction, and a failing social system.

Footage of Devil's Gate Dam insterspersed with text occultist text by Jack Parsons, co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who some believe opened a portal for dark energy nearby.

Isolated in Mexican South Baja California desert, exciting and fragile, rancher´s life is showed by amazing as unknown characters.

Vans Skateboarding is proud to present Lizzie, a short 35mm film directed by renowned filmmaker Greg Hunt. Unveiling a personal, intimate account of Lizzie Armanto beyond her skateboarding accolades and identity as one of the world’s most talented skateboarders, the film is the first to explore Lizzie’s life through the lens of those closest to her, including her mother, husband as well as skate legend Tony Hawk.

Against the backdrop of deserted spaces, a filmmaker explores his abandoned Zodiac Killer documentary, delving into the true crime genre's inner workings at a saturation point.

Pictures Southern California as the area in America most like the Mediterranean lands in climate. Shows that the two areas produce similar crops.

High up in the Northern California mountains there is a place, where not too many get to visit. Its called - The Emerald Triangle, real mecca of Americas cannabis game. Follow a ukrainian journalist Luka on a journey that explores lifes of real growers and hustlers and the dangers that come with it.

A filmmaker moves his family cross-country only to arrive in their new city, Redding, California, as a fire tornado rips through neighborhoods during the deadly 2018 Carr Fire. As the smoke clears he sets out to investigate several heroic stories, discovering why people in Northern California are “Stronger Than Carr”.

When six teenage boys came together as a skateboarding team in the 1980s, they reinvented not only their chosen sport but themselves too – as they evolved from insecure outsiders to the most influential athletes in the field.

Questions of race, identity and heritage are explored through the lives of young American women growing up as adoptees from China. These four distinct individuals reflect on their experiences as members of transracial families.

In a contemporary reimagining of the American West, three young women - a snake hunter, a New York artist, and a rodeo queen - challenge the idea of who is permitted to be a cowgirl.

Footage of the eruption of Mt. Lassen in Northern California. Mt. Lassen erupted from 1914-1917, the last volcano in the Cascades to erupt prior to Mt. St. Helens. This footage was most likely taken in 1917 and is the oldest surviving footage of an American volcano erupting.

Designing with Nature provides a vivid account of a pivotal chapter in the architectural history of Northern California. Set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the documentary examines the work of several major architects who were influenced by Arts and Crafts ideals, as well as by the reformist ethos of the Progressive Era. These designers sought to create an architecture suited to the landscape, climate, and emerging culture of the region. Rejecting Victorian excess and the artificial separation of art and craft, they strove to create an organic architecture based on unified design and harmony with nature.

PURSUING BEAUTY: The Architecture of Bernard Maybeck tells the story of a 19th century romantic who used 20th century materials to create buildings that speak across time. The body of work that Maybeck created is remarkably diverse - by turns antique and modern, rustic and refined, theatrical and sublime. His projects reveal an original vision, a reverence for nature, a commitment to community, and a deep and abiding love of beauty. Over twenty of Maybeck's important works are featured in Pursuing Beauty, including his best known project, the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Also seen are Hearst Hall at the University of California; Wyntoon in Siskiyou County: the George Boke, Andrew Lawson, J.H. Senger, and Albert Schneider houses, all in Berkeley; the Samuel Goslinsky and Leon Roos houses in San Francisco; First Church of Christ Scientist in Berkeley; the Guy Hyde Chick House in Oakland; and several buildings at Principia College in Elsah, Illinois.

Thousands of participants in a San Francisco-based alternate reality game end up getting more than they bargained for. Told from the players’ perspectives, the film looks over the precipice at an emergent new art form where the real world and fictional narratives merge to create unforeseen and often unsettling consequences. Examining counter-culture, new religious movements and street art, this film takes the viewer on a journey into a secret underground world teeming just beneath the surface of everyday life.

Every Christmas, Bruce Mertz lights up the neighborhood with the 50,000 lights covering his house. For decades he's obsessively added to his display, creating beautiful, towering fixtures that people travel across the country to see. In this offbeat, touching portrait, we learn what drives him, and discover how a kid who grew up on a farm with no electricity became Mr. Christmas.

In prisons ruled by toxic masculinity, dancing is an absolute taboo. But at Lancaster’s A-Yard, near Los Angeles, a group of young men, willing to take a chance to be mocked in the yard, start a dance class led by French choreographer Dimitri Chamblas. This class quickly becomes an intoxicating escape from their grim reality so they decide to create a dance show. In this exceptional context, the inmates engage with overwhelming sincerity, evoking their childhood, ganglife, the crimes, the prison, and their desire for transformation. Beyond damaged lives and a prison system on the edge of the abyss, DANCING IN A-YARD explores redemption and the capacity of human beings to reinvent themselves, when given a chance. And more importantly, how art and introspection can help see the light.

This in-depth analysis explores the disconnect between policymakers and regular Californians, causing a mass exodus from the state. It's an essential resource for all Californians to understand what's happening.

David Hallyday