The Pony Express was one of the most legendary of the frontier trails in the American West. Riding for the Pony Express was a dangerous job. No one has an exact amount of riders that lost their life while delivering the mail. This short film was filmed on the actual Pony Express trail used over 150 years ago.
To help Francis Hallé in his fight to save the last tropical forests, a documentary filmmaker with a passion for nature decides to make his first film: "The Botanist", an ecological thriller with Leonardo DiCaprio. He traces his path with malice, obstinacy, and discovers, with candor, the arcana of the seventh art. Even if he never gives up, will his film ever exist?
Bill Moyers takes a piercing look at how global economic changes are destroying the lives and livelihoods of hardworking Americans. The documentary follows several individuals and their families in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as they fight to make ends meet in the “new economy.” In sheer numbers, more jobs were created than lost in America during the last decade, but a look behind those numbers reveals a shortage of jobs that pay enough to support a family. The program intimately portrays the lives of workers and their families as they struggle to make it in today’s job market.
Jeff Koons is a MOCA commissioned mini-documentary on the career of artist Jeff Koons, directed by Oscar Boyson.
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.
El conserje
A cheap, powerful drug emerges during a recession, igniting a moral panic fueled by racism. Explore the complex history of crack in the 1980s.
This short film reveals the inspiration, motivation and political challenges at San Francisco City Hall during the frantic days leading up to the first government-sanctioned same-sex marriage.
The Letter tells the true story of 11-year-old Andrè and his inspiration to pursue a ballet career.
In a robbery gone wrong, two women are forced to reckon with their values, livelihood, and relationship.
Fearless George thinks he’s the king of the famous West 4th Street basketball courts as he hustles civilians who pass by. It isn’t until he meets his match that his true character is revealed.
In summer 2003, when the heatwave hit in Europe, in Switzerland, the glacier below the Schnidejoch pass, released a mysterious object: a piece of a Neolithic quiver.
U.S.-based film professor Jamsheed Akrami talks to Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami in an inpromptu video interview, which offers a frank and funny view of Kiarostami rarely seen before.
Essentially a dizzying montage of quirky shots of legendary Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs and noted surrealist artist Brion Gysin, this nearly 20 minute avant-garde short features repeated articulations of such random things as "Hello," "Where are we now?," and "Look at that picture" instead of music or standard dialogue. The narrative is decidedly nonlinear and perplexing, with no discernible plot whatsoever as we see images of Gysin working on his paintings and calligraphic designs and Burroughs rummaging through draws, packing a suitcase, giving a young man a physical, making a call in a phone booth, and waiting on a platform for a subway train.
An Iranian man and a French woman stroll around the city of Isfahan, Iran and find that their love is mirrored perfectly in the architecture and mosaics of the city's mosques.
A look at Hammer’s progression from a back office in London’s Regent Street to its iconic status within the horror film genre. The company, started by comedian and businessman William Hinds in 1934, made films such as The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Quatermass Xperiment during the period for which it is best known, making stars out of the likes of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.
An experimental film of the group Throbbing Gristle in concert.
A film shot during the summer of 1968 in Oakland, California around the meetings organised by the Black Panthers Party to free Huey Newton, one of their leaders, and to turn his trial into a political debate. They tried and succeeded in catching America’s attention.
George Lucas's senior project at the University of Southern California in 1966. It was named for the lap time of the Lotus 23 race car that was the subject of the film. It is a nonstory visual tone poem depicting the imagery of a car going at full speed, and featuring the car's engine as the primary sound element. Shot on 16mm color film with a 14 man student crew, it was filmed at Willow Springs Raceway, north of Los Angeles, CA. The Lotus 23 was driven by Pete Brock.
After a look at some strange creatures, the narrator and camera take us to the Chaco forest, on the borders of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil, where a vampire bat lives, desmodus rotondus, attacking wildlife and domesticated creatures, killing small ones by draining all their blood and killing large ones by leaving a parasite in their bloodstream. Four inches long, with a 12-inch wingspread, we see it walk, approach a victim, pull out a patch of fur large enough for it to engage its teeth, then lap six or seven ounces of blood. Its saliva may be an anesthetic keeping its victims from waking. A stub nose and harelip contribute to its efficiency and its hideous look.