Butterfly Dance

Swinging and twirling Dorothy Toy Fong the legendary tap dancer is still exciting at 99 years old. Award-winning reporter Rick Quan traces Fong’s journey as a famous duo with Paul Wing and exciting run with her Oriental Showgirl group. Fong’s wondrous spirit dances off the screen and into your heart.

Scientists visit the remote surface and undersea locations to study various species of whales in their natural habitat.

Film historians, and survivors from the nearly 30-year struggle to bring sound to motion pictures take the audience from the early failed attempts by scientists and inventors, to the triumph of the talkies.

Pina Bausch created and performed Café Müller for her dance company Tanztheater Wuppertal. The dance was inspired by and based on her childhood memories of watching her father work at his café in Germany during and immediately following World War II. In this silent style featurette, Bausch shows a restaurant after closing, in which the ghosts of the departed customers stumble blindly into walls and onto chairs but fail to find one another.

From the rains of Japan, through threats of arrest for 'public indecency' in Canada, and a birthday tribute to her father in Detroit, this documentary follows Madonna on her 1990 'Blond Ambition' concert tour. Filmed in black and white, with the concert pieces in glittering MTV color, it is an intimate look at the work of the icon, from a prayer circle before each performance to bed games with the dance troupe afterwards.

For two hundred years, the Shakers have been America's most successful utopian society. While seeking harmony, order and perfection in every aspect of their lives, they built minimalistic furniture and buildings that influenced modern design. The Shakers wrote songs of exquisite beauty and danced to the point of ecstasy during their religious meetings. Inspired by this music and dance, choreographer Tero Saarinen created Borrowed Light, a dance piece about communal life and individual sacrifice. Shot in Finland and the United States, featuring interviews and excerpts from Borrowed Light, this documentary explore the cultural legacy of this religious group devoted to creating heaven on earth.

A testimony to the performance of ritual dances. Although they were performed only during the so-called “unbaptized days”, the 12 days between Christmas and Epiphany in the Orthodox Christianity, these dances are associated by some researchers with the Roman rosaries, the cult of the dead. Ritual clothing and the use of wooden swords to disperse the demons are important props in the dances that are believed to protect the folks from temptations and demons until they are baptized.

Explore the extraordinary hidden world of insects, where a leaf weighs more than a car, rain drops feel like exploding hand grenades and a blade of grass soars like a skyscraper. Shot on location in the Borneo rainforest, Bugs! brings the beautiful and dangerous universe of its tiny stars up close and personal with cutting-edge technology that magnifies them up to 250,000 times their normal size.

The film "Hurricane on the Bayou" is about the wetlands of Louisiana before and after Hurricane Katrina.

Australia: Land Beyond Time takes viewers on a breathtaking journey back in time to witness the birth and evolution of a mysterious land that harbors remnants of Earth's earliest life and many of it's strangest creatures that exist nowhere else on the planet.

A documentary about a 15-day river-rafting trip on the Colorado River aimed at highlighting water conservation issues.

This film shows how far we have come since the cold-war days of the 50s and 60s. Back then the Russians were our "enemies". And to them the Americans were their "enemies" who couldn't be trusted. Somewhere in all this a young girl in Oklahoma named Shannon set her sights on becoming one of those space explorers, even though she was told "girls can't do that." But she did.

Straight Up: Helicopters in Action will take audiences on a series of aerial adventures. Fly along with skilled helicopter crews as they carry out sea and mountain rescues, apprehend drug smugglers, repair high voltage lines, save endangered animals, deliver humanitarian aid, and undertake a reconnaissance mission. Learn how helicopters are flown.

A look at the great wolf debate with comments and views from people on both sides. It also contains footage of Natives dressing up & doing tribal dances. The link between wolves, bison, and Native Americans; as well as white man's reasoning behind their determination to eliminate bison and wolves from the landscape.

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

Brenda Way, founder and artistic director of ODC, is a recipient of the San Francisco Foundation Community Awards "for creating a community hub through dance. She built the largest, most comprehensive contemporary dance center in the nation, and through it she inspires dancers and audiences, cultivates artists, and engages the community. Brenda is a choreographer, writer, and community activist who strengthens our region's cultural connections." - San Francisco Foundation

A comedic docu-essay looking at the legacy of "Fred Ott's Sneeze," one of the first films ever made. Official selection of The Indie Gathering International Film Festival.

The senior year of a girls’ high school step team in inner-city Baltimore is documented, as they try to become the first in their families to attend college. The girls strive to make their dancing a success against the backdrop of social unrest in their troubled city.

Warsaw's Central Railway Station. 'Someone has fallen asleep, someone's waiting for somebody else. Maybe they'll come, maybe they won't. The film is about people looking for something.

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.