Using text from Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes and ancient Aztec and Mayan poetry, viewers are lead on a visual journey through this country's rich and varied past and present. Stunning images and a dramatic musical score by Daniel Valdez create a vivid, insightful portrait of the Mexican people and their culture
A look at the first years of Pixar Animation Studios - from the success of "Toy Story" and Pixar's promotion of talented people, to the building of its East Bay campus, the company's relationship with Disney, and its remarkable initial string of eight hits. The contributions of John Lasseter, Ed Catmull and Steve Jobs are profiled. The decline of two-dimensional animation is chronicled as three-dimensional animation rises. Hard work and creativity seem to share the screen in equal proportions.
Travel alongside the astronauts as they deploy and repair the Hubble Space Telescope, soar above Venus and Mars, and find proof of new planets and the possibility of other life forming around distant stars.
Documentary filmmaker Amy Berg investigates the life of 30-year pedophile Father Oliver O'Grady and exposes the corruption inside the Catholic Church that allowed him to abuse countless children. Victims' stories and a disturbing interview with O'Grady offer a view into the troubled mind of the spiritual leader who moved from parish to parish gaining trust ... all the while betraying so many.
A documentary exploring the rise and fall of 80s skateboard legend Mark "Gator" Rogowski.
A sensitive portrait of Sabine Bonnaire, the autistic sister of the french actress Sandrine Bonnaire.
This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with New York Women in Film & Television in 2004.
Documentary about the history of the bateyes, informal settlements surrounding the mills to house workers. Throughout the film, Sara Gómez recovers the political and cultural relevance of black migrants.
Thirteen European directors explore the theme of Sarajevo; what this city has represented in European history over the past hundred years, and what Sarajevo stands for today in Europe. These eminent filmmakers of different generations and origins offer exceptional singular styles and visions.
Director Jean-Luc Godard reflects in this movie about his place in film history, the interaction of film industry and film as art, as well as the act of creating art.
Unprecedented access to Muhammad Ali's personal archive of "audio journals" as well as interviews and testimonials from his inner circle of family and friends are used to tell the legend's life story.
Documentary chronicling the government relocation of 10,000 Navajo Indians in Arizona.
Behind the closed doors of the Copenhagen-based women's shelter, the women and children are slowly recovering after having escaped domestic violence. Day by day the women are processing their traumas, building confidence and slowly understanding what it takes to break the cycle of violence.
With one million immigrants making their home in the U.S. annually, immigrant students are entering American public schools in record numbers. Welcome to South Portland, Maine explores a demographic shift through the lives of young women attending high school in what is considered the whitest state in America - Maine. The film's 14 teen protagonists-from Somalia, the Congo, Vietnam, Jamaica, and southern Maine-are enrolled in a hip hop, health and culture program during the most anti-immigrant period in recent U.S. history. The 2016 presidential race and recent terrorist attacks have fueled an atmosphere of mistrust, fear, and violence against recent immigrants. Viewers will watch as the girls relate to one another's hopes and fears, and manage to build trust as the charged events unfold around them.
Filmmaker Kimberly Reed returns home for her high school reunion, ready to reintroduce herself to the small town as a transgender woman and hoping for reconciliation with her long-estranged adopted brother Marc. Things are complicated by the shocking revelation that Marc may be the grandson of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth, forcing Kim and her family to explore questions of sexual orientation, identity, severe trauma and love.
David Suchet, TV's Poirot, has spent more of his life acting out the plots and dramas created by Agatha Christie than anyone else in the world. Suchet is embarking on a journey to learn more about the woman who created Poirot and whose books remain outsold only by Shakespeare and the Bible. Suchet's journey takes him to the places Christie lived, the landscapes that inspired her and to meetings with people who knew the woman behind the fame and those inspired by her extraordinary legacy. He explores the close links between Christie's extraordinary life and her work and discovers what it was about the woman from a small seaside town that allowed her to become the best-selling murder mystery writer in history.
A 15-year-old girl's transformation from conservative Southern Baptist to liberal Christian and ardent feminist parallels her fight for sex education and gay rights in Lubbock, Texas.
An uplifting feature documentary highlighting the transformative power of art and the beauty of the human spirit. Top-selling contemporary artist Vik Muniz takes us on an emotional journey from Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, to the heights of international art stardom. Vik collaborates with the brilliant catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, true Shakespearean characters who live and work in the garbage quoting Machiavelli and showing us how to recycle ourselves.
This soulful documentary illuminates the hell-and- back life of the late, great L.A. alto sax legend Frank Morgan. A prodigy who was acclaimed as the natural heir to his bebop mentor, Charlie Parker, Morgan derailed his career with heroin, which led him into a life of crime. After decades in prison, he made an astonishing comeback, leaving behind recordings of deep, melancholy beauty. Framed by a tribute concert held in San Quentin, where Morgan’s 19-year-old Asian-American protégé, Grace Kelly, performs a heart-stopping version of “Over the Rainbow,” N.C. Heikin’s film is filled with revealing interviews with the colleagues, lovers, family and wives who accompanied Morgan on his long and rocky journey to redemption.
Commissioned by French television, this is a short documentary on the neo-classical statues found throughout Paris, predominantly on the walls of buildings, holding up windows, roofs etc.