In a mountainous but extremely green landscape goats jump over the rocks and laughing children run after them. In this paradise on earth, nomadic families have found their temporary home. From one of these families comes a teenage girl, Shahnaz. The girl should be getting married soon, but her thoughts are focused on the world of literature.
Documentary about the Black Lives Matter movement.
Daisy Asquith investigates the mysterious world of children's entertainers.
One woman's campaign against extremism in her West Virginia mosque throws the community into turmoil, raising questions that cut to the heart of American Islam.
An independent documentary exploring the nature of identity, through the eyes of an adult trans-racial adoptee (Lucy Sheen). How being an adoptee affects and influences others like herself and what it means (if anything) to be both Chinese and British - if there is such a thing?
Welcome to Florence, Arizona: a cowboy town with a prison problem. Just 8,500 residents call the tiny community home—but over 17,000 inmates live there, housed in nine jails spread out over a sprawling industrial prison complex. The economic fate of the town’s inhabitants is inextricably linked with the prisons—and the townspeople are not necessarily happy about it. Director Andrea B. Scott follows four colorful characters whose lives are tied up with the prisons, including the town’s aspiring mayor, a retired correctional officer and speed shooter, a barber who longs for the town’s free-spirited cowboy days, and troubled teen Marcus, whose parents met through their prison careers. “Florence, Arizona” is a richly drawn, humorous look at a singular small town whose Wild West roots are still very much alive in its outlaw identity today. -TCFF database
In 2007 an indiepop music festival was born in the unlikeliest of settings - a heritage steam train site, Butterley Derbyshire. Bringing together passionate characters from two very distinct worlds this affectionate portrait is told from the point of view of the retired volunteers that run the locos who have "steam in their blood" and don't really know very much about "this indiepop music".
An intimate portrait of a man on the edge of society, filmed over the course of twenty years.
The Grand Rescue is a story about a rescue that became legend. In 1967, on the North Face of the Grand Teton, seven rescuers risked their lives to save a severely injured climber and his companion. The rescue took three harrowing days, pushed the team to the edge of their abilities, and cemented a lifelong bond.
The film focuses on the light and shadow playing on the walls of the Castro Camera Store, a location in Gus Van Sant’s Milk. The soundtrack features Harvey Milk himself, shortly after his election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977.
Naomi Kawase observes people in the city of Shibuya with curiosity and openness, drawing parallels between life and filmmaking and discovering her abilities as a filmmaker.
Celebrated filmmaker and photographer Cheryl Dunn turns her lens on the pioneers and masters of New York street photography. Dunn profiles artists spanning six decades, including Bruce Davidson, Mary Ellen Mark, Jill Freedman, Jeff Mermelstein and Martha Cooper, revealing that these shooters are as colourful and unique as the subjects they’ve relentlessly documented. Everybody Street explores the passion that compelled Freedman to spend years riding in squad cars during the most violent years in the city; Bruce Gilden’s drive to thrust his camera in people’s faces to capture a moment; and Martha Cooper’s dedication to chasing graffiti on passing subway cars in the Bronx. The film is a definitive look at the iconic visionaries of this often imitated art form.
In 1970, hundreds of hippies followed Stephen Gaskin on a journey from San Francisco to Tennessee, where they founded a legendary commune known as the Farm. Within this self-sustaining society based on non-violence, vegetarianism and respect for the earth, members willingly took a vow of poverty, lived in converted buses, grew their own food and home-delivered babies. Born and raised in this alternative community, filmmakers and sisters Rena and Nadine return for the first time since leaving in 1985. Finally ready to face the past after years of hiding their upbringing, they chart the rise and fall of America’s largest utopian socialist experiment and their own family tree. The nascent idealism of a community destroyed, in part, by its own success is reflected in the personal story of a family unit split apart by differences. American Commune finds inspiration in failure, humour in deprivation and, most surprisingly, that communal values are alive and well in the next generation.
Narrated by Oprah Winfrey, this is the moving and inspiring story of a disabled orphan who overcame poverty and prejudice to become a world hero after he rode a bicycle with one leg across the nation of Ghana.
The first film made by Jenny Gilbertson (nee Brown), with a second hand 16mm cine camera on which she taught herself the rudiments of photography and editing. She stayed with crofter friends in Shetland while shooting scenes through the changing seasons during 1930-1931. The intimacy she established with her hosts, who are the subjects of the film, clearly comes through.
'Nothing shall come between me and dancing'. Those are the words of 9-year-old Elsa Marianne after a night at the theatre. This is where the magic starts - and so does her fascinating story of a long, passionate and uncompromising life with ballet. Ballerina is a poetic dance documentary inspired by the life and career of world famous Swedish prima ballerina Elsa Marianne von Rosen - a life of magic, hardship, love and not least an unyielding urge to follow your dreams and your heart. No matter the price. Through new choreographed dance scenes with three professional contemporary dancers, a unique archival material with von Rosen (both still and video), a narrative inspired by her own autobiography 'Inte bara en dans på Rosor' and brand new recordings with the now 90 year-old dance legend, the film gives us a poetic peek into von Rosen's deeply passionate relationship to dancing - a passion that gave her life itself, but also almost took it away from her.
Masked in tattoos and armed with an indomitable spirit, Lucky Torres has forged a path all her own. Spanning five years, this intimate survival story delves deep into the fringes of NYC to reveal a life etched in wounds, longing, resilience and dreams.
The Forgotten Frontier (1931) is a documentary film about the Frontier Nursing Service, nurses on horseback, who traveled the back roads of the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States.
Ana and I is the story of a daughter's search for answers. As she confronts the mystery that surrounds the deaths of her sister and father, and the reasons for the sudden adoption of her two sisters, Primavera presents her enigmatic mother, Ana, a single parent who does whatever it takes to provide for her large family; the family that became the first Spanish equestrian champion vaulting team.
Based on photographs taken on the arrest of political prisoners during the Portuguese dictatorship (1926-1974), this documentary aims to convey the mechanisms by which a dictatorial regime sought to sustain its existence throughout 48 years.