Against the Grain

This short documentary chronicles the culture and arts of Cambodian Americans and the Lowell, MA community through the eyes of Sokhary Chau, the first Cambodian American Mayor in the United States. Chau immigrated to the U.S. at seven years old to escape the Khmer Rouge genocide. Through this unique story that showcases the best of Lowell—immigrant success, assimilation, history, and the development of the arts—we see a man born into a war-torn country who comes to America to be a first-in-the-nation leader.

Family farmers in southwest France practice an ancestral way of life under threat in a world increasingly dominated by large-scale industrial agriculture.

A new documentary film revisits the golden age of kung fu stuntmen and action directors in Hong Kong during the 1960s-'80s, exploring their pain and struggles. The documentary is a tribute to kung fu stuntmen. “They risked their lives for stunts,” said kung fu choreographer Yuen Bin. In their heyday, these stuntmen and choreographers presented the best, most creative and most complicated kung fu fight sequences anywhere in the world, creating stunts that looked seemingly impossible.

Mark and Dan Jury document the gradual demise of a community nestled within the Cuyahoga National Recreation Area between Akron and Cleveland, Ohio, as the National Park Service works to acquire the land of ~500 residents in order to establish a National Park. After initially being told only a handful of houses would be taken, residents are shocked by hundreds of homes and businesses being bought up, boarded up, and posted No Trespassing - and by the homes of the politically connected being spared. Significant portions of this film appeared in the PBS FRONTLINE episode For the Good of All.

Two iconic British buildings - the Wellington Rooms in Liverpool and the Coal Exchange in Cardiff - are threatened with demolition and Nick Broomfield is on the case.

Fulton and Pepe's 2000 documentary captures Terry Gilliam's attempt to get The Man Who Killed Don Quixote off the ground. Back injuries, freakish storms, and more zoom in to sabotage the project.

Díky, pane Kříženecký

The story of Italian cinema under Fascism, a sophisticated film industry built around the founding of the Cinecittà studios and the successful birth of a domestic star system, populated by very peculiar artists among whom stood out several beautiful, magnetic, special actresses; a dark story of war, drugs, sex, censorship and tragedy.

Argentinian film historians find a complete print of Fritz Lang's “Metropolis” (1927) at Buenos Aires Film Museum and take it to Germany for its restoration.

Thierno Souleymane Diallo sets out with his camera in search of the birth of filmmaking in Guinea. Charming and determined, he traces his country’s film heritage and history and reveals the importance of film archives.

The order comes in the summer of 1941 from propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels himself: The best animators are summoned to Berlin. Their task: Producing feature-length cartoons in ‘Disney-Quality’ with the newly founded ‘Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH’. To get trained, the Disney movie “Snow White” is re-traced frame by frame. After the final victory, one new feature-length production of quality shall be released every year from 1947 onwards. – that is the plan. Only in 1943, the first production is completed: “Armer Hansi” a 17-minute-long colour movie, realized with the effortful Multiplane-technology. The second film by the ‘Deutsche Zeichenfilm’ is only completed in 1946 – by DEFA. In the territories occupied by Germany, cartoons are produced as well, sometimes harmless ones, sometimes propagandistic ones. With excerpts from animated movies, life-action film documents, and witness reports by contemporaries, this documentary draws a picture of the cartoon production in the third Reich.

A documentary about Fassbinder and the early years of the legendary Antiteater, the group he was a member/leader of. You can here see and hear some of the actors he was going to use in his movies for the next years. The movie shows rehearsals for his play "The Coffeehouse," which also became a television movie, and you can watch unique footage from the 19th Film Festival in Berlin (1969) where "Love is Colder Than Death" was shown. As told in this documentary, his first feature movie was given a cold shoulder by many of the journalists and visitors at the festival. You can in "End of the Commune" watch Fassbinder and actor Ulli Lommel walk out on stage after the opening of "Love is Colder Than Death,” while a man in the audience is shouting "Out with the director!” In this documentary, Fassbinder also talks a lot about his father, who was a respectable doctor.

E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Steven Spielberg's endearing movie released in 1982, achieved the triple feat of bringing to life one of the most iconic characters in pop culture, revolutionizing science fiction cinema and establishing itself as one of the highest-grossing family movies in the history of cinema, capable of making the whole world laugh and cry.

A tribute to Italian filmmaker Sergio Corbucci (1926-90), presented by American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.

A comprehensive and fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the restoration process of restoring 3-strip Cinerama for the 1962 film "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm".

Over 90 percent of the available lands in the Greater Chaco region of the Southwest have already been leased for oil and gas extraction. Witness the Indigenous-led work to protect the remaining lands that are untouched by oil and gas, as well as the health and well-being of communities surrounded by these extractive industries.

Robert Altman's life and career contained multitudes. This father of American independent cinema left an indelible mark, not merely on the evolution of his art form, but also on the western zeitgeist. With its use of rare interviews, representative film clips, archival images, and musings from his family and most recognizable collaborators, Altman is a dynamic and heartfelt mediation on an artist whose expression, passion and appetite knew few bounds.

The Death of 'Superman Lives': What Happened? feature film documents the process of development of the ill fated "Superman Lives" movie, that was to be directed by Tim Burton and star Nicolas Cage as the man of steel himself, Superman. The project went through years of development before the plug was pulled, and this documentary interviews the major filmmakers: Kevin Smith, Tim Burton, Jon Peters, Dan Gilroy, Colleen Atwood, Lorenzo di Bonaventura and many many more.

The greatness, fall and renaissance of Hammer, the flagship company of British popular cinema, mainly from 1955 to 1968. Tortured women and sadistic monsters populated oppressive scenarios in provocative productions that shocked censorship and disgusted critics but fascinated the public. Movies in which horror was shown in offensive colors: dreadful stories, told without prejudices, that offered fear, blood, sex and stunning performances.

Berlanga, fanáticamente contradictorio