In Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, the Vida/Sida Cacica Pageant brings together members of the Puerto Rican community to celebrate its transgender participants. I Am The Queen follows Bianca, Julissa and Jolizza as they prepare for the pageant under the guidance of Ginger Valdez, an experienced transgender from the neighborhood. These trans women share stories of their transition, their relatives’ varying reactions, and how they find support from within the community. Family dynamics, cultural heritage, and personal identity all play a part in how the contestants face the daily struggle that comes from being true to themselves.
A wabi sabi summer in Japan: Observing that which is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete produces a series of visual haiku in teeming street life; Bodies in emotion, and leafprints in the mud.
Internationally known as 'The Live Music Capital of the World,' Austin's music culture has led it to become one of the world's most sought-after destinations. As nearly two dozen high-rises pop up throughout the city amidst an economic downfall, how does the working musician get along? This lyrical documentary provides a telescopic view into the lives of Austin's vibrant young musicians as they grapple with questions of artistic integrity, commercialism, experimentation, and the future of their beloved city. Echotone is a cultural portrait of the modern American city examined through the lyrics and lens of its creative class.
Bahia Benmahmoud, a free-spirited young woman, has a particular way of seeing political engagement, as she doesn't hesitate to sleep with those who don't agree with her to convert them to her cause - which is a lot of people, as all right-leaning people are concerned. Generally, it works pretty well. Until the day she meets Arthur Martin, a discreet forty-something who doesn't like taking risks. She imagines that with a name like that, he's got to be slightly fascist. But names are deceitful and appearances deceiving.
The true story of Saartje Baartman, a black South African worker who moves to London with her master in the early 19th century. Although she dreams of being an artist, once in Europe she is exploited as a sideshow attraction due to her large buttocks and genitalia.
Wu-Tang Saga is the story of the music super group the Wu-Tang Clan told by Cappadonna, chronicling over 9 concerts, a trip to Shaolin aka Staten Island, photoshoots, and the 5 percent philosophies. There's also many exclusive hip hop freestyles, as Cappadonna takes you inside the music business first hand. The first Wu-tang documentary to be entirely narrated by a Wu-Tang member, this is truly an epic Wu-Tang experience.
Window on Your Present is Cinqué Lee's first feature film, which he wrote and directed in the late 1980s. The film takes place in a world where color and love do not exist. The people who live in this dreary world have nothing to live for and often end up taking their own lives. However, two unlikely lovers discovery that there is something else that is special that exists outside of their horrid world.
A modern, gothic tale of crime and redemption about an aging police officer from a small Ontario Mennonite town who hides a violent past until a local murder upsets the calm of his newly reformed life.
Redheaded teen Remy is bullied by his soccer teammates and drawn into fights with his younger sister and mother in their cramped apartment. After a flare-up of domestic violence, he flees home and is tracked down by a bitter guidance counselor, Patrick, also a redhead. Patrick looks upon Remy’s sullen insolence with both sympathy and disdain and decides to toughen him up...
In Altitude Falling it's the year 2029, and everyone has been injected with a chip that is used to track people's movements, jobs and political memberships. Greg helped invent it, but now he's in the mountains living a quiet life...that is until he meets, and falls in love with, the adorable, and very young, Danny.
Shot on location in New York City and starring an ensemble cast of New York City Ballet dancers, NY Export: Opus Jazz takes Jerome Robbins‘ 1958 “ballet in sneakers” and reimagines it for a new generation in this scripted adaptation. After winning an Audience Award at the 2010 South by Southwest Film Festival, the film aired nationally on PBS’ Great Performances series and was nominated for the Rose d’Or Award.
On a summer break from college, Ivy, a young epileptic woman, struggles to balance her feelings for her fledgling boyfriend while her friend Al crashes with her for the season.
Inspired by the short stories of Julio Cortázar, Lynne Sachs creates an experimental narrative about a group of girls on the verge of adolescence. While their lives are blissful and full of play, the political and social unrest of contemporary Argentina begins to invade their idyllic existence. Sachs’ brilliant mixture of film formats complements the shifts in mood from innocent amusement to protest
Recognized as Uganda’s first action film, Who Killed Captain Alex? is about the aftermath of a police raid in Kampala in which a police captain is killed.
A glimpse at the life of French singer Serge Gainsbourg, from growing up in 1940s Nazi-occupied Paris through his successful song-writing years in the 1960s to his death in 1991 at the age of 62.
Lynne Sachs pays homage to Walter Benjamin’s essay "The Task of the Translator" through three studies of the human body. First, she listens to the musings of a wartime doctor grappling with the task of a kind-of cosmetic surgery for corpses. Second, she witnesses a group of Classics scholars confronted with the haunting yet whimsical task of translating a newspaper article on Iraqi burial rituals into Latin. Finally, she turns to a radio news report on human remains.