The careers of D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Charlie Chaplin are chronicled culminating in the formation of United Artists and 1919.
From Go Fish to Paris is Burning to The Watermelon Woman, this festival favorite goes behind the scenes to reveal seven successful lesbian directors. These talented movie-makers enlighten and entertain as they explore their sexual identity, growing up gay, inspirations and techniques, Hollywood vs. Indie, and of course, love and sex, onscreen and off. The conversations are intimate, the topics unlimited, and the clips from their work enthralling! Featuring Cheryl Dunye, Rose Troche, Jennie Livingston, Monika Treut, Maria Maggenti, Su Friedrich and Heather MacDonald.
A look at the confluence of the Red Scare, McCarthyism, and blacklists with the post-war activism by African Americans seeking more and better roles on radio, television, and stage. It begins in Harlem, measures the impact of Paul Robeson and the campaign to bring him down, looks at the role of HUAC, J. Edgar Hoover and of journalists such as Ed Sullivan, and ends with a tribute to Canada Lee. Throughout are interviews with men and women who were there, including Dick Campbell of the Rose McLendon Players and Fredrick O'Neal of the American Negro Theatre. In the 1940s and 1950s, anti-Communism was one more tool to maintain Jim Crow and to keep down African-Americans.
Tenor saxophone master Sonny Rollins has long been hailed as one of the most important artists in jazz history, and still, today, he is viewed as the greatest living jazz improviser. In 1986, filmmaker Robert Mugge produced Saxophone Colossus, a feature-length portrait of Rollins, named after one of his most celebrated albums.
Narrated by Rod Steiger, this documentary examines the frightful conventions from which the modern-day horror movie has evolved, featuring clips from classics like Dante's Inferno and Leaves from Satan's Book.
Focusing directly on the world of commercial images, Sut Jhally asks some basic questions about the cultural messages emanating from this market-based view of the world: Do our present arrangements deliver what they claim -- happiness and satisfaction? Can we think about our collective as well as our private interests? And, can we think long-term as well as short-term?
Contained inside this box are the spirits of the Dark Carnival. To watch this video is to unleash ICP's voodoo magic into your life forever, A brave camera crew follows ICP and their deranged fans throughout Detroit and all across the country to try to capture some of the deadly insanity that surrounds ICP on film. This Shockumentary is the best mortal man can do to explain what happens in the bizarre and twisted world of ICP. With never-seen-before UNCENSORED and UNEDITED ICP interviews, concert footage and naked chicks, this video documents the true hardcore reality about the most hated band in the world: The Insane Clown Posse.
"Explores the 400-year era of the transatlantic slave trade, when millions of Africans were kidnapped and shipped to the Americas. Features interviews with scholars, oral histories and a dramatic recreation of the Middle Passage" (The History Channel).
Featuring over 40 minutes of vintage performances by the world's greatest gospel singer, this is Mahalia at her most powerful, singing the beloved songs of the holiday season.Originally intended as musical vignettes for CBS's 1960-61 television season, this beautiful footage has been digitally remastered for optimum sound and picture quality form the original 16mm Kinescopes.
George Hickenlooper filmed five pages (two scenes) from Orson Welles' screenplay of "The Big Brass Ring" in 1997 in the hope of attracting interest in the project. The feature film version was released in 1999.
Three decades after German-American pilot Dieter Dengler was shot down over Laos, he returns to the places where he was held prisoner during the early years of the Vietnam War. Accompanied by director Werner Herzog, Dengler describes in unusually candid detail his captivity, the friendships he made, and his daring escape. Not willing to stop there, Herzog even persuades his subject to re-enact certain tortures, with the help of some willing local villagers.
The tragic story of the immortal artist whose works are among the world's most treasured masterpieces today, but who was almost completely ignored in his own lifetime.
A film scrapbook, images, phrases from our past, hiding their meanings behind veils. Let's lift those veils, one by one, to find how images, at one time seeming innocent, have revealed, after decades, to have homosexual overtones.
Jim Charlesworth, director of Princeton University's Dead Sea Scrolls Project believes that a large number of scrolls have yet to come to light. The programme is about his quest to track them down, an undertaking not without risks. The cliffs of Qumran still attract scroll hunters with non-academic motives - the scrolls are much sought after by private collectors and the shady figures of the black market who supply them.
The non-profit organization, Colors United, teaches drama to a group of inner city kids. The culmination of the theater education is a musical called Watts Side Story.
In an era of antifeminist backlash, this articulate documentary by the makers of Thank God I’m a Lesbian forcefully reminds us that the revolution continues. Powerful interviews with feminist leaders including bell hooks, Gloria Steinem, and Urvsahi Vaid are intercut with documentary sequences to engagingly explore the past and present status of the women’s movement. Discussing the unique contributions of second wave feminism, they explore their racial, economic and ideological differences and shared vision of achieving equality for women. Anessential component of women’s studies curricula, My Feminism introduces feminism’s key themeswhile exposing the cultural fears underlying lesbian baiting, backlash, and political extremism.
Harrod Blank, who took us into the world of art cars with his epic first film, Wild Wheels, now focuses more in-depth on a few select art vehicles, the Grass Bus, the Hamburger Harley, and the Camera Van. As with his previous film, and the following one (Automorphosis) Blank takes a dauntless look at American car culture.