MARY is based on the true life story of Mary MacKillop who in the 1860s began an order of nuns to teach poor Catholic children in rural Australia. When she refused to obey the local Bishop, she was ex-communicated. More than 100 years later, in 1995, she was beatified as Australia's first saint. The film follows her tumultuous journey.
This fascinating French documentary chronicles the reopening of the Zoology Hall in the Paris Museum of Natural History in 1993. It had been closed for almost thirty years and it took three years of hard work to restore it and the stuffed creatures within.
This Academy Award-nominated film takes a moving personal story, illuminates it with insight and humor, and makes it universal. In recounting her attempts to come to terms with her mother's advancing Alzheimer's disease, Deborah Hoffmann explores the relationship between mother and daughter, parent and child, and the tenacity of love.
The Devil Never Sleeps is a “whodunit” documentary about family secrets. Filmmaker Lourdes Portillo received a phone call informing her of the mysterious death of her wealthy Mexican uncle Oscar. Officially ruled a suicide, Portillo’s relatives claimed murder, offering several possible suspects including a business partner, a ranch hand, and Oscar’s young widow who stood to inherit everything. Traveling to Mexico, Portillo attempts to learn the truth about her powerful uncle. Using interviews, old snapshots and home movies, she finds a complicated web of family secrets, intrigue, rumor and betrayal that makes her enigmatic uncle’s murder seem ever more likely, yet ever more obscure. As the Mexican saying goes, “When evil is lurking, the devil never sleeps.”
Documentary about canine superstar Lassie, combining film clips, still photographs, home movies, archival footage and on-camera interviews with many figures involved with the Lassie films or television series.
See Yellowstone National Park: Grizzlies, geysers, rivers, canyons and, of course, moose. The history of Yellowstone National Park is vividly portrayed in this memorable film, from the Tukudika Tribe, the earliest known inhabitants, to the early explorers including John Colter, a member of the Lewis & Clark party. Also portrayed are Wilson Hunt, who deemed the west unfit for habitation, Father Francis Kuppens, a Jesuit priest in pursuit of native souls, and the Washburn Expedition, instrumental in establishing Yellowstone as America’s first national park.
HIGH SCHOOL II is a film about Central Park East Secondary School (CPESS), a successful alternative high school in New York's Spanish Harlem, 85-95% of whose graduates go on to four year colleges. The film illustrates the school's emphasis on the “Habits of Mind” program (weighing evidence; awareness of multiple points of view; seeing connections and relationships; speculating on possibilities; and assessing values.) Sequences illustrating the school's approach to learning include: classroom activities in the humanities and sciences; family conferences; discussions of race, class, and gender; faculty meetings; disciplinary problems; sex education; conflict resolution by students; and student council meetings.
A psycho-geographic journey through London and its history, as undertaken by an unseen narrator and his companion, Robinson, at the time of the 1992 general election.
Australia was rocked on February 13, 1978, when a bomb placed in a garbage bin outside the Hilton Hotel exploded in a garbage truck killing three people. Many years later, Australia's most significant political crime remains unsolved.
African-American documentary filmmaker Marlon Riggs was working on this final film as he died from AIDS-related complications in 1994; he addresses the camera from his hospital bed in several scenes. The film directly addresses sexism and homophobia within the black community, with snippets of misogynistic and anti-gay slurs from popular hip-hop songs juxtaposed with interviews with African-American intellectuals and political theorists, including Cornel West, bell hooks and Angela Davis.
WARRIOR MARKS is a poetic and political film about female genital mutilation from the director of A PLACE OF RAGE, presented by the Pulitzer Prize winning author of THE COLOR PURPLE and POSSESSING THE SECRET OF JOY. Female genital mutilation affects one hundred million of the world’s women and this remarkable film unlocks some of the cultural and political complexities surrounding this issue. Interviews with women from Senegal, Gambia, Burkino Faso, the United States and England who are concerned with and affected by genital mutilation are intercut with Walker’s own personal reflections on the subject.
CHINA: A CENTURY OF REVOLUTION is a six-hour tour de force journey through the country's most tumultuous period. First televised on PBS, this award-winning documentary series presents an astonishingly candid view of a once-secret nation with rare archival footage, insightful historical commentary and stunning eyewitness accounts from citizens who struggled through China's most decisive century. THE MAO YEARS examines the turbulent era of Mao's attempts to forge a "new China" from the war-ravaged and poverty-stricken nation.
As the campaign to force Jews out of Germany ramps up, the American government blocks efforts to help rescue many of these displaced persons, and Americans' antisemitism only seems to get worse.
After the atomic obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, over 36,000 Australian men and women, part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF), marched onto Japanese soil. They were assigned the toughest and most dangerous area of Japan: Hiroshima Prefecture, which included the atom-bombed city. The Forgotten Force tells for the first time the story of Australia's role in Japan. Rare archival and private footage, photographs and eyewitness accounts from both sides vividly recreate the atmosphere of post-war Japan - the horror of Hiroshima and its aftermath; the struggle to build a new "democratic" society while under the heel of military rule; the growth from suspicion and fear to friendship and trust between foes.
The equation of life on the Serengeti is simple: carnivores eat plants, herbivores eat carnivores. Africa: The Serengeti takes you on an extraordinary journey to view a spectacle few humans have ever witnessed. The Great Migration. Journey with more than two million wildebeests, zebras and antelopes in their annual 500 mile trek across the Serengeti plains
In Aparecida, 50 Km from o’Porto, the atmosphere surrounding this years preparation of the yearly festivities is tense: the new priest aims to discouraje the "Promise payers" from doing it having themselves carried in open coffins through the village untill th chappel of the Appeared Lady.
Superstition against Theological Argument, fidelity to the vows or reinterpretation… The conflict becomes unavoidable. It’s the local identity and its inhabitants identity that’s in stake.
If this type of processions were common in the last century on the north of the Iberian Peninsula, this one, will probably be the last in Portugal.
At the village of Senhora Aparecida the festivities of August are set.
The main wooden bier that will carry the Saint may be 15 metres high. It is now being assembled and decorated.
Those who escaped death now celebrate life.
The Lady redistributes the power she's been given.
A haunting documentary on the pains of growing up male. It explores the inner and outer cruelties that boys perpetrate and endure. The film provokes the viewer to reflect on how our society can deprive boys of wholeness.