A series of suicides among youths who had to travel far from home to go to school, shocked their indigenous community in the Colombian Amazon. They are different cultures in the frantic friction of our time, it is a generation of young people born from the meeting of both cultures who are hanging before the mirages of a foreign world.
A documentary about Caroll Spinney who has been Sesame Street's Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch since 1969. At 78-years-old, he has no intention of stopping.
What is life like for a dancer when they can no longer dance? Inspired by Merrill Ashley's departure from the New York City Ballet as an acclaimed principal dancer, this new documentary captures the poignancy of this life turning point. After a struggle to find her next step, today Merrill Ashley travels around the world teaching Balanchine to dance companies which perform his works as once she did. This is the story of any dancer - or, in truth any one of us - who need to find their way into a new life.
For a gay filmmaker, filming in Saudi Arabia presents two serious challenges: filming is forbidden in the country and homosexuality is punishable by death. For filmmaker Parvez Sharma, however, these were risks he had to assume as he embarked on his Hajj pilgrimage, a journey considered the greatest accomplishment and aspiration within Islam, his religion. On his journey Parvez aims to look beyond 21st-century Islam’s crises of religious extremism, commercialism and sectarian battles. He brings back the story of the religion like it has never been told before, having endured the biggest jihad there is: the struggle with the self.
Over 2000 Union soldiers, passengers and crew were crammed aboard the steamboat Sultana, licensed to carry 376. Graft, greed, overcrowding, a poorly maintained boat, and the Mississippi River was swollen with spring snowmelt conspired together to create a disaster. On April 27, 1865, the boat’s boilers exploded, causing the worst maritime disaster in US history.
Three men, one an actor, one a dancer and the other a soldier, are all casualties of war in some way. The men explore the relationships between art and artist, and historical and contemporary truth in search of a way to bind the wounds of conflict.
Thousands of three-wheeled motorized rickshaws - called tuk-tuks - zip through the frenetic streets of Cairo everyday, driven by industrious young men, many of them not even teenagers. Across gorgeously photographed sun-drenched streets, Tuk-tuk follows Abdallah, Sharon and Bika, who, while too young to shave or even obtain a legal license, are forced to drive to feed their families. Besieged on all sides by police, thieves and other taxis, the boys take every chance to find a happy diversion or fleeting escape from the prison of poverty. Pulsating with comedy and danger, the film illustrates the resilient outlook of three children who have to become adults before their time, and their struggle to hold on to some semblance of childhood.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, the rock radio DJ played an unprecedented creative role in the rock music world. I Am What I Play profiles four disc jockeys in major markets during this period: their programming, their politics and their deep connections with musicians and fans in the heyday of rock radio. Where are they now - and how did they reinvent themselves as the medium changed? Featuring the music of The Ramones, Joni Mitchell, Rush, David Bowie, The Cars, The Sonics and more.
Game Face shows the quest to self-realization of LGBT athletes and the acceptance in society. The film follows athletes during their coming out process, and sheds light on the obstacles LGBT sports players deal with throughout their career.
Ted "Black Lightning" Patrick's practice of "deprogramming," also known as "reverse brainwashing," started in the early 1970s and quickly snowballed into a vast underground movement composed of concerned parents, ex-cultists-turned-deprogrammers and some sympathetic law-enforcers whose mission was to physically and mentally remove individuals from cults.
Adam, a young Tanzanian boy persecuted because of his albinism, finds a kindred spirit in Peter, a Canadian man with the same condition. Together they embark on an unlikely journey that transcends cultures and continents.
Karski & The Lords of Humanity is a feature-length partially animated documentary project. The film tells the story of a member of the Polish underground who acted as a courier during World War II and whose most prominent mission was to inform the Allied powers of Nazi crimes against the Jews of Europe in an effort to prevent the Holocaust.
Join young filmmaker Patrick Ireland as he tumbles down the rabbit hole, penetrating the very core of Anonymous in the build-up to the infamous 'Million Mask March' on the 5th of November 2014.
'Country: Portraits of an American Sound' is a documentary film that explores the history and culture of country music through the lens of photography, which has portrayed the ideals, lifestyle and personalities of country music artists for over 80 years. The film features imagery and commentary from Grand Ole Opry photographer Les Leverett, the late celebrity photographer Leigh Wiener, documentary photographer Henry Horenstein, iconic music photographers Henry Diltz and Raeanne Rubenstein, and contemporary photographers David McClister and Michael Wilson. Over a dozen country music artists also appear, including Rosanne Cash, Roy Clark, Merle Haggard, Lyle Lovett, Charley Pride, LeAnn Rimes, Kenny Rogers, Tanya Tucker, The Band Perry and Keith Urban. The film weaves iconic images, historical footage and over 25 country music hits into a dynamic look at this uniquely American sound.
The Surire Salt Flat is located at an altitude of 4300 m in the Chilean High Plateau and is one of the most remote places in the world, keeping the treasure of untouched nature with all its beauty but also holding an allurement: a huge amount of borax, promising the mining industry profits at unknown levels. Surire, metaphorically tells us in an outstanding visual way the story of our planet - about the very important subjects of the disappearance of traditional indigenous culture, untouched nature, the environment, and the clash of new and old.
If you want to impress your dining companions in Cyprus, it's not caviar that you order, but ambelopoulia: a tiny songbird. But as this gripping doc reveals, the cost to bring such delicacies to the table is enormous. Bestselling novelist Jonathan Franzen takes a break from the world of fiction to guide us through an all too horrifying reality: tens of millions of protected migratory songbirds are illegally killed every year. Franzen, a longtime bird lover, accompanies young staffers of the Committee Against Bird Slaughter on their expeditions. With police enforcement in Southern Europe practically non-existent, they risk their lives to rescue trapped birds, and confront hostile poachers. It's a topic that proves a cultural flashpoint -- the Cypriot landowners cannot understand why a bunch of Italians can tell them what to do on their land.
Can you imagine what it means to grow up as the child of a mass murderer? Hans Frank and Otto von Wächter were indicted as war criminals for their roles in WWII. Nazi Governors and consultants to Hitler himself, the two are collectively responsible for thousands of deaths. But what stood out to Philippe Sands were the impressions they left on their sons. While researching the Nuremberg trials, the human rights lawyer came across two men who re-focused his studies: Niklas Frank and Horst von Wächter. The men hold polar opposite views on the men who raised them.