In THE UNMAKING OF A COLLEGE, students at Hampshire College confront a new president's underhanded attempt to shut down their school and discover that a powerful institution is bullying an inexperienced administration into giving up the independence of one of the most experimenting colleges in the United States. A raucous ode to democracy in action, this film evokes the courage required to stand up to power at a time when many liberal arts colleges are failing.
Riveted: The History of Jeans reveals the fascinating and surprising story of this iconic American garment. At any given moment, half the people on the planet are wearing them. They have become a staple of clothing the world over, worn by everyone from presidents and supermodels to farmers and artists. More than just an item of apparel, America’s tangled past is woven into the indigo blue fabric. From its roots in slavery to its connection to the Wild West, youth culture, the civil rights movement, rock and roll, hippies, high fashion and hip-hop, jeans are the canvas on which the history of American ideology and politics is writ large.
Shot in Australia, USA, Italy, France, Germany, and Japan, Beyond the Wasteland follows the fans from around the world who go to extraordinary lengths in the name of Mad Max. Transporting us into the world of Mad Max, we explore the eccentric world of the fans, their costumes, and their machines as these oddball fans find their place amongst the Mad Max community. The documentary also follows original cast member, Bertrand Cadart as he continues his fight against stage IV leukemia and travels from his home on the Sunshine Coast to the “Wasteland,” the desert location of Mad Max 2 in Silverton, for the last time. Beyond the Wasteland not only celebrates life but the ability to change oneself through passion.
A warts-and-all character study of a struggling 58-year-old New York actor who has been in over a hundred unheard-of films. This tragic, comedic documentary explores the nature of performance and the complexity of self-truth.
A relentless chronicle of the tragedy of the Uighurs, an ethnic minority of some eleven million people who live in the Xinjiang region of northwest China, speak a Turkic language and practice the Muslim religion. The Uighurs suffer brutal cultural and political oppression by Xin Jinping's tyrannical government: torture, disappearances, forced labor, re-education of children and adults, mass sterilizations, extensive surveillance and destruction of historical heritage.
Georgia’s former prime minister has found a unique hobby. He collects century-old trees, some as tall as 15-story buildings, from communities along the Georgian coast. At a great expense and inconvenience, these ancient giants are uprooted from their lands to be transplanted in his private garden.
Second grader Sylvie navigates the absurdities and emotional turbulence of her eccentric, multigenerational Jewish matriarchy, a dad who lives far away and life gone virtual, seen through the lens of her filmmaker single mom.
Based on Mallory Smith's posthumously published memoir, Salt In My Soul offers a look inside the mind of a young woman trying to live while dying. Diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, Mallory turned to a secret diary to record her thoughts.
Brash and opinionated, Christine Choy is a documentarian, cinematographer, professor, and quintessential New Yorker whose films and teaching have influenced a generation of artists. In 1989 she started to film the leaders of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests who escaped to political exile following the June 4 massacre. Though Choy never finished that project, she now travels with the old footage to Taiwan, Maryland, and Paris in order to share it with the dissidents who have never been able to return home.
On January 26, 1950, a US Airforce troop plane left Anchorage for Montana with 44 people on board. The crew of the Douglas C-54 Skymaster #2469 was supposed to check in every half hour along the route. As the aircraft crossed into Yukon, they radioed the tiny outpost of Snag to say that there was ice forming on the wings, but otherwise all was well. After that, the Skymaster disappeared. And to this day no sign of the aircraft or its passengers has ever been found. This fascinating Yukon-shot documentary tells the stories of the victim’s families and an intrepid group of Yukoners striving to give those families closure by searching every summer in hopes that the Skymaster will finally turn up.
As reports of fatal police violence continue to flood the headlines, this film shines a light on not only the circumstances of these cases but how to improve the system as a whole and heal the communities they impact.
The hidden scientific secrets of butterflies reveal them to be more inventive and resilient than we ever imagined. Follow their extraordinary life cycle and migrations to tropical rainforests, windswept prairies, and even inside a chrysalis as it’s being spun.
Charlotte Gainsbourg looks at her mother Jane Birkin in a way she never did, overcoming a sense of reserve. Using a camera lens, they expose themselves to each other, begin to step back, leaving space for a mother-daughter relationship.
Beyond Impossible exposes the corruption of the fake meat industry. Health expert Vinnie Tortorich asks the question: what do Harvard, Vegans and the World Economic Forum all have in common? A religious desire for the world to go Vegan.
For 46 years, Ken Sparks devoted his life, despite the sacrifices it demanded of him, to coach the game of football in such a way that it led players and fans to Jesus and in so doing made the man a legend.