"The Art of Dissent" celebrates the resilience and power of artistic engagement in Czechoslovakia before and after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion. The documentary's main protagonists - Václav Havel, banned singer Marta Kubisová, and the underground rock group the Plastic People of the Universe (PPU) - became the most recognizable dissidents during the 1970-80s. Havel bridged the disparate clusters of individuals and fused the literary, musical, political, and philosophical nonviolent elements into a hybrid network that eventually toppled the totalitarian regime in 1989.
Danny Abel’s documentary tells the incredible, all-American story of Jeremiah Heaton and his geographical conquest. It all starts in 2014, when Heaton lays claim to 500,000 acres of desert land between Egypt and Sudan; his initial aim is to establish a kingdom so that his daughter can be made a princess. What follows is media attention, a movie deal with Disney, and a shift in motivation: Heaton decides to create a bonafide nation, with industry, a military, and more.
Composed of a series of short vignettes that share a telecommunications application as a common thread, Distancing Socially focuses on loosely connected human interactions taking place virtually across a world in lock down.
Playing Frisbee in North Korea is the first documentary produced and directed by an African-American female filmmaker from inside North Korea. The idea began at a conference on Korean Re-unification organized by General Colin L. Powell and the Colin Powell Center, where director Savanna Washington was a Graduate Fellow. Through verité footage from inside North Korea, interviews with North Korean refugees, long time aid workers, scholars, and experts on the topic, this documentary provides an authentic, on the ground perspective of the lives, struggles, and humanity of the people of North Korea.
Alicia is a 42-year-old-woman whose grief has caused her estrangement from society. Her world is turned upside down when 14-year-old Chief, a young boy who looks after people’s cars, stumbles into her house, bleeding.
Travel is at a tipping point. From Carribean beaches to remote villages in Kenya, forgotten voices reveal the real conditions and consequences of one of the largest industries in the world. The role of the modern tourist is on trial.
A sound technician's pregnant wife is brutally murdered while witnessing a kidnapping in broad daylight. Dressing as a white ninja, he takes to the streets as a sword-wielding vigilante hell bent on cleaning up the streets of New York City.
1.8 trillion dollars in student loan debt is what’s separating more than 40 million Americans to achieve their goals in life. This crisis is only getting bigger and more dangerous.
Utica: The Last Refuge tracks the Azeins, a Sudanese family, from touchdown at the Syracuse airport in 2017 through their first years in Utica. They have landed amidst unprecedented upheaval in US refugee policy. The Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees has to take care of them and other new arrivals while simultaneously fighting for its own survival. The film demonstrates Utica's resilience and commitment to these vulnerable families, who are, in turn, essential to the city’s rebirth.
A provocative feature doc about America's affordable housing crisis told through the prism of iconic Venice CA 90291's struggle with the growing income divide.
When the horrific murder of nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015 sparks a national reckoning around the meaning of the Confederate flag, battle lines are drawn in Mississippi to determine the fate of the last state flag to include the most powerful, and divisive, symbol of our fractured history. In Look Away, Look Away, director Patrick O'Connor introduces us to an array of activists, and captures the fierce five-year battle over the Mississippi state flag, revealing how race, heritage and long-simmering grievances over the Civil War shapes our sense of who we are as Americans.
The story of trailblazing 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who changed the world with his camera. Artful, resilient, selfish, naive, eccentric, deceitful--Muybridge is a complicated, imperfect man and his story drips with ambition and success, loss and betrayal, near death experiences and even murder. "The machine cannot lie," Stanford declared of Muybridge's pioneering motion images. But what about the photographer?
A widowed farmer and his son warily take in a mysterious, injured man with a satchel of cash. When a posse of men claiming to be the law come for the money, the farmer must decide who to trust. Defending a siege of his homestead, the farmer reveals a talent for gun-slinging that surprises everyone calling his true identity into question.
In a remote village in Costa Rica, Clara, a withdrawn 40-year-old woman, experiences a sexual and mystical awakening as she begins a journey to free herself from the repressive religious and social conventions which have dominated her life.
Blues and folk singer Karen Dalton was a prominent figure in 1960s New York. Idolized by Bob Dylan and Nick Cave, Karen discarded the traditional trappings of success and led an unconventional life until her early death. Since most images of Karen have been lost or destroyed, the film uses Karen's dulcet melodies and interviews with loved ones to build a rich portrait of this singular woman and her hauntingly beautiful voice.
The American indie rock band “Dinosaur Jr.” is a radical group with an unmistakeable sound. The film tells the story the three charismatic guys in the band: J. Mascis (vocals, guitar), Lou Barlow (bass) and Murph (drums).
A sensitive and intimate portrait of Ivanna, a nomadic reindeer herder in the Russian Arctic and mother of five small kids. Ivanna is forced to leave the traditional way of life and emigrate to the city, following her own dreams, due to the quickly deteriorating conditions of life in the tundra. We follow her life for several years.