A chronicle of the civil uprising against the regime of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych that took place in Kyiv in the winter of 2013/14. The film follows the progress of the revolution: from peaceful rallies, half a million strong in the Maidan square, to the bloody street battles between protesters and riot police.
The film is concerned with the restoration and reopening of the Olivetti store in Piazza San Marco in Venice to document the recovery of a historic and meaningful place.
'Last Call' tells the story of the rise and fall, and today's rebirth of one of the most controversial and inspiring environmental book of all times: 'The Limits to Growth'. Its message is today more relevant than ever: unlimited growth in a limited planet will bring our society and environment into overshoot and on the edge of collapse. Supported by extraordinary archive materials, 'The Limits to Growth' authors provide a provocative insight on the reasons of the global crisis and share their visions of our common future. Is there still time for a last call?
Life After Manson is an intimate portrait of one of the world's most infamous crimes and notorious killers. An exclusive interview with Manson Family member Patricia Krenwinkel reveals an unlikely relationship with charismatic Charles Manson that led her to cross every line of moral consciousness, culminating in the brutal murders she committed to win approval of the man she loved. Life After Manson offers a provocative character study that exposes a broken woman struggling with her past, her arduous effort to evaluate the cost of her choices, and the possibility of self-forgiveness. Can society offer her the same, and even identify with a woman who took life only to lose her own in a desperate effort to find love?
D-Day: American medics Robert Wright and Kenneth Moore from the 101st Airborne (Screaming Eagles) set up an aid station inside a small 12th-Century church in Normandy, France. Over 36 hours, Wright and Moore help anyone brought into the church, even German soldiers. Seven decades later, the blood of the injured remains on the pews as a reminder of the compassion, courage and humanity shown there.
The Delano Manongs tells the story of farm labor organizer Larry Itliong and a group of Filipino farm workers who instigated one of the American farm labor movement’s finest hours – The Delano Grape Strike of 1965 that brought about the creation of the United Farm Workers Union (UFW). While the movement is known for Cesar Chavez’s leadership and considered a Chicano movement, Filipinos played a pivotal role. Filipino labor organizer, Larry Itliong, a cigar-chomping union veteran, organized a group of 1500 Filipinos to strike against the grape growers of Delano, California, beginning a collaboration between Filipinos, Chicanos and other ethnic workers that would go on for years.
Immigrant residents of a “shift-bed” apartment in the heart of New York City’s Chinatown share their stories of personal and political upheaval. As the bed transforms into a stage, the film reveals the collective history of the Chinese in the United States through conversations, autobiographical monologues, and theatrical movement pieces. Shot in the kitchens, bedrooms, wedding halls, cafés, and mahjong parlors of Chinatown, this provocative hybrid documentary addresses issues of privacy, intimacy, and urban life.
Armed only with their cameras, Peabody and Emmy Award-winning conflict Journalist Mike Boettcher, and his son, Carlos, provide unprecedented access into the longest war in U.S. history.
Above and Beyond highlights one of the most compelling escape and survival stories from World War II. On December 1, 1943, Bruce Sundlun's bomber drew fire from German fighter planes and crashed in Nazi-occupied Belgium. With help from an underground network, Bruce fled to occupied France, where he joined the Resistance. He would go on to spy for the OSS, the precursor to the CIA.
THE AMERICAN NURSE is a heart-warming film that explores some of the biggest issues facing America - aging, war, poverty, prisons - through the work and lives of nurses. It is an examination of real people that will change how we think about nurses and how we wrestle with the challenges of healing America. THE AMERICAN NURSE is an important contribution to America's ongoing conversation about what it means to care. The film follows the paths of five nurses in various practice specialties including Jason Short as he drives up a rugged creek to reach a home-bound cancer patient in Appalachia. Tonia Faust, who runs a prison hospice program where inmates serving life sentences care for their fellow inmates as they're dying. Naomi Cross, as she coaches an ovarian cancer survivor through the Caesarean delivery of her son. Sister Stephen, a nun who runs a nursing home filled with goats, sheep, llamas and chickens, where the entire nursing staff comes together to sing for a dying resident.
Hunger in America is a powerful documentary tackling the hunger epidemic in America. Narrated by James Denton. What does the face of hunger look like? Is it a child in Ethiopia? An aging man in Somalia? Or a family in poverty-stricken India? This eye-opening documentary will change your whole perception on what hunger looks like. In America today, one in six people, including hard-working men and women, suburban families and children are struggling with hunger. Tonight, over 50 million Americans won't have enough food to eat by day's end. The face of hunger in America is not just the homeless, like everyone thinks. As it turns out, the face of hunger in America is the single mom, it's grandparents raising babies, it's the elderly, it's the infirm. This is their story...
BECOMING ANITA EKBERG is an exploration of how the construct of "Anita Ekberg" became an internationally famous sex goddess as a result of the careful cultivation of her image in various movies, both in Hollywood, by Frank Tashlin, and in Europe, by Federico Fellini. It's an exploration of the texts and subtexts of commercial films and the subterranean and complicated ways that they affect us and can be read.
Gold, the enduring safe investment and symbol of wealth, comes at a high price. Mined in slave-like conditions, it has been linked to everything from funding civil wars in Africa to causing environmental disasters in Latin America. The market for gold is enormous with 70% of global production handled by just one country: Switzerland. The industry has been protected by the Swiss state for more than a century, and turning a blind eye here is standard practice. Despite attempts at reforms, a lack of transparency still remains. We travel to Peru, Congo, Dubai and Switzerland to investigate.
Sam Cooke died at the age of 33 on December 11, 1964, at the Hacienda Motel, at 9137 South Figueroa Street, in Los Angeles, California. Answering separate reports of a shooting and of a kidnapping at the motel, police found Cooke's body, clad only in a sports jacket and shoes but no shirt, pants or underwear. He had sustained a gunshot wound to the chest, which was later determined to have pierced his heart. The motel's manager, Bertha Franklin, said she had shot Cooke in self-defense after he broke into her office residence and attacked her. Her account was immediately questioned and disputed by acquaintances.
The rags to riches story of Sophie Tucker, an iconic superstar who ruled the worlds of vaudeville, Broadway, radio, television, and Hollywood throughout the 20th century. Before Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Bette Midler, Marilyn Monroe, and Mae West, Sophie Tucker was the first woman to infatuate her audiences with a bold, bawdy and brassy style unlike any other. Using all of "The Last of the Red Hot Mamas" 400-plus recently rediscovered personal scrapbooks, authors Susan and Lloyd Ecker take you on their seven-year journey retracing Tucker's sixty-year career in show business.`
In the heart of Kamouraska in Quebec, Patrice Fortier lives at “La société des plantes” (The Society of Plants). There, like a transcriber of the middle ages, he diligently cares for the rare and forgotten plant seeds to create a variety of so-called “old futures.” Patrice dreams up his garden and turns his crops into art projects. Over time, and with patience, he passes on his passion and his knowledge to us through his seed bank. These seeds of life will appear in thousands of gardens throughout the world. An ode to plant biodiversity and to our heritage, brought forth by a true and genetically motivated sower.
To Olmsted, a park was both a work of art and a necessity for urban life. Olmsted’s efforts to preserve nature created an “environmental ethic” decades before the environmental movement became a force in American politics. With gorgeous cinematography, and compelling commentary this film presents the biography of a man whose parks and preservation are an essential part of American life.
From PBS and Frontline: With unprecedented access, FRONTLINE investigates the impact of mass incarceration in America, focusing on a troubled housing project in Louisville, Kentucky, and a statewide effort to reverse the trend. There are some 2.3 million people behind bars in the U.S. today, but a disproportionate number come from a few city neighborhoods, and in some places the concentration is so dense that states are spending millions of dollars a year to lock up residents of single blocks. "Prison State" examines one community, Louisville's Beecher Terrace housing project, and follows the lives of four residents as they move in and out of custody, while Kentucky tries break that cycle and shrink its prison state.
Louis Ortiz, a down on his luck 40-something Puerto Rican resident of the Bronx, looks in the mirror one day and believes he’s found gold—he’s a dead ringer for Barack Obama. With visions of finally living the American Dream, the charismatic Ortiz launches a complete makeover. He dons Obama’s trademark suit, adopts his mannerisms, mimics his voice and steps out onto the street as a presidential impersonator. Taken on by a casting agent, Ortiz and a gang of other political impersonators, including a Bill Clinton and a Mitt Romney, hit the road during the run-up to the 2012 presidential election to perform satirical debates for mostly Republican conventions, throwing Ortiz into conflict with his personal political beliefs. As Ortiz struggles to make ends meet, the distance between the White House and the Bronx becomes increasingly acute. The life of a president isn’t always as easy as it looks.