Not My Life comprehensively depicts the cruel and dehumanizing practices of human trafficking and modern slavery on a global scale. Filmed on five continents, in a dozen countries, Not My Life takes viewers into a world where millions of children are exploited through an astonishing array of practices including forced labor, sex tourism, sexual exploitation, and child soldiering.
The film bears witness to German artist Anselm Kiefer's alchemical creative processes and renders in film, as a cinematic journey, the personal universe he has built at his hill-studio estate in the South of France.
Ten years in the making, Strange Powers is an intimate documentary portrait of songwriter Stephin Merritt and his band the Magnetic Fields. With his unique gift for memorable melodies, lovelorn lyrics and wry musical stylings that blend classic Tin Pan Alley with modern sounds, Stephin Merritt has distinguished himself as one of contemporary pop's most beloved and influential artists.
This feature film looks at five individuals who made a decisive change later in life-to come out as lesbian, gay, or trans gender, after the age of 55. Why did they wait until their 50's, 60's, or 70's to come out? And what was the turning point that caused each of these people finally to openly declare their sexuality? From Canada to Florida, to Kansas, we find out what ultimately led these dynamic individuals to make the liberating choice to pursue fully integrated lives.
Paul Goodman, whose best-selling 'Growing Up Absurd' made him the philosopher of the New Left in the 1960s, was also a brilliant poet, out queer (and family man) in the 1940s, radical pacifist and visionary. His ideas and stubborn integrity helped many find a moral compass in the '60's -- and can do so again today.
Set against the raucous backdrop of the 2010 World Cup, MEANWHILE IN MAMELODI is a beautifully crafted portrait of a place and one family’s daily life inside it. The Mtsweni family lives in the Pretoria Township of the title, in the district known as Extension 11. Their world is a ramshackle collection of corrugated tin dwellings and makeshift shops, open sewers littered with debris and red-earth rectangles filled with soccer-playing children and teens. Seventeen-year-old Mosquito is one of those kids. As she studies for math tests, flirts with boys and shops with her best friend, her father Steven prepares his "tuck shop" for the promise of cash-flush tourists. Meanwhile, his wife struggles with mental illness. The Mtswenis' lives unfold as the Cup brings new hope to the ravaged town. Despite the poverty around her, Mosquito insists this is not her parents' country. She is the face of South Africa's future - part of "a new generation free to do all things."
Mauricio, a lifeguard on a Chilean beach, considers himself to be a model of efficiency and professionalism. His colleagues, however, think otherwise, and speculate on why he never goes into the water. Maite Alberdi's visually gorgeous feature documentary debut has the intensity of a short story; beginning as a quirky character study of lifeguards and beachgoers, it becomes something altogether darker and more shocking when events take a dramatic turn.
In the aftermath of Stonewall, a newly politicized Vito Russo found his voice as a gay activist and critic of LGBTQ+ representation in the media. He went on to write "The Celluloid Closet", the first book to critique Hollywood's portrayals of gays on screen. During the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, Vito became a passionate advocate for justice via the newly formed ACT UP, before his death in 1990.
The 'bertsolari' is a kind of minstrel sings and improvises verses in Basque. This oral tradition has evolved with the times and connecting with younger generations, getting to meet at the end of the last championship to 14 thousand people. An austere aesthetic art of surprising in this age of spectacle and special effects.
THE GIRLS IN THE BAND tells the poignant, untold stories of female jazz and big band instrumentalists and their fascinating, groundbreaking journeys from the late 1930s to the present day.
A cinematic feature documentary about China's foray into Africa told through the lives of Chinese adventurers & Zambian power brokers as they negotiate the tricky waters of this rapidly expanding and vital relationship.
Cory Mann is a quirky Tlingit businessman hustling to earn a living in Juneau, Alaska. He gets hungry for smoked salmon, nostalgic for his childhood and decides to spend a summer smoking fish at his family's traditional fish camp. The unusual story of his life and the untold history of his people interweave with the process of preparing traditional food as he struggles to pay his bills, keep the IRS off his back, and keep his business afloat. By turns tragic, bizarre, or just plain ridiculous, Smokin' Fish tells the story of one man's attempt to navigate the messy zone of collision between the modern world and an ancient culture.
In Jandamarra's War, we learn how in the 1890's the European colonialists arrive in the Kimberley with vast herds of sheep and cattle, determined to make their fortune by feeding a rapidly growing population in the South. But the settlers soon discover they are in land populated with indigenous tribes, ready to fight the red-faced invaders.
Danish journalist Mads Brügger goes undercover as a Liberian Ambassador to embark on a dangerous yet hysterical journey to uncover the blood diamond trade in Africa.
In Managua, Nicaragua, teenager Sujeylin Aguilar raises her newborn daughter Karla on the same streets she has been calling home for the past eight years. Based in a city park and part of a larger group of youngsters, mother and baby struggle to reach the little one's first birthday. Beautifully told and full of hope, Karla's Arrival offers an intense personal story about second generation street children.
Renowned Iranian director Jafar Panahi received a 6-year prison sentence and a 20-year ban from filmmaking and conducting interviews with foreign press due to his open support for the opposition party in Iran's 2009 election. In this film, which was shot secretly by Panahi's close friend Mojtaba Mirtahmasb and smuggled into France on a USB stick concealed inside a cake for a last-minute submission to Cannes, Panahi documents his daily life under house arrest as he awaits a decision on his appeal.
Cape Spin! An American Power Struggle tells the surreal, fascinating, tragicomic story of the battle over America's most scandalous clean energy project. Cape Wind would be the U.S.'s first offshore windfarm...But strange alliances formed for and against: Kennedys, Kochs, and everyday folks do battle with the developer and green groups over the future of American power. With full access to both sides, a commitment to impartial storytelling and fueled by a satiric 'revolutionary' soundtrack, Cape Spin! is "a gripping and entertaining study of eco-capitalism and grassroots democracy".