'Don't build prisons, they cost too much!' In this era of Great Recession, the conservative and tough-on-crime State of Texas takes an unprecedented path by becoming a social justice leader with programs that rehabilitate offenders. Looks like rape, abuse and death are no longer parts of the solution for modern-day Bonnie and Clyde...
André's Eyes is an experimental docudrama in which the actual family members themselves participate in the recreation of their own story. Set in a small village in the Portuguese countryside, the film follows the struggle of a divorced father to keep his family together after his youngest son is taken away from them and placed in a foster family.
I HOPE YOU DANCE: the power and spirit of song is the first full length documentary film to explore how one extraordinary song has transformed people's lives in profound, meaningful and sometimes startling ways. It is a film about hope, faith, optimism and the power of music to inspire and heal. The film highlights true stories of Love, Inspiration, Second Chances, Forgiveness and Miracles: A father who honors his daughter's memory by saving four lives through organ donation; a homeless shelter that teaches ballroom dancing, literally getting people back on their feet; a woman who miraculously recovers from a devastating spinal cord injury that should have killed her instantly; a couple who overcome the pain of their respective pasts to find love and redemption; two Nashville songwriters whose life experiences combine to create breathtaking piece of music for the ages.
Count Karl Ulysses von Salis-Marschlins was a Swiss botanist and naturalist. He travelled widely observing and studying the lands he visited. In 1789 he travelled in the Kingdom of Naples. On returning home, he wrote a book about it. Here is how he described his visit to the "Casino del Duca" at San Basilio, the largest estate of Apulia, South Italy. "Anapeson" are these places, now, sleepless and abandoned within the distracted modernity. The History as ruins.
In an invisible territory at the margins of society, at the border between anarchy and illegality, lives a wounded community that is trying to respond to a threat: of being forgotten by political institutions and having their rights as citizens trampled. Disarmed veterans, taciturn adolescents, drug addicts trying to escape addiction through love, ex-special forces soldiers still at war with the world, floundering young women and future mothers, and old people who have not lost their desire to live. Through this hidden pocket of humanity, the door opens to the abyss of today's America.
Steve Lawler is one of the UK’s most long-standing and well-respected DJs. ‘The Art of the DJ’ is the story of Steve’s rise to the forefront of UK underground dance music and an 80-minute journey into a career that has spanned over two decades in the music industry. With help from peers such as Carl Cox, Darren Hughes, Danny Whittle, James Todd, and Ben Turner, and through Steve’s friends and family, we discover the path leading to Steve Lawler’s status as one of the most truly influential DJs of our time.
In hidden basements, bedrooms and bars across London, "Chemsex" is a documentary that exposes frankly and intimately a dark side to modern gay life. Traversing an underworld of intravenous drug use and weekend-long sex parties, "Chemsex" tells the story of several men struggling to make it out of 'the scene' alive - and one health worker who has made it his mission to save them. While society looks the other way, this powerful and unflinching film uncovers a group of men battling with HIV, drug addiction and finding acceptance in a changing world.
Life Under the Horseshoe is a fun, entertaining and historical look at Spring City, Utah's only live FM stage radio show. The film teaches us a little about history while taking us back to the golden age of radio. The documentary interviews Mark and Vicki Allen, the show hosts while learning more about their interesting, but opposite family history. The film also highlights the historical Victory Hall, a one-hundred-year-old restored vaudeville theater on Main Street, and "Spit & Whittle" Avenue, where Charlie (1885-1936), son of Simon Beck, had a bench the women of the town called the "Bummer's Bench." The men claimed it was where important community events were discussed and decisions made. Simon's son Charlie, paralyzed at an early age, presided at the bench providing advice and wisdom to all comers.
The Divide tells the story of 7 individuals striving for a better life in modern day US and UK - where the top 0.1% owns as much wealth as the bottom 90%. By plotting these tales together, we uncover how virtually every aspect of our lives is controlled by one factor: the size of the gap between rich and poor.The film is inspired by "The Spirit Level" by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.
Jon Mikl Thor was a bodybuilding, steel bending, brick smashing rock star in the '70s & '80s whose band, Thor, never quite made it big. Years later he attempts a comeback that nearly kills him.
Between 1793 and 1867 the British Government banished its radicals, dissenters and rebels to harsh prison colonies at the very edge of the known world, Australia. Some escaped and returned to their homeland as heroes but many stayed on in this alien new world... The life stories of these rebels are full of acts of bravery and derring-do. In their own words they tell tales that are at once stirring, heart wrenching, dark, creepy, and even funny.
The life and work of Robert Frank—as a photographer and a filmmaker—are so intertwined that they're one in the same, and the vast amount of territory he's covered, from The Americans in 1958 up to the present, is intimately registered in his now-formidable body of artistic gestures. From the early '90s on, Frank has been making his films and videos with the brilliant editor Laura Israel, who has helped him to keep things homemade and preserve the illuminating spark of first contact between camera and people/places. Don't Blink is Israel's like-minded portrait of her friend and collaborator, a lively rummage sale of images and sounds and recollected passages and unfathomable losses and friendships that leaves us a fast and fleeting imprint of the life of the Swiss-born man who reinvented himself the American way, and is still standing on ground of his own making at the age of 90.
Charles Lewis founded TapouT in 1997, prompting a whirlwind life that intersected the birth of a sport. Selling TapouT apparel out of the trunk of his car during road trips throughout California, a hot bed of mixed martial arts in the late 1990s, Lewis took on the superhero persona of “Mask" as he donned war paint on his face and wore outlandish comic book outfits. Mask's vision quickly came to represent hardcore aspects of MMA fandom at a time when the sport floundered under political pressure. The history of MMA cannot be told without mentioning Charles “Mask” Lewis, or the era in which he emerged. On March 11, 2009, Lewis was killed by a drunk driver in Newport Beach, Calif. To honor his contributions, the sport's dominant promoter, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), posthumously inducted "Mask" as the first and only non-fighter into the UFC Hall of Fame.
Desperate to save his failing business, a Manhattan restaurateur ruffles more than a few feathers when he makes the controversial decision to put up the iconic zebra wallpaper made world famous by the now shuttered Upper East Side institution Gino's.
A look at the social-media phenomenon known as sexting, the process of sending sexually explicit photos via text messages or on the Internet, includes scandals it has caused as well as ways it can actually benefit healthy relationships.