Brooklyn Castle is a documentary about I.S. 318 – an inner-city school where more than 65 percent of students are from homes with incomes below the federal poverty level – that also happens to have the best, most winning junior high school chess team in the country. (If Albert Einstein, who was rated 1800, were to join the team, he’d only rank fifth best.) Chess has transformed the school from one cited in 2003 as a “school in need of improvement” to one of New York City’s best. But a series of recession-driven public school budget cuts now threaten to undermine those hard-won successes.
Yoga was brought to the west from India by a lineage of male teachers. Now there's a generation of women who are leading the way and they're radically changing people's lives. From the busy streets of Manhattan to the dusty slums of Kenya, from the golden beaches of Australia YOGAWOMAN uncovers a global phenomenon that has changed the face of yoga forever.
Professor David Spiegelhalter tries to pin down what chance truly is and how it works in the real world. With his unique storytelling method, he applies a blend of wit and wisdom, animation, graphics, and gleeful nerdery to the joys of chance and the mysteries of probability. It is a vital branch of mathematics that tells us what might happen in the future based on the events of the past.
Narrator Damian Lewis tells the story of the building and dedication of the Richard D. Winters Leadership monument in Normandy, France in June of 2012. The film focuses on the leader of World War II's "Band of Brothers" and the leadership skills he possessed. A never before seen interview with the late Major Winters is utilized, as well as interviews with the "Band of Brothers" who are still alive.
Alanis Obomsawin’s documentary The People of the Kattawapiskak River exposes the housing crisis faced by 1,700 Cree in Northern Ontario, a situation that led Attawapiskat’s band chief, Theresa Spence, to ask the Canadian Red Cross for help. With the Idle No More movement making front page headlines, this film provides background and context for one aspect of the growing crisis.
Pablo blends documentary and animation elements to tell the saga of "famous unknown" Pablo Ferro, a man with a personal journey that spans from Havana, during the pre-Cuban revolution to his current home, in the garage behind his son's house.
The film shows the lives of four foreign musicians from different backgrounds and musical genres that after visiting the City of Rio de Janeiro, ended up falling in love with the city, choosing it to live in and becoming typical cariocas.
March 1989: two respected chemists from the University of Utah stand in front of a wall of reporters. Flashbulbs pop as they announce they have solved the world's energy problems using seawater, batteries and a mysterious glass contraption. 'Cold Fusion' is born. Within days, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann are on the cover of Time Magazine. But three short months later, their careers in tatters and their reputations ruined, they flee the US as Cold Fusion becomes synonymous with 'bad science.' Twenty-two years later, despite continued disdain from mainstream science, a group of scientists, entrepreneurs and one high school student are confident that Cold Fusion will save the world, and that we're closer than ever to the Holy Grail of civilization. They're The Believers.
James Grashow is an artist who has built—among many other things-- giant 15 foot tall fighting men, a city, and an ocean-- using paper mache, fabric, chicken wire and cardboard. More recently, he has begun making sculptures entirely out of corrugated cardboard and twist ties.
Forget about war and suffering and discover a different side of Congo. The sapeurs adhere to a subculture of high fashion. They may be surrounded by poverty but as Yves Saint Laurent, President of the Sapeur Association, explains, they're always dressed impeccably in Versace or Prada. Rapper Cheriff Bakala is working on recording his first album in a country with almost no producers. Meanwhile wrestler Palmas Ya Ya, is relying on voodoo and faith to help him defeat younger, stronger opponents...
A core group of architects embraced the West Coast from Vancouver to LA with its particular geography and values and left behind a legacy of inspired dwellings. Today, architects celebrate the influence established by their predecessors.
Venus and Serena takes an honest and unfiltered look into the remarkable lives of sisters and tennis legends Serena and Venus Williams. Through the prism of one year in their lives, the film tells the untold story of how these two great stars came to be and how they struggle to stay on top.
As Ciudad Juarez slowly recovers from a six year period of hyperviolence, a militant police chief stirs controversy, and wary citizens cast their hopes on a new national president. All the while, the tragic facts of the "drug war" begin to form a far more sinister picture.
A first time documentary filmmaker offers a compelling insight into a devastating reality of breast cancer, as seen through the eyes of several female patients helping demystify the disease while painting poignant and often humorous intimate portraits of survival.
Our healthcare system is broken. Potent forces fight to maintain the status quo in a medical industry created for quick fixes, rather than prevention; for profit-driven, rather than patient-driven, care. Healthcare is at the center of an intense political firestorm in our nation's capital. But the current battle over cost and access does not ultimately address the root of the problem: we have a disease-care system, not a health-care one. After decades of opposition, a movement to introduce innovative high-touch, low-cost methods of prevention and healing is finally gaining ground.