Conductor Rem Gekht leads the rehearsal of a school brass band. The sessions are interspersed with the children talking about the musical instruments they play.
Robert Mugge's 1986 film provides a full-blooded portrait of the Latino singer, actor, bandleader, and composer. Blades' Panama homeland, his Harvard Master's degree, and a New York performance with his band Seis de Solar all serve as stops on this biographical journey.
Jack Kerouac's life is examined through interviews with his contemporaries and friends including Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and William S. Burroughs. The film also employs dramatic recreations of Kerouac's life beginning with his early childhood.
Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
A documentary film about dancing on the screen, from it's orgins after the invention of the movie camera, over the movie musical from the late 20s, 30s, 40s 50s and 60s up to the break dance and the music videos from the 80s.
Discover the inside story of the most influential English rock band of the '60s. Inspired by a mix of genres including rhythm and blues, folk and country, their music created a British Invasion around the world. Their third single "You Really Got Me" became an international hit and went straight to the top of the charts in the UK. With seventeen top 20 singles and five top ten albums in the UK, the Kinks had an incredibly successful career spanning over 30 years. Featuring interviews with key members of the group, this is their story.
This documentary about teenagers living on the streets in Seattle began as a magazine article. The film follows nine teenagers who discuss how they live by panhandling, prostitution, and petty theft.
A concert film documenting Talking Heads at the height of their popularity, on tour for their 1983 album "Speaking in Tongues." The band takes the stage one by one and is joined by a cadre of guest musicians for a career-spanning and cinematic performance that features creative choreography and visuals.
Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world.
A documentary on the inhabitants of South Williamsburg, New York, whose lives are explored through the testimony of five inhabitants of the Brooklyn neighborhood. In the late 70s and early 80s, Los Sures was one of the poorest neighborhoods in New York City. In fact, it had been called the worst ghetto in America. Diego Echeverria's film skillfully represents the challenges of its time: drugs, gang violence, crime, abandoned real estate, racial tension, single-parent homes, and inadequate local resources. The complex portrait also celebrates the vitality of this largely Puerto Rican and Dominican community, showing the strength of their culture, their creativity, and their determination to overcome a desperate situation.
George Carlin hits the boards with the former Hippie-Dippie Weatherman's take on Brooklynese pronunciations of the names of sexually transmitted disease ("hoipes"), plus a prayer for the separation of church and state, feuds between breakfast foods, and the absurdity of wearing jungle camouflage in a desert.
From an early age Yossi Klein received a special education. He was prepared for another Holocaust. So were other children in Boro Park, the largest Orthodox survivor community in America, and this candid portrait of a young Jewish activist coming to terms with his father's traumatic history is as bracing as any fiction. Through his writing and activism, Yossi attempts to carry on the legacy of struggle passed on to him. A portrait emerges of a young man whose world view and personal outlook have been principally shaped by an event that took place before he was born.
An exploration of Burroughs’ life story, as told by Burroughs himself along with many of his contemporaries, including Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin, Francis Bacon, Herbert Huncke, Patti Smith, Terry Southern, and William Burroughs Jr.