Filmmaker Erik E. Crown joins local water activists to investigate accelerated cancer rates and other illnesses in central Florida communities, tracing the source to phosphate mining.
When Texas emerges as a hotbed for recruiting young talent into the professional paintball scene in early 2000s, a group of teenagers find a mentor, pledge to stick together, and in the process change professional paintball in Texas forever.
One of the most successful teams in New York sports history, Gotham Girls Roller Derby is a feminist powerhouse of elite athletes, misfits, and renegades. QUEENS OF PAIN follows three skaters — Suzy Hotrod, Evilicious, and Captain Smack Sparrow — as they battle the constraints of being a woman in America while fighting for the coveted Golden Skate.
This documentary offers rare interviews with over 15 major Asian-Pacific American women poets. Organized in interwoven sections such as Immigration, Language, Family, Memory, and Spirituality, it is a sophisticated merging of Asian-American history and identity with the questions of performance, voice, and image.
France makes the most desired, revered and expensive wines in the world. They’ve had centuries to hone their craft. If you make fine wine, France is the benchmark. Or are they? One country famous for punching above its weight is taking on the aristocracy. This is a story featuring the World's most renowned winemakers, critics, writers and fine wine merchants. Travelling from the Old World to the New World we explore the history, culture and tension in the changing world of fine wine, answering that one question - has New Zealand earned a seat at the table?
Nothing Stays the Same celebrates the last 30 years of live music in Austin, while also examining the challenges faced by musicians and music venues in one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, all through the lens of the legendary Saxon Pub.
After 18 years living in Italy, the Cuban Barbara Ramos returns to live in her homeland. In the town of Santa Clara, she discovers through the projects of family and friends what has changed in Cuba but also what has not and will likely never change. Shot over a period of three years - the time it took Barbara to build her dream house - RETURN TO CUBA chronicles her life in the wake of Raul Castro's liberal reforms and reconciliation with the United States of America. A light-hearted yet energetic movie positively demonstrating that finding happiness is possible in today's Cuba!
The two atheist documentary filmmakers Stefan Kolbe and Chris Wright use their cameras to observe something that does not normally receive much public attention: they accompany a group of young men and women in the final phase of their training to become pastors.
A video essay exploring the frequency and meaning of that particular prop in a wide variety of Sirk movies. Is it a device that traps and keeps women in an artificial world with a limited point of view? Or is it a gateway to the past and the future, and a distorted but nevertheless real vision of the roles that woman are forced to play in society? 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.
From their early formation in Philadelphia’s underground music scene, to their business partnership with a local, independent record label, filmmaker Justin J. Jackson’s documentary Rosetta: Audio/Visual chronicles the musical accomplishments, monetary struggles, and intimate friendships of blue-collar, do-it-yourself, post-metal band Rosetta. Every album is a creative milestone, each tour a test of faith. Four years in the making, Rosetta: Audio/Visual tells the story of emotional and material sacrifice made by an electronics technician, high school civics teacher, coffee shop barista, and martial arts instructor in order to achieve financial control and artistic freedom.
Through interviews with former World War II fighter aces, "How Hitler Lost the War" examines the theory that the German Armed Forces substantially won and then lost the war in Europe before 1942. That had it not been for the political and military mistakes of Adolf Hitler, the United States would have had to stand alone against a Nazi Europe allied with an even more powerful Japan, and face a future that is barely imaginable.
This documentary tells the personal story of those directly affected by the Deepwater Horizon spill of 2010, who are now struggling to rebuild their lives amidst the economic devastation and long-term health risks.
The life and work of Alice Neel (1900-1984), American portrait painter. Part of the narration is chronological, part consists of interviews with friends, other artists, scholars, and family members, particularly two sons, Richard and Hartley, who are none too sanguine about their childhood and their mother's Bohemian life, and the filmmaker himself, a grandson whose querulous voice is heard from time to time. The film also includes footage of Neel, later in life, painting, talking, appearing on television, and giving lectures. Throughout, we see her paintings, bold, frank, and direct. After years of poverty and obscurity, fame comes as she nears 70.
Tapestries of Hope is the story of filmmaker Michealene Cristini Risley who traveled to Zimbabwe to document the work of Betty Makoni and the Girl Child Network. The film exposes an issue that continues to be ignored: the rape and abuse of thousands of young girls in Zimbabwe by men who believe it will cure their HIV/AIDS.
Obsession, love, money, and postage. Freaks and Errors: A Rare Collection, is the first, independent documentary film that reveals the rarely seen, expectedly eccentric and surprisingly large world of stamp collecting.