We follow the harrowing, yet frequently inspiring plight of ex-offenders, social activists, and entrepreneurs, witnessing the fierce tenacity required to change the narrative — and change lives on Chicago’s West Side.
Explores one of the most intense & unique relationships between people who rarely meet: music artists and their fans. Folk rock icons Indigo Girls openly share their journey, which has powerfully influenced the life of their biggest fan. Composer and pianist Vijay Iyer examines issues of immigration and race through his music; his work touches the heart of Garnette, a “man of the streets” from Kingston, Jamaica. Rapper and activist Talib Kweli inspires and transforms the life of Mike, a “Hip Hop” architect from Detroit.
An old, battle-scarred hippo bull – once a king among the hippos in Zambia’s Luangwa Valley – has an incredible story to tell. It’s a story normally hidden from human eyes and almost always misunderstood, because a hippo’s secret life happens beneath the water and under cover of darkness. Follow the life of the “Hippo King,” and discover the true character of one of Earth’s largest land mammals.
When her 3-year-old son drowns in a friend’s backyard pool, director Chezik Tsunoda goes on a heartbreaking but, ultimately, healing journey to connect with parents who have experienced similar tragedies. Searching for answers, she finds hope in the work of other parents and activists to make a difference in this preventable tragedy.
The film focuses on Tarlton, who enters his second Race Across America race. The grueling bike race sees more than half of the participants not finishing, but Tarlton is determined to win his division. Until the Wheels Come Off follows his 12-day odyssey as his family and friends serve as his support crew in a journey that stresses not only their physical limits, but their emotional limits as well.
The secrets of film financing from insiders and the untold story of funding “The Blair Witch Project,” the most profitable independent film in history. Insight into funding films, how it’s done, what works, what doesn’t and how to find investors.
Ukraine is a country that was unknown to most citizens of the United States, but it was always known to the political establishment of the USA. But since February 22, 2014, Ukraine quickly came to the attention of Americans, as well as the entire world. Ukraine - 30 Years of Independence explores the competing narratives about country's journey through the eyes of an American filmmaker as it is being told through the words of the men who governed the country.
US Air Force JAG Attorney Yvonne Bradley was assigned to defend a man held at Guantanamo Bay. Believing Guantanamo held ‘the worst of the worst’, her world was turned upside down once she arrived in Cuba and began to untangle an unimaginable case.
Three former child soldiers face retribution, anxiety, and danger as they attempt to rebuild their lives after fighting in Colombia's bloody civil conflict. Strangers to Peace intimately captures the personal stories of Dayana, the market vendor navigating her new identity as a trans woman; Ricardo, the young father secretly clinging to his communist ideology; and Alexandra, the indigenous child soldier who left her family behind in the Amazon Jungle. Can these former guerrilla fighters, seen by society as terrorists, redefine their futures?
In the wake of the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, Indigenous People across the nation are using their newfound platform to shed light on the wide array of injustices committed against them for centuries in an effort to wake up the world and embark upon the process of decolonization.
With unprecedented, intimate access to the private life of Courtney Barnett, this innovative and stylised 16mm feature documentary follows a paradoxically introverted performer and anti-influencer, who, at the height of success, is ready to walk away. Long-time collaborator Danny Cohen’s feature documentary reveals a woman who finds power in sharing her vulnerability. Recording her innermost thoughts on a Dictaphone over a period of three years, Courtney begins her slow acceptance of Danny Cohen’s camera. This unique filming process mirrors Courtney’s gradual search for purpose and emergence as an artist embracing her place in the world.
What drives men and women to risk their own lives to save those of others? Fuoco Sacro tells the story of the Vigili del Fuoco, the Italian fire department, and does it through the voices of the people who, over half a century of history, have tackled with competence and a spirit of self-sacrifice the greatest calamities that Italy has tragically had to experience at firsthand.
On a bicycle trip across the country, a young Neill Kirby McMillan Jr. experiences The Mojo Revelation and becomes Mojo Nixon. After teaming up with the enigmatic Skid Roper, he unexpectedly finds mainstream success during the Golden Age of MTV.
An archive of '90s culture and a philosophical study of fame via the intimate video-diary of Shannon Hoon, the late lead singer of alt-rock band Blind Melon.
Vertical Freedom is an epic, feature-length documentary film highlighting the professional and personal lives of six communications infrastructure workers in the United States who possess diverse backgrounds and compelling stories, on and off the job.
In this feature-length documentary from FRONTLINE and Retro Report, an unsolved 1960s murder reveals an untold story of the civil rights movement and Black resistance. “American Reckoning” examines Black opposition to racist violence in Mississippi, spotlighting a little-known armed resistance group called the Deacons for Defense and Justice, woven alongside the Jackson family’s decades-long search for justice amid a federal effort to investigate civil rights era cold cases.
In THE UNMAKING OF A COLLEGE, students at Hampshire College confront a new president's underhanded attempt to shut down their school and discover that a powerful institution is bullying an inexperienced administration into giving up the independence of one of the most experimenting colleges in the United States. A raucous ode to democracy in action, this film evokes the courage required to stand up to power at a time when many liberal arts colleges are failing.