Emmy-winning Sierra Leonean filmmaker Sorious Samura has grown tired telling negative stories about Africa. He embarks on a journey with his best friend, Sierra Leone’s most famous playwright, to create an epic work of national theatre – a play to reclaim their country from negative media narratives and the damaging legacy of colonial rule. It doesn’t go as planned.
Terminally Optimistic follows the life journeys of three women with metastatic breast cancer. Eva, Krissy and Kim are adapting to their failing bodies in a variety of ways, because they must. Life has changed drastically after diagnosis, and they must reinvent themselves and accept a new "normal." This is the story of these three METAvivors, their families, caregivers, and communities.
A Canadian Jew searches for the tree that was planted in his name in Israel many years earlier. When he discovers that it stands on the remains of a Palestinian village that was destroyed in 1967, he embarks on another journey—to determine his responsibility in helping to cover up the destruction.
Son of Cornwall is about opera singer John Treleaven. John has had a forty year career performing in thousands of opera productions including playing the leading roles in Siegfried, Carmen, Tannhauser, and many more classics. Each of these operas are included in the documentary through a combination of archive theatre footage, historical photos, audio excerpts, and interviews from some of John's colleagues.
A decade since his last campaign, 89-year-old former senator and 2008 presidential candidate Mike Gravel comes out of retirement when a group of teenagers convinces him to run for president one last time. Through the senator’s official Twitter account, the “Gravel teens” embark on an unlikely adventure to qualify him for the Democratic debates in order to advance an anti-war, anti-corruption, and direct democracy agenda in the 2020 presidential race. Working together, the young activists and the experienced politician confuse and amaze the generations between them.
THE STORY WON’T DIE, from Award-winning filmmaker David Henry Gerson, is an inspiring, timely look at a young generation of Syrian artists who use their work to protest and process what is currently the world’s largest and longest ongoing displacement of people since WWII. The film is produced by Sundance Award-winner Odessa Rae (Navalny). Rapper Abu Hajar, together with other creative personalities of the Syrian uprising, a post-Rock musician (Anas Maghrebi), members of the first all-female Syrian rock band (Bahila Hijazi + Lynn Mayya), break-dancer (Bboy Shadow), choreographer (Medhat Aldaabal), and visual artists (Tammam Azzam, Omar Imam + Diala Brisly), use their art to rise in revolution and endure in exile in this new documentary reflecting on a battle for peace, justice and freedom of expression. It is an uplifting and humanizing look at what it means to be a refugee in today’s world and offers inspiring and hopeful vantages on a creative response to the chaos of war.
Emily @ the Edge of Chaos interweaves Emily Levine’s live performance with animation, appearances by scientists, and animated characters. The film uses physics, which explains how the universe works, to explain our metaphysics – the story of our values, our institutions, our interactions. Using her own experience and a custom blend of insight and humor, provocation and inspiration, personal story and social commentary, Emily takes her audience through its own paradigm shift: from the Fear of Change to the Edge of Chaos.
REZ METAL follows the Navajo heavy metal band I Don't Konform's remarkable journey from performing on poverty-stricken reservations to recording their debut album with Grammy-award winner producer of Metallica while telling the compelling story of thriving heavy metal scene on the Navajo reservations.
On Chicago's South and West sides, the scourge of guns and gangs is destroying countless lives. Taking matters into their own hands, two men dedicate their lives educating, empowering and healing young Black men at high risk for being victims—or perpetrators—of deadly gun-violence.
The Race To Save The World is a climate change film like no other. Instead of focusing on paralyzing facts and numbers this inspiring feature takes a unique approach by following passionate activists, ages 15-72, who are in the trenches fighting for a livable future. These brave climate warriors put their lives on the line to push for change, regardless of the personal cost. Emmy award-winning filmmaker Joe Gantz brings an urgent and intimate portrait of the protests, arrests, courtroom drama and family turmoil these activists endure as they single mindedly focus their attention on the goal of creating a more sustainable world for future generations. The Race To Save The World is an inspiring and energizing call-to-action to quit waiting on the sidelines and make our voices heard.
Filmed over eight years, Rothman follows a group of adolescents who discover that they were conceived from the same sperm donor, forming an unlikely family of familiar strangers. There are presently 37 half-siblings, and counting. This documentary explores the complexities of alternative conception while defining a new realm of modern family.
Two friends in a Southern drug recovery program struggle to come to terms with their addiction and mental illness by making a short film about the pain they've caused their families.
Anthropomorphic robots are increasingly being introduced into our lives: they meet us at the reception, educate children and even live in families as partners. Scientists are trying to make robots as human-like as possible. In the late 80s, scientists studying the emotional reaction of people to robots discovered the "uncanny valley effect": the most humanoid robots caused dislike and even fear in people. But what will happen when they become indistinguishable from a person? And will they?
In a dramatic attempt to bring attention to climate change, an international expedition led by renowned explorer Will Steger embarked on the first-ever coast-to-coast expedition across Antarctica in 1989. Six men and their sled dogs braved howling storms, sub-zero temperatures, snow crevasses, and other perils as they traversed the icy terrain. Tasha Van Zandt’s enthralling feature debut catches up with Steger 30 years later as he revisits the frigid continent, deftly weaving his contemporary journey with rare, dynamic footage of his original, treacherous seven-month odyssey.
Tells the inspiring story of how six iconic African American female entertainers – Lena Horne, Abbey Lincoln, Nina Simone, Diahann Carroll, Cicely Tyson and Pam Grier – challenged an entertainment industry deeply complicit in perpetuating racist stereotypes, and transformed themselves and their audiences in the process.
As their bodies give way to Parkinson's disease, two New York actors put their hearts into one final Off-Broadway production of Beckett's "Endgame," the play that posits, "there's nothing funnier than unhappiness."
In today's highly charged world of structure, stranger danger, and helicopter parenting, free play in childhood has disappeared, giving way to unprecedented anxiety and depression. This phenomenon impacts kids from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Children's lives are consumed with wall-to-wall activities and constant monitoring-the overprotected, over-directed, over-pressured childhood is the new normal. This film takes us to schools in affluent Wilton, CT; working class Patchogue, NY; and metropolitan Manhattan. Throughout these different stories, a central question emerges: How can we eschew harmful parenting strategies and empower our kids to become their most fully realized, authentic selves? The film offers possible solutions as journalist Lenore Skenazy, evolutionary psychologist Peter Gray, former dean of freshmen at Stanford University Julie Lythcott-Haims, and leaders of the "free play" movement fight to restore a less curated childhood.
Starting with the image of a tour bus warming its engine in the stillness of an empty lot, this haunting, personal portrait of music legend Levon Helm evokes the mood of a lifetime spent on the road. Jacob Hatley's extraordinarily intimate documentary finds Helm, a founding member of The Band, at home in Woodstock in the midst of creating his first studio album in 25 years. The ultimate survivor, he's overcome drugs, bankruptcy, the bitter breakup of The Band and a bout of throat cancer -but then, as the rueful title indicates, he wasn't in it for his health