After a school fight lands 17-year old Daje Shelton in a court-supervised alternative high school, she's determined to turn things around and make a better future for herself in her rough St. Louis neighborhood. But focusing on school is tough as she loses multiple friends to gun violence, falls in love for the first time, and becomes pregnant with a boy, Ahkeem, just as Ferguson erupts a few miles down the road. Through Daje's intimate coming-of-age story, For Ahkeem illuminates challenges that many Black teenagers face in America today, and witnesses the strength, resilience, and determination it takes to survive.
The Ax Fight (1975) is an ethnographic film by anthropologist and filmmaker Tim Asch and anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon about a conflict in a Yanomami village called Mishimishimabowei-teri, in southern Venezuela. It is best known as an iconic and idiosyncratic ethnographic film about the Yanomamo and is frequently shown in classroom settings.
A fascinating look at how American agricultural policy and food culture developed in the 20th century, and how the California food movement rebelled against big agribusiness to launch the local organic food movement.
Nine artisans on secluded Gabriola Island reveal the differences between mass manufactured and authentic locally handmade through intimate portraits of their work and lifestyle.
With their long working hours, cultural obsession with productivity, and high-stakes schooling system, South Koreans live life in the fast lane. Everyone has the same aim: to be successful and to beat the competition. Thanks in part to this hard...
Unknown or forgotten by most Americans, the Korean War divided a people with several millenniums of shared history. Memory of Forgotten War conveys the human costs of military conflict through deeply personal accounts of four Korean American survivors whose experiences and memories embrace the full circle of the war: its outbreak and the day-to-day struggle for survival, separation from family members across the DMZ, the aftermath of a devastated Korean peninsula, and immigration to the United States. Each person reunites with relatives in North Korea conveying beyond words the meaning of four decades of family loss. Their stories belie the notion that war ends for civilians when the guns are silenced and foreshadow the futures of countless others displaced by ongoing military conflict today.
About a group of "Rockers" who belong to a British motorcycle club. Included are interviews with both male and female bikers. The film is largely based on candid interviews where the bikers respond to questions about politics, society, freedom and independence.
Different faces show us an Iran where tradition and modernity coexist and confront each other. Erfan Shafei invites us to discover a country through its music and its people. Erfan is a funny and ironic young Kurdish man who wants to become a film director. He sings, writes poetry, lives with his parents and his parrot, but knows nothing about love...
From the dreamy blue perfection of the South Pacific to the darkest uncharted waters of Africa (and everywhere in between), John Florence faces a broad spectrum of emotions as he continues to seal his legacy as one of the most gifted surfers ever. And while the young Hawaiian is pulled in increasingly different directions, there is no form of pressure that will keep him from his ultimate goal — to redefine what is possible in the ocean.
The stars of Europe's ascendant chip music movement demonstrate the repurposing of old videogame and home computer hardware like Nintendo's GameBoy and NES, Atari's ST, and Commodore's Amiga and C64 into tools by which they have created a new sound, a modern tempo and an innovative musical style.
On October 14, 1947, Captain Chuck Yeager accomplished what many thought was impossible: he broke the sound barrier and in doing so, changed aviation history forever. Behind this remarkable achievement was a dedicated team of rocket scientists and engineers, and one incredible plane, a Bell X-1 named "Glamorous Glennis." This is the story of the plane and the people who dared to travel faster than the speed of sound, pushing flight science forward and proving that no matter the barrier, humanity can find a way to break through.
The story of three lifelong friends who overcame domestic violence, substance abuse and depression to form Life of Agony, one of the most influential bands in its genre, led by the very first openly transgender singer. Through the success of their groundbreaking 1993 debut "River Runs Red", hailed by Rolling Stone as "One of the Greatest Metal Albums of All Time", they channeled their cumulative life stories into a soundtrack for a broken generation. This new found fame allowed them to suppress the tragedies of their past, but in its wake new obstacles arose.
In 1973, eleven year old Miguelito was discovered singing in the San Juan airport by the legendary New York record producer Harvey Averne. Within the year, he went from the slums of Manuel A Perez, to recording an album with some of the finest salsa musicians of the time to finally performing with Eddie Palmieri at Madison Square Garden in front of 20,000 people. Throughout Latin America his songs ‘Payaso’ and ‘Canto a Borinquen’ had become cult hits. And then he simply disappeared...
A love letter to film history, Sickies Making Films looks at our urge to censor movies and asks, Why? By focusing on the Maryland Board of Censors, the nation's longest lasting censor board, we discover reasons both absurd and surprisingly understandable.
This coming-of-age story focuses on Kyle Westphal, an isolated autistic boy who’s fascinated by fabric and emerges from an experimental autism treatment program to become a fashion designer. Westphal’s family looks back on twenty years of his development with candor and humor. The film combines observational footage, archival material, and animation to chronicle how a passion for fashion transformed Kyle and his family.