Set in America's rural south, on the eve of the recent election a town deals with issues of immigrant integration and reckons with its segregated past.
This documentary promoting the joys of life in a Soviet village centers on the activities of the Young Pioneers. These children are constantly busy, pasting propaganda posters on walls, distributing hand bills, exhorting all to "buy from the cooperative" as opposed to the Public Sector, promoting temperance, and helping poor widows. Experimental portions of the film, projected in reverse, feature the un-slaughtering of a bull and the un-baking of bread.
A documentary film about session and touring musicians that are hired by well-established and famous bands and artists. These people may not be household names, but are still top-notch performers!
A documentary 33 years in the making. A director and friend of Kurt Vonnegut seeks through his archives to create the first film featuring the revolutionary late writer.
For over 130 years till 1996, more than 100,000 of Canada's First Nations children were legally required to attend government-funded schools run by various Christian faiths. There were 80 of these 'residential schools' across the country. Most children were sent to faraway schools that separated them from their families and traditional land. These children endured brutality, physical hardship, mental degradation, and the complete erasure of their culture. The schools were part of a wider program of assimilation designed to integrate the native population into 'Canadian society.' These schools were established with the express purpose 'To kill the Indian in the child.' Told through their own voices, 'We Were Children' is the shocking true story of two such children: Glen Anaquod and Lyna Hart.
Lala Rolls’ fascinating quest to examine what happens to a Tahitian high priest and navigator when he travels across the pacific – and further on towards England as a translator and guest (or is it as a living trophy?) – aboard Captain James Cook’s HMS Endeavour.
In the remote Russian Arctic, an aging scientist and his son are trying to recreate the Ice Age. They call their experiment Pleistocene Park – a perfect home for woolly mammoths, resurrected by modern genetics. But the mammoths are only a means to a bigger end: defusing a carbon timebomb frozen in the permafrost to slow the effects of global warming.
Panti Bliss is many things: part glamorous aunt, part Jessica Rabbit, she's a wittily incisive performer with charisma to burn who is regarded as one of the best drag queens in the business. Created by Rory O'Neill, Panti is also an accidental activist and in her own words 'a court jester, whose duty is to say the un-sayable'. Over the last few years Rory has become a figurehead for LGBT rights in Ireland and since the recent scandal around Pantigate, his fight for equality and against homophobia has been recognised all around the world.
James Baldwin was at once a major 20th century American author, a Civil Rights activist and, for two crucial decades, a prophetic voice calling Americans, black and white, to confront their shared racial tragedy.
Volcanoes: The Fires of Creation is a tale of science, culture, and thrilling adventure! Earth is a planet born of fire. For billions of years, volcanoes have helped create the world we know. From the continents to the air we breathe and even life itself, all have their origins in fire. With over 500 active volcanoes, Earth is bursting at the seams with these forces of mass construction. The story of volcanoes is the story of the planet’s creation, and the story of us.
This documentary shows a few days in the life of various members of Abdijan, Ivory Coast's gay and transgender community. We get to meet a variety of woubis, yossis, etc. The hero/heroine of the film is a statuesque young man named Barbara who is organising the annual year-end party of the Ivory Coast Tranvestite Association, to be held December 27, 1997.
How do you put a life into 500 words? Ask the staff obituary writers at the New York Times. OBIT is a first-ever glimpse into the daily rituals, joys and existential angst of the Times obit writers, as they chronicle life after death on the front lines of history.
The story of a small group of Blackfoot people and their mission to establish the first wild buffalo herd on their ancestral territory since the species’ near-extinction a century ago, an act that would restore the land, re-enliven traditional culture and bring much needed healing to their community.
When filmmaker and investigative journalist Frances Causey, a daughter of the South, set out to explore the continuing racial divisions in the US, what she discovered was that the politics of slavery didn't end with the Civil War. In an astonishingly candid look at the United States' original sin, The Long Shadow traces slavery's history from America's founding up through its insidious ties to racism today.
Maths teacher Ted Slauson became adept at recording and memorizing prices of products featured on the iconic game show The Price is Right, an obsession dating back to the show's inception in 1972. This passion and dedication for the show culminated in him helping a contestant place a perfect bid during a 2008 showcase, an innocent act that would create one of the biggest controversies in television industry history.
In the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt appointed Frances Perkins as the first woman on a presidential cabinet. Against overwhelming odds, she became the driving force behind Social Security, the 40-hour work week, the eight-hour day, minimum wage and unemployment compensation. Summoned: Frances Perkins and the General Welfare features compelling interviews with David Brooks, Nancy Pelosi, Amy Klobuchar, Lawrence O’Donnell and others while telling Perkin’s heroic story which explores the history of women in politics, Social Security, our attitudes toward immigration, poverty, Socialism, and the role of government. Without this context our current dialogue is ill-informed and diminished.
The story of how Australia's 'ANZAC myth' was born and the role of General John Monash in this process as soldier and statesman both during and after WW1.