A raucous, visceral Los Angeles tale—seen through the story of a 20th Century fight palace and the remarkable woman who ran it-—reveals battles over race, gender and identity that still roil America.
With the plastic industry expanding like never before and the crisis of ocean pollution growing, FRONTLINE and NPR investigate the fight over the future of plastics.
Explore the filmmaker’s life and career in interviews with colleagues, friends and Burns himself. The importance of place emerges as a theme as he reflects on his own geographic touchstones, from the Brooklyn Bridge to small-town New Hampshire.
The men in FINDING OUR WAY range in age from twenty-seven to seventy-one and come from a variety of backgrounds: a writer, an insurance agent, a clergyman, and the owner of a dry cleaning store. They are heterosexual, gay, and bisexual. FINDING OUR WAY is a first step toward creating new role models and moving beyond the stereotypes surrounding male sexuality. The program helps men feel less afraid of closeness with other men and encourages both men and women to talk more openly about their sexuality.
An abstract narrative, diary film and travelogue reminiscing on the quotidian. My day to day routines and deviations from it are captured as 6 months pass on the screen in a blur. Musique concrète accompanies the visuals taken from vocal samples of myself as a child and repurposed. Ruminations on nostalgia, film as material and 16mm as a particularly evocative medium with a long history of home movies and nonprofessional filmmaking. The film acts as a document, archiving time and place, as a way for me to recount where and what I did at this point in my life-a point where I still feel an existential drifting and listlessness. Something to look back at and only make sense of after the fact.
Waila, the contemporary dance music of southern Arizona's tribal communities, is often called "chicken scratch." Played at tribal functions, this fun, lively music offers relief from the hardships of reservation life. Waila! Making the People Happy explores the history of the music and looks at the Joaquin's, a family of musicians, and their journey from a remote tribal village to performing at Carnegie Hall.
“Lights of Baltimore” tells the story of the war of images surrounding Baltimore in the aftermath of Freddie Gray’s death at the hands of the police in 2015 — images produced by factions fighting for the heart of one of America’s greatest and most troubled cities.
A New Zealander and an Irishman quit their jobs, cash in their savings and walk 2,626 miles from Mexico to Canada along one of the longest and most challenging foot trails in the world, the Pacific Crest Trail. Their route takes them through some of the most spectacular scenery in North America, including California’s deserts, the high mountain passes of the Sierra Nevada, the Cascade Mountains and the lush forests of Oregon and Washington States. Walking at a challenging pace of 21 miles a day for 4.5 months, they must cross the Canadian border before the approaching winter storms. The ordeal forced one of them to quit just 60 miles before the finish. An amusingly poignant tale about two novice hikers search for adventure and enlightenment on the Pacific Crest Trail.
At the intersection of Alice and 14th Streets in the heart of downtown Oakland, California, tension is brewing between real estate developers and artists around the best present and future uses of a coveted historic space. Following the proposal, creation, and final result of a mural, this documentary shows how art can work as a tool for grassroots activism and underscores the power of coalition-building to disrupt the displacing forces of privilege.
In 1936, a right-wing military coup tried to overthrow the new, legally elected, democratic government of Spain. Hitler and Mussolini quickly joined the fight on the side of the fascist military. In response, and against the wishes of the U.S. government, about 80 American women joined over 2700 of their countrymen to volunteer for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. This film is composed of interviews with and excerpts from the letters, journals, and published writings of some of these women, as well as of supporters and sympathizers including Martha Gellhorn, Eleanor Roosevelt, Virginia Cowles, Josephine Herbst, and Dorothy Parker.
In the artificial landscape that is Los Angeles, where even palm trees are imported, nothing epitomizes man's short-sighted efforts to reshape the face of the earth more than the LA River: modified beyond recognition, its flow tapped before it even reached the surface, the river was used, abused and essentially forgotten. But when an unassuming boater insists on seeing it as a river again, a local controversy takes on national dimensions, and the once-derided eyesore turns into a source of hope for the City of Dreams. 'Rock the Boat' is a fun, high-energy and, ultimately, moving film that tells this every-man's adventure and looks at the price nature has to pay for our urban lifestyle.
The unprecedented bushfire crisis that struck Australia during the 2019-2020 summer sparked numerous controversies and its abnormality revealed underlying major issues with bush management and Australia’s part in contributing to global warming. Experts in politics, ecology and land management stress the importance of adjusting to the new reality of extreme weather conditions and most importantly adopting methods to reduce global warming. Can our past save our future?
Raised in a small farming village in the mountains of southern Peru, Feliciano works as a porter on the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in hopes of some day taking his son to live in the city. Framed by the seasons, Mi Chacra chronicles one year in Feliciano’s life, from the planting season in his community to the harvest, and through a season of work on the Inca Trail. The film paints a vivid picture of this man’s world, of the conflict between his love of the land and the work he has learned from his father, and the desire to see his son living what he sees as a better life in the city.
Follow a young Mormon as he gives up 2 years of his life and goes off to convert the people. For 20-year-old Josh Field, it's an emotional journey full of sacrifice.
Deep Ellum is a place -- a part of Dallas, Texas. Deep Ellum, along with its legendary music scene built by the likes of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie Johnson, Lead Belly, and Bill Neely, all but disappeared with the construction of Central Expressway in the 1950s. This film is one of three short films in the Living Texas Blues series which explores the 1920's and 1930's night life in Dallas through the music of Bill Neely.
Peter Proctor is New Zealand's father of biodynamic agriculture. Peter has been gardening and making compost for over 65 years. "Biodymanics makes organics work." Compost is the fundamental element in all gardening & farming. This master class takes you through the biodynamic compost making process from gathering and assembling your materials to creating the perfect compost heap. Rudolf Steiner believed biodynamic compoast was the foundation of humanity and the vital link between the cosmos and the earth. In Perfect Compost, Peter Proctor walks you through every step to building perfect compost.
TALES OF THE SAN JOAQUIN, A RIVER JOURNEY follows the San Joaquin River from its source in the Sierra Nevada Mountains to its eventual meeting with San Francisco Bay. Along the way we cross paths with a colorful group of people who know the river firsthand, a river called by many, "the hardest working river in America," and by others, "the most abused." Once the birthplace for hundreds of thousands of salmon, the San Joaquin now runs completely dry in two separate sections of the original river channel. This is the story of how this once mighty river was destroyed by water diversion and what the possibilities are for its eventual restoration.
In a tale of twisted sex, religion and family, a mother and daughter team up — first to overcome their severe differences, and then to take steps to end a curse that has plagued their family for generations.