In 1917 Australian Light Horse soldiers claimed one of the greatest ever cavalry charged victories in history. Some 95 years later, 40 Australians retraced their footsteps in living detail – from the foothills of the pyramids to the treacherous expanse of ANZAC Cove. Incorporating archival footage from the Australian War Memorial, interviews with historians, experts and authors, The Charge of The ANZACS is a detailed documentary account of Australia and New Zealand’s equine involvement in WWI. Following the Australian Light Horse Association’s attempt to re-enact the monumental journey, they commemorate the anniversary of the charge of Beersheba and explore the extraordinary lives of many fallen heroes.
Civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall's triumph in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision to desegregate America's public schools completed the final leg of a journey of over 20 years laying the groundwork to end legal segregation. He won more Supreme Court cases than any lawyer in American history, making the work of civil rights pioneers like the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks possible.
URBAN ROOTS is a documentary that tells the story of the spontaneous emergence of urban farming in the city of Detroit. Detroit, once an industrial powerhouse of a lost American era, is a city devastated by the loss of half its population due to the collapse of manufacturing. By the looks of it, the city has died. But now, against all odds, in the empty lots, in the old factory yards, and in-between the sad, sagging blocks of company housing, seeds of change are taking root.
From the communal councils of Venezuela to constitutional assemblies, grassroots movements and cooperatives, filmmakers Silvia Leindecker and Michael Fox explore the many incarnations of democracy across the Americas. The documentary examines democracy in nations such as Brazil, Colombia and Canada, and features interviews with journalists, cooperative and community members, elected representatives, academics and activists.
This eye-opening doc explores the phenomena of "outsourcing" surrogate mothers to India. Weaving together personal stories within a growing international industry, the film reveals the clash of reproductive technology and choice from a global perspective.
From the early race to build gliders to the D-Day invasion at Normandy and Nazi Germany's final surrender, "Silent Wings - The American Glider Pilots of WWII" narrated by Hal Holbrook, reveals the critical role gliders played in World War II offensives. Through rare archival footage and photographs, the film places the audience right at the center of the action in the dangerous world of the American glider pilot. During WWII, 6000 young Americans volunteered to fly large unarmed cargo gliders into battle. For these glider pilots every mission was do-or-die. It was their task to repeatedly risk their lives landing the men and tools of war deep within enemy-held territory, often in complete darkness. Thousands of lives were saved and battles won because of their efforts. In fact, one pilot interviewed said - the 'G' in their emblem didn't stand for glider; it stood for 'guts.' Features include: - Virtual walk-through tour of the Silent Wings Museum in Lubbock, Texas
An epic adventure into an underground science and an unstoppable passion. Earthworm scientists concoct a plan to find and name their ultimate discovery...the world's first Super Worm. Nothing will stop them as they travel to all corners of the world with spades, GPS worm locators and secret worm outing fluids to unearth their prize.
One woman's campaign against extremism in her West Virginia mosque throws the community into turmoil, raising questions that cut to the heart of American Islam.
Archive footage, recently discovered, shot by the Edwardian documentary film-makers Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon. Selected from a total of 28 hours of material, this compilation is grouped into five sections: 'Youth and Education'; 'The Anglo-Boer War'; 'Workers'; 'High Days and Holidays' and 'People and Places'. It includes footage of ordinary people going about their everyday business, from the factory gates to football matches, and is set to a specially commisioned score by the Shieffield-based duo In the Nursery.
Krishna Das is on a journey to India to discover legendary spiritual teacher Neem Karoli Baba, through drug addiction and depression, to his eventual emergence as a world-famous Kirtan singer.
The tallest building on the west coast was recently completed in one of the most seismically active zones in the world, Aspire to the Sky: The Wilshire Grand Story.
Based upon Van Gogh's correspondence with his brother Theo, combined with the images of the canvases he painted in the last two years of his life, this video brings to life his time in Arles, the period he spent in the asylum at Saint-Remy de Province, and his last weeks in Auvers-sur-Oise.
Vong Phaophanit showed his strikingly seductive Neon Rice Field when he was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1993. Like much of his rich and complex work since then, this installation exhibits a strong interest in language and light, in the painterly qualities of ephemeral materials and in ideas of cultural displacement. He was born in Laos, educated in France and has worked mostly in Britain since the early 1990s. Much of his work now is commissioned for architectural and environmental settings, including Outhouse in Liverpool. Created like many of his large-scale sculptures with fellow artist Claire Oboussier, this is a transparent glass house (with opaque windows) which serves as a flexible social space for the people who live in the surrounding tower blocks.
Science and Surrealism, ancient myths, Buddhism and feminism are among the frameworks of ideas important to Liliane Lijn’s art. In Paris at the end of the 1950s, in Greece and New York, and in England since 1966, she has worked with light, energy and movement, with archetypal shapes and unconventional materials to produce an art that is clear, complex and strikingly beautiful. Many of Liliane Lijn’s key drawings and sculptures are featured in this profile, which was filmed alongside an important reassessment of her work at the Mead Gallery. The Poem Machines and Koans of the 1960s and 1970s are considered as well as the ambitious “goddess” figures of more recent years.
Since the 1960s, when he was associated with British Pop Art, Joe Tilson has enjoyed international acclaim for the individuality and originality of his paintings, constructions, prints and multiples. All of his playful, engaging work is informed with ideas from literature, philosophy, ethnography and alchemy. Tilson’s early work focussed on mass-market consumerism and politics. But he was soon disenchanted with mechanical methods of production and his art in the 1970s and 1980s employed hand-worked wood and metal in intriguing ways. Shot in and around the artist’s studio in Cortona, Italy, this film was produced alongside Joe Tilson’s first British retrospective at London’s Royal Academy of Arts.
Gereon Krebber’s proposal for a monumental and expensive aluminium object called Tin won the 2003 Jerwood Sculpture Prize. Shot over more than a year, this film follows the creation, casting and placing of the final sculpture. Sitting in the elegant country house garden at Ragley Hall, Tin suggests a kitchen container or a hamburger and yet is at the same time defiantly abstract. Krebber is a young sculptor from Germany who studied at the Royal College of Art and now works in London. The surprising range of his work, and the processes which create it, are revealed here as he talks engagingly about how to create “seriously flippant” objects. His art, made with diverse materials including balloons and Cling Film as well as traditional media, has a unique deadpan humour. Its effect, the artist hopes, is to make you ”smile and shiver at the same time”.
From previously barren moorland in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh, Ian Hamilton Finlay has created a unique garden as an encompassing work of art. Little Sparta is a magical combination of culture and horticulture, poetry and planting, philosophy and myth. Ian Hamilton Finlay began his work at Little Sparta in the mid-1960s. With friends and collaborators, around a group of old farm buildings he has fashioned landscapes, streams, bridges, glades, lanes, bowers and more. Everywhere there are inscriptions and sculptures reflecting the artist’s preoccupations: the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, pre-Socratic philosophy, garden history, World War Two, the sea and fishing fleets, time and mortality.