A NORMAL LIFE shows the personal everyday life of four Bosnian women who were forced to flee their home country due to the consequences of the Yugoslav Wars and have been working as cleaning women in Vienna ever since. We get personal insights into their lives, their work, their urge to build a new life and their personal way of overcoming trauma.
The extraordinary rise of Olympic boxing champion, record-breaker, feminist and LGBT icon Nicola Adams. From the streets of Leeds to the world stage, Adams fought her way to the top and changed the game. This, is her story.
The Sax Man tells the story of a beloved street musician, Maurice Reedus Jr. , and how this once rising star fell from the heights of the stage to the humility of the street. As he spends his later years longing for the good old days, Maurice receives a surprise opportunity to reunite with his old band to take to the stage one more time giving him one final shot to show who Maurice Reedus Jr. really is. . .
Exploring the idea that times of extreme difficulty facilitate increased resourcefulness and creativity, this compelling documentary takes a look at the art, music, literature, business, architecture, sports and entertainment of the Great Depression. The filmmakers also interview both ordinary people dealing with crisis and a diverse group of luminaries -- including Buzz Aldrin, Jesse Jackson, Hugh Downs, Mickey Rooney and Jerry Stiller.
Through interviews and performance clips, filmmaker Henry Chalfant explores the history of music in the South Bronx, from the Puerto Rican and Cuban influences that created the local salsa sound to the rise of hip-hop after fires destroyed the area. Artists appearing in this colorful documentary include Eddie Palmieri, Angel Rodríguez, Benny Bonilla, Clemente "Kid Freeze" Moreno, Ray Barretto, Willie Colón, Bobby Sanabria and many others.
Why She Smiles is the true, inspirational story of 34-year old Jamie Sorum, who is battling Huntington's Disease. Huntington's Disease is a rare, fatal neurological disease with symptoms being described as having ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's all simultaneously. There is no cure. Why She Smiles brings awareness to the necessity of a cure, and highlights Jamie's unfaltering ability to face each day with hope, joy, and surpassing bravery.
Ukrainian communities of the Canadian prairies still follow the Julian calendar and celebrate Christmas on the seventh of January. Traditional foods are prepared for the holy Christmas Eve supper, eaten when the first star of the evening appears. Then traditional carols and light-hearted dances in gay costume continue the festivities. In striking contrast, on Christmas Day the Ukrainians gather at the Greek Orthodox church to worship in a solemn service with ancient ritual.
‘When it comes to climate change, why do we do so little when we know so much?’ Through a relentless investigation to find the answer, Disruption takes an unflinching look at the devastating consequences of our inaction. The exploration lays bare the terrifying science, the shattered political process, the unrelenting industry special interests and the civic stasis that have brought us to this social, moral and ecological crossroads.The film also takes us behind-the-scenes of the efforts to organize the largest climate rally in the history of the planet during the UN world climate summit.
A documentary about the Famous Jeff Healey Club which opened in downtown Toronto, Canada in 2001 until its closure in 2008. The movie tells the story of the Jeff Healey club ,the A- list musicians who played there from around the world and of course the amazing talent that Jeff had as a Blind Musician who never let his disability stop him from doing what he loved most -Music. With interviews with Cristie Healey, Randy Bachman, Burton Cummings, Ronnie Hawkins and others and with rare live performance footage from the club with Jeff Healey, The Jeff Healey Blues Band, Ian Gillan, Jimmy Bowskill, Watermelon Slim and many more.
Viral busker Cam Cole takes his one-man rock show across the Atlantic for his first tour of the United States. Travelling by himself in a RV, Cam ventures South to explore the roots of the music that shaped him. Performing with blues legends along the way, he learns about the soul of American music and the spirit of the American people he encounters.
In this documentary, the members of the University of British Columbia's Thunderbirds hockey team travel to China to demonstrate their skills to the new teams in the East. While hockey there still has a long way to go, this film leaves no doubt that the Chinese players are up to the challenge. A film propelled by discoveries, it goes a long way to providing insight into the differences between East and West.
Jellyfish is a cinematic novel; a meditative approach to talk about notions of gender by translating cognitive knowledge and literary elements into filmic narrative. The film depicts two types of characters: inhabitants of the fictional planet of gender utopian society that are gender fluid, and real characters who find themselves outside of cisnormativity. It offers another way of seeing gender with its possibility to float between different forms without limitations and restrictions.
Located at the intersection of disability and queerness, this documentary enriches, implicates, and breaks open the conversation around sexual life in the disabled community. This film does not shy away from the complexities and challenges of queer life, but rather embraces them and in doing so, illuminates how they impact one another and bring new dimensionality to the position of the body within them. Resisting a normative lens, this filmmaker uses the observational power of the camera to document the raw sexuality, fantasies, and erotic expressions of a wide array of subjects with rare candor and vulnerability. Embodied sexual explorations are balanced against interviews that in their frankness and insightfulness criticize and deepen the lacking conversation around this intersection in the wider discourse.