On March 7, 1967, 40 million Americans tuned in to watch CBS Reports: The Homosexuals, network television’s first documentary on homosexuality. Near the top of the program, host and interviewer Mike Wallace calls homosexuals “the most despised minority in the United States.” The hour that follows is filled with salacious location footage, sermonizing therapists, and shadowed interviews with distraught homosexuals.
Jean Epstein’s short documentary filmed on the Breton island of Sein, which film preservationist and cinephile Henri Langlois called “one of the most beautiful documentaries in the history of French film, a true poem about Brittany and the sea."
Shot under extreme conditions and inspired by Mayan creation theory, the film contemplates the illusion of reality and the possibility of capturing for the camera something which is not there. It is about the mirages of nature—and the nature of mirage.
Going deeper than fine fabrics and silk linings, Suited takes a modern, evolved look at gender through the conduit of clothing and elucidates the private and emotional experience surrounding it. With heart and optimism, the film documents a cultural shift that is creating a new demand—and response—for each person’s right to go out into the world with confidence.
When Diana had her iconic wedding, she was just 20 years old. Ten years later, she had become a world-famous public figure beloved across the world for her friendly, informal approach to regular people.
This documentary explores the wonders of downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Rick Sebak narrates while you are taken on a nostalgic journey through downtown Pittsburgh's rich history as a bustling American urban center. The film explores downtown Pittsburgh's culture, history, architecture, and secrets. With new and archival footage.
A significant number of American children and teenagers - from all social backgrounds - suffer from mental disorders, schizophrenia, autism and emotional problems, leading them to isolation from society while treating their issues in mental health facilities. But there's no end in sight for those young individuals when they face obstacles and mistreatment in inadequate places under the supervision of careless and inexperienced professionals. The documentary follows some of those public mental institutions and another private center dealing with troubled kids and reveals what's wrong with their procedures, and the irreparable harm they cause in those patients.
Conservationists Jim and Jean Thomas braved the steamy jungles of Papua New Guinea to save a tree kangaroo from extinction and ended up providing water and sanitation to ten thousand people in one of the most remote places on earth.
In the picture-postcard community of North Vancouver, filmmaker Murray Siple follows men who have turned bottle-picking, their primary source of income, into the extreme sport of shopping cart racing. Enduring hardships from everyday life on the streets of Vancouver, this sub-culture depicts street life as much more than stereotypes portrayed in mainstream media. The films takes a deep look into the lives of the men who race carts, the adversity they face, and the appeal of cart racing despite the risk.
Two Italians, Sandro and Lorenzo, are traveling through the Soviet Union. Lorenzo has been to Russia before and now, accompanying his friend, gives him the necessary explanations. This peculiar technique allows us to see the USSR through the eyes of a progressively thinking Italian, to familiarize through Western countries with the grandiose transformations that were taking place at that time in the Soviet country, with the most essential features of the socialist reality, with the life of people, with the achievements of science, technology, culture and art.
'I Am Not Pilatus' is a poetic and artistic manifesto by Welket Bungué. This film reviews the case of police brutality that occurred in Bairro da Jamaica (South Bank, Lisbon) in January 2019. That case shocked the Portuguese and the African diaspora. The film connects the case to the mobilization achieved in the march held at Avenida da Liberdade (Lisbon), an initiative of young black African descendants complaining about justice and more egalitarian rights regarding police treatment of the black population living in Portugal.
From Raleigh to Appalachia, North Carolinians are living with curable cancers, heart disease and other conditions. However, they can't afford to get treatment, because North Carolina didn't expand Medicaid. Left Behind goes deep into North Carolina to explore the economic and social cost of the thousands who are "left behind' by North Carolina's healthcare laws.
This made-for-video documentary treats film fans to a behind-the-scenes look at the making of The Color Purple, Steven Spielberg's oscar-nominated adaptation of Alice Walker's novel about life for a young black woman in turn-of-the-century America. Features interviews with Spielberg, as well as with producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, who share their experiences from working on the project, as well as discuss the special efforts that went into bringing this classic to life.
A documentary about the closure of General Motors' plant at Flint, Michigan, which resulted in the loss of 30,000 jobs. Details the attempts of filmmaker Michael Moore to get an interview with GM CEO Roger Smith.