Away from professional stadiums, bright lights, and manicured fields, there’s another side of soccer. Tucked away on alleys, side streets, and concrete courts, people play in improvised games. Every country has a different word for it. In the United States, it's called “pick-up soccer.” In Trinidad, it's "taking a sweat." In England, it's "having a kick-about." In Brazil, the word is “pelada,” which literally means "naked"— the game stripped down to its core. It’s the version of the game played by anyone, anywhere—and it’s a window into lives all around the world.
On May 12, 2008, a catastrophic earthquake hit Sichuan Province in rural China, killing nearly 70,000 people, including 10,000 children. In town after town, poorly constructed school buildings crumbled, wiping out classrooms filled with students, most of them their parents' only child. But when grieving mothers and fathers sought explanations and justice, they found their path blocked by incompetence, corruption and empty promises.
Focusing on Mark Lee Ping-bin, one of the most talented and prolific cinematographers in Asia, the movie details the itinerant lifestyle of a deeply observant and philosophical artist and the tolls that his profession takes on his family life.
1943, The Netherlands is under total Nazi occupation. In Amsterdam, Jack, an unassuming accountant, first meets Ina at a birthday party - a 20-year-old beauty from a wealthy diamond manufacturing family who instantly steals his heart. But Jack's pursuit of love will be complicated; he is poor and married to Manja, a flirtatious and mercurial spouse. When the Jews are being deported, the husband, the wife and the lover find themselves at the same concentration camp; actually living in the same barracks. When Jack's wife objects to the "girlfriend" in spite of their unhappy marriage, Jack and Ina resort to writing secret love letters, which sustain them throughout the horrible circumstances of the war.
National Geographic looks in some detail at 6 of the many close brushes with death Adolph Hitler had at the hands of assassins. The potential for the plots to succeed are examined as is the unpleasant fate of the would be assassins.
In the early 1970s, Otto Schily and Hans-Christian Ströbele were part of the group of attorneys of the left-wing extraparliamentary opposition in Germany. In this function, they, for instance, represented the militant Horst Mahler in court. One thing that united all three of them was their goal to create a new and different republic. They viewed Federal Germany as an oppressor of political freedom and as a vassal of the United States. Today, Schily is a former Federal Minister of the Interior with a firmly conservative stance and Ströbele is a well-respected member of the left wing of the Green Party in the German parliament while Mahler has again come into conflict with the law because of his extremist right-wing activities.
Part home movie, part road movie, Kötting's riveting and eccentric film stars his 85-year-old grandmother Gladys - opinionated, bursting with anecdotes and contradictory reminiscences – and Eden, his eight-year-old daughter with Joubert syndrome, as they take a zig-zagging 6,000 mile trip in their campervan around Britain's coastline.
As the debate over the state of America's public school system rages on, one thing everyone agrees on is the need for great teachers. Yet, while research proves that teachers are the most important school factor in a child's future success, America's teachers are so woefully underpaid that almost a third must divide their time between a second job in order to make a living. Chronicling the stories of four teachers in different areas of the country, American Teacher reveals the frustrating realities of today's educators, the difficulty of attracting talented new teachers, and why so many of our best teachers feel forced to leave the profession altogether. But this wake-up call to our system's failings also looks at possibilities for reform. Can we re-value teaching in the United States and turn it into a prestigious, financially attractive and competitive profession? With almost half of American teachers leaving the field in the next five years, now is the time to find out.
The film's title is borrowed from a Dani fable that Gardner recounts in voice-over. The Dani people, whom Gardner identifies mysteriously as "a mountain people," believe that there was once a great race between a bird and a snake, which was to determine the lives of human beings. Should men shed their skins and live forever like snakes, or die like birds? The bird won the race, dictating that man must die. The film's plot revolves around two characters, Weyak and Pua. Weyak is a warrior who guards the frontier between the land of his tribe and that of the neighboring tribe. Pua is a young boy whom Gardner depicts as weak and inept.
This provocative and insightful film is the first in a series of documentaries that will reveal the secret knowledge embedded in the work of the greatest filmmaker of all time: Stanley Kubrick. This famed movie director who made films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut, placed symbols and hidden anecdotes into his films that tell a far different story than the films appeared to be saying. In Kubrick's Odyssey, Part I, Kubrick and Apollo, author and filmmaker, Jay Weidner presents compelling evidence of how Stanley Kubrick directed the Apollo moon landings.
The life of Marcela, an ordinary Czech woman is explored throughout several decades of her life. We are engaged to struggle and fight back with Marcela as her tragic life unfolds before our eyes especially when dealing with her daughter’s unexpected death, which almost drives her to suicide. The film was initially part of a series about the fate of six married couples, but the events that happened throughout Marcela’s life were the reason why the director decided to focus solely on a documentary about her.
Forty runners compete in the most gruelling race on earth, the Badwater. The film documents the trials and tribulations of these athletes as they run 135 miles through Death Valley in July and explores the motivations behind this seemingly masochistic contest. A celebration of the perseverance of the human will beyond the limits of the human body
FOREVER HARDCORE is fearless in exposing the true history of this wrestling revolution, as the faces that shaped an era share their memories through the laughter and the tears.
Intended to be about the passing of the torch from Stewart to Cevert; One By One is a documentary chronicling the lives of Formula 1 racers in the seventies.
CENTRAL PARK is a film about the famous New York City landmark and the variety of ways in which people make use of it: running, boating, walking, skating, music, theatre, sports, picnics, parades and concerts. The film also illustrates the complex problems the New York City Parks Department deals with in order to maintain and preserve the park and keep it open and accessible to the public.
Nick Brandestini is a filmmaker based in Zurich, Switzerland. His first documentary, Return to Florence (2006), about a small group of young American and British artists studying classical methods at an unconventional school in Florence, screened at numerous film festivals across North America, winning several awards. His next documentary, H.R. Giger's Sanctuary (2007), about the renowned and reclusive artist, H.R. Giger, most famous as the creator of Ridley Scott's “Alien”, was an official selection at the AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles.
After escaping Russia's communist revolution, Léon Theremin travels to New York, where he pioneers the field of electronic music with his synthesizer. But at the height of his popularity, Soviet agents kidnap and force him to develop spy technology.