A sound journey accros the mountains, deserts and forests of Ethiopia and its cultural universe. Roaring Abyss will take you through an inedit collection of music recordings of unvaluable importance for the transmission and preservation of the African heritage.
Written and directed by San Diego based musician and filmmaker Jason Blackmore, Records Collecting Dust documents the vinyl record collections, origins, and holy grails of alternative music icons Jello Biafra, Chuck Dukowski, Keith Morris, John Reis, and over thirty other underground music comrades.
A documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has lasted for more than 50 years. Contains some interviews with the children in this conflict.
The story of three lifelong friends who overcame domestic violence, substance abuse and depression to form Life of Agony, one of the most influential bands in its genre, led by the very first openly transgender singer. Through the success of their groundbreaking 1993 debut "River Runs Red", hailed by Rolling Stone as "One of the Greatest Metal Albums of All Time", they channeled their cumulative life stories into a soundtrack for a broken generation. This new found fame allowed them to suppress the tragedies of their past, but in its wake new obstacles arose.
From iconic guitar player to construction worker, Chris Holmes has lived a life of highs and lows. After losing publishing rights of his own songs and dealing with addictions, the ex-W.A.S.P. member has had to start from scratch living in his mother in law's basement in Cannes, France. He is now ready to take on Europe with his new band. As we follow him along, he meets many fans and proves that he still is the showman he was as a young and famous rockstar. This musical journey draws parallel stories of the rise, fall, and rebirth of Chris Holmes with archives, live performances, interviews, and behind-the-scenes footage.
In this documentary about friendship and perseverance, three young transgender women from El Salvador and Honduras go on a 2,400-mile journey with the high-profile migrant caravan. These women, strangers at the outset and fleeing extortion, discrimination, and abusive relationships, endure hardship as they slowly make their way to the US, teaming up with other trans girls along the route and integrating with the caravan’s LGBTQ community.
Tenor saxophone master Sonny Rollins has long been hailed as one of the most important artists in jazz history, and still, today, he is viewed as the greatest living jazz improviser. In 1986, filmmaker Robert Mugge produced Saxophone Colossus, a feature-length portrait of Rollins, named after one of his most celebrated albums.
Documentary about the rise and fall of Frank Zappa's record labels, Bizarre and Straight which featured a collection of acts that included: Alice Cooper, The GTOs, and Wild Man Fischer.
The Camden 28 explores how and why 28 individuals intentionally placed themselves at risk of arrest and imprisonment while protesting the war in Vietnam. Featuring a treasure of archival materials and current interviews with former FBI agents involved in the case and scholars such as Howard Zinn, The Camden 28 is a story about a potent form of dissent that has special relevance to our current political climate.
The son of a junkie aristocrat and a schizophrenic showgirl becomes a master of reinvention on a 50+ year journey through rock and roll, TV, and movies.
Author Barry Gifford's gritty autobiographical stories of growing up in 1950s Chicago provide the backdrop for an impressionistic documentary portrait of a vanished time and place.
Larger-than-life actress, cabaret performer, activist, and proud sex professional since the age of eleven, Luana Muniz - arguably one of Brazil’s most recognizable transgender personalities, shapes a new reality for a new generation of transgender sex workers in her hostel by providing a safe working environment in the dangerous neighborhood of Lapa in Rio de Janeiro. Queen of Lapa explores the day-to-day lives, quests for love, housemate rivalries in a turbulent political climate under matriarch Muniz’s watchful and guiding eye.
THE LAST HAPPY DAY is an experimental documentary portrait of Sandor (Alexander) Lenard, a Hungarian medical doctor and a distant cousin of filmmaker Lynne Sachs. In 1938 Lenard, a writer with a Jewish background, fled the Nazis to a safe haven in Rome. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Army Graves Registration Service hired Lenard to reconstruct the bones, small and large, of dead American soldiers. Eventually he found himself in remotest Brazil where he embarked on the translation of “Winnie the Pooh” into Latin, an eccentric task that catapulted him to brief world-wide fame. Sachs’ essay film uses personal letters, abstracted war imagery, home movies, interviews and a children’s performance to create an intimate meditation on the destructive power of war.
A look at the modern-day problem of "affluenza," an epidemic of stress, overwork, shopping and debt caused by the pursuit of the American Dream. The history of the condition is explored, as well as the advertising and marketing ploys used to sustain it. Men and women from around the country share their stories of personal debt and suggestions for financial recovery.
Through the intimate portraits of five student survivors, IT HAPPENED HERE exposes the alarming pervasiveness of sexual assault on college campuses, the institutional cover-ups and the failure to protect students, and follows their fight for accountability and change on campus and in federal court.
In this illuminating study of cultural contrasts, American filmmaker Lynne Sachs and her sister, Dana, travel north from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, recording conversations with Vietnamese strangers and friends. The sisters' expansive travel diary covers tourism, insights into city life, pervasive culture clashes and a bracing historic inquiry. What begins as a picaresque road trip soon blossoms into a richer social and political discourse.
British mod rocker Steve Marriott had great stage presence, a unique voice and plenty of angst -- all on display in this docu-concert featuring clips from Marriott's days in bands the Small Faces and Humble Pie. Though Marriott remained a lesser-known musician throughout his abbreviated life, performance selections here, such as "Paradise Lost" "Black Coffee" and "Lazy Sunday," bring it all back for his fans.