Comedy icon Joanna Lumley pursues a life-long dream to track down the elusive and beautiful Northern Lights. She travels North across the Arctic Circle, up through Norway and finally to Svalbard, the most northerly permanently inhabited place on Earth, where she has to cope with temperatures approaching minus 30° C. Joanna’s journey takes her from train to boat and huskysled to snowmobile as she is pulled ever northwards and finally, in a breathtaking climax to the film, Joanna gets to see with her own eyes the spectacular beauty of the Northern Lights. As seen on ABC1.
The film looks behind the fear, hype and politics that polarize people into emotionally charged pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine camps with no room for middle ground. Verite stories of individuals and their families, whose lives have been forever changed by vaccine choices, interwoven with interviews from leading experts in the field, will re-frame the vaccine debate and offer, for the first time, the opportunity to have a rational, scientific and factual discussion on how to create a more effective vaccine program in America today.
Shot clandestinely over a two year period, this film provides a rare look into the second most isolated country on the planet held in a stasis by a brutal military regime for almost a half century. From over 100 interviews of people across Burma, including the recently released Aung San Suu Kyi, interwoven with stunning footage of Burmese life this documentary is truly unique.
STATE LEGISLATURE shows the day-to-day activities of the Idaho Legislature during an entire session. Lobbyists, lawmakers and their constituents are seen debating and discussing the concerns of the electorate, on issues that range from violence in schools, mad cow disease and video voyeurism to illegal immigration, secondhand smoke and the deregulation of telephone rates. The film is an example of the achievements, values, constraints and limitations of the democratic process.
MODEL shows male and female models at work on TV commercials, fashion shows, magazine covers, and advertising for a variety of products, including designer collections, fur coats, sports clothes and automobiles. The models are seen at work with photographers whose techniques illustrate different styles of fashion and product photography. The business aspect of running an agency is also shown: interviewing prospective models, career counseling, arranging portfolios, talking with clients, and planning trips. The film presents a view of the intersections of fashion, business, advertising, photography, television and fantasy.
Distressed over his teenaged son's addiction to the Internet and fearful that the developing boy has grown detached from the real world, documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee takes a journey back into his own adolescence by returning to St. Quay-Portrieux in Brittany, France, which he visited as a teen, and attempting to track down the photographer who gave him his first job, and the girl who once stole his heart.
The Los Angeles Times Critics' Pick Something’s Gonna Live is an intimate portrait of life, death, friendship and the movies, as recalled by some of Hollywood's greatest cinema artists. Academy Award®-nominated director Daniel Raim (The Man on Lincoln’s Nose), captures the late life coming together of renowned art directors Robert Boyle (North by Northwest, The Birds), Henry Bumstead (To Kill a Mockingbird, The Sting) and Albert Nozaki (The War of the Worlds, The Ten Commandments), storyboard illustrator Harold Michelson (The Graduate, Star Trek: The Motion Picture), and master cinematographers Haskell Wexler (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Medium Cool) and Conrad Hall (In Cold Blood, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). These prolific artists have worked on a total of 400 films, garnering 25 Academy Award® nominations and 8 wins.
“Portrait of Wally”, Egon Schiele’s tender picture of his mistress, Walburga (“Wally”) Neuzil, is the pride of the Leopold Museum in Vienna. But for 13 years the painting was locked up in New York, caught in a legal battle between the Austrian museum and the Jewish family from whom the Nazis seized the painting in 1939.
The extraordinary story of 'Radioman', a New York film set mascot who overcame homelessness and alcoholism to become a fixture of the New York film industry, with over 100 small parts to his name.
Set against the raucous backdrop of the 2010 World Cup, MEANWHILE IN MAMELODI is a beautifully crafted portrait of a place and one family’s daily life inside it. The Mtsweni family lives in the Pretoria Township of the title, in the district known as Extension 11. Their world is a ramshackle collection of corrugated tin dwellings and makeshift shops, open sewers littered with debris and red-earth rectangles filled with soccer-playing children and teens. Seventeen-year-old Mosquito is one of those kids. As she studies for math tests, flirts with boys and shops with her best friend, her father Steven prepares his "tuck shop" for the promise of cash-flush tourists. Meanwhile, his wife struggles with mental illness. The Mtswenis' lives unfold as the Cup brings new hope to the ravaged town. Despite the poverty around her, Mosquito insists this is not her parents' country. She is the face of South Africa's future - part of "a new generation free to do all things."
This film, shot by 100 amateur camera operators, tells the story of the enormous street protests in Seattle, Washington in November 1999, against the World Trade Organization summit being held there. Vowing to oppose, among other faults, the WTO's power to arbitrally overrule nations' environmental, social and labour policies in favour of unbridled corporate greed, protestors from all around came out in force to make their views known and stop the summit. Against them is a brutal police force and a hostile media as well as the stain of a minority of destructively overzealous comrades. Against all odds, the protesters bravely faced fierce opposition to take back the rightful democratic power that the political and corporate elite of the world is determined to deny the little people.
A fascinating look at how American agricultural policy and food culture developed in the 20th century, and how the California food movement rebelled against big agribusiness to launch the local organic food movement.
Follow the life of four talented musicians from their origins as they soared to one of the greatest Rock n Roll bands of all time. This documentary tells the story of Freddie Mercury and his impact on a band, which would become a worldwide sensation.
Musician Fela Anikulapo Kuti recorded more than 60 albums to promote the magic of Afrobeat but never lost his political voice as an outspoken critic against widespread government corruption in Nigeria. This documentary examines the role that Fela, dubbed "Black President," played in shedding light on atrocities in his homeland and in promoting the ascent of African music worldwide.
Filmmaker Jarreth Merz directs this eye-opening documentary about the 2008 presidential elections in Ghana, chronicling the start-to-finish drama of campaigning in a nation that's long served as a measure of the continent's political stability.