Belarus, Winter 2015. The omnipotent president Loukachenko is starting his campaign looking for a 5th mandate. As Kostia celebrates his18th birthday and gets ready to vote for the first time, he takes us around in his village and among his relatives as they all try to understand and conceive their country and their future.
Gopi was the youngest and first intersexual to run in the Legislative Assembly elections in the state of Tamil Nadu in India. Everyday, Gopi fights for the rights of the intersex people and the LGBTQIA community.
By 2045, twenty localities in Germany will be resettled because of brown coal open pit mining. The film Waste Land follows the inhabitants of three villages in the Rhenish coal-mining district during their last years in their old home and documents how an entire region prepares for its collective relocation.
A documentary about Top Value Television (TVTV), a band of merry video makers who, from 1972 to 1977, took the then brand-new portable video camera and went out to document the world.
A portrait of Japanese master chef Hiroji Obayashi and his wife Yasuyo over a sixteen-year year span as they managed the day to day operation of their LA restaurant Hirozen Gourmet.
For over a decade, Russ "Rock Bottom" Byars and Kurt "Mountain Man" Steiner have endured a rivalry that lifted competitive stone skipping to unthinkable heights. Tested by physical ailments, emotional hardships and the rise of young talent, these obscure legends fight to cement their place in the record books.
'2E: Twice Exceptional' follows the personal journeys of a handful of middle school and high school students in Los Angeles who have been identified as 'twice exceptional' -- gifted or highly gifted individuals with learning disabilities or differences. They are geniuses, mavericks and dreamers -- Malcolm Gladwell's budding 'outliers.' Among them may be the next Einstein, Mozart or Steve Jobs... if they can survive the American school system and their own eccentricities.
Jesus' world is flipped upside down when his mother, Adelaida, undergoes emergency surgery to remove a brain tumor. Although most aspiring comedians build their careers on the road, Jesus juggles his responsibilities at home in Long Beach with open mics and auditions in the Los Angeles area, often driving more than two hours each way every day. As the pressure of his budding career mounts, the family receives more devastating news: Jesus’ father, Antonio, is diagnosed with stage 2 colon cancer. An only child, Jesus becomes his parents’ sole caregiver. Transforming adversity into comedy, he uses his life experience as material for his routine. He continues to reach for his dream while taking over his father’s landscaping business to keep the family afloat. When his set catches the eye of producers at The Late Late Show with James Corden, Jesus may have scored the big break he’s been banking on.
In 1957, decades before Steve Jobs dreamed up Apple or Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, a group of eight brilliant young men defected from the Shockley Semiconductor Company in order to start their own transistor business. Their leader was 29-year-old Robert Noyce, a physicist with a brilliant mind and the affability of a born salesman who would co-invent the microchip — an essential component of nearly all modern electronics today, including computers, motor vehicles, cell phones and household appliances. SILICON VALLEY tells the story of the pioneering scientists who transformed rural Santa Clara County into the hub of technological ingenuity we now know as Silicon Valley.
Black Indians are inhabitants of New Orleans neighborhoods , African-Americans who gather in tribes, make the most beautiful costumes of the world, and parade in the streets like African angels disguised as dreaming indians by affirming to the face of the world the pride, beauty, and humanity of their communities. This documentary pays tribute to the Indian spirits of the land of America as do the Big Chiefs of the tribes we follow throughout the film. Musical and danced, joyful, Black Indians takes us back to the roots of call and response , a musical form that is the last living tradition of African culture and one of the sources of jazz
The daughter of a Nebraska minister, Anna Louise Strong earned a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Chicago. But it was in the Pacific Northwest, where she witnessed the 1916 Everett massacre and chronicled the 1919 Seattle General Strike, that her political vision took shape. In Moscow she helped found the first English language newspaper, in Spain her many visits resulted in her book, Spain in Arms; and in China she interviewed Mao in a Yan'an cave in 1946. She is buried in Beijing in a special cemetery for martyrs of the revolution.
Documentary about the influence that master cello player Paul Katz has on four gifted cello players over the space of several years. It explores how music can influence and enhance the lives of both the teacher and his students.
Originally broadcast on PBS, the film features the Barrios, a middle-class family both activated and fractured by the conflict. Instead of fleeing their country, the siblings are guided by a religious and socialist desire to help those most vulnerable and destitute, mostly peasants in the rural areas.
'The Girl Who Cannot Speak' follows five women's true stories of sexual abuse. We began this project by meeting with women from all different backgrounds, ages, and walks of life. The level of sincerity, depth, and trust that is cultivated in this documentary is nothing short of impressive. Each woman has been involved with the Lenox Hill Women's Shelter in New York city. As the project moves forward we meet Charlotte a 13 year old girl who's story is depicted through visual images. She never speaks. Charlotte's image is a metaphor of innocence that ties all the women's unique stories together.
Madagascar is the fourth largest island in the world, known for its lemurs and unique biodiversity and as the setting of the popular animated films. But the real Madagascar is much different than the world imagines. 'Madagasikara' is the story of three resilient women fighting for the survival of their families and the education of their children against the overwhelming forces of domestic political instability, international political hypocrisy and the crushing poverty caused by both.
In the frigid waters off of Russia’s Bering Strait, Inuit and Chukchi hunters today still seek out the giant sea mammals that have provided their people with food since time immemorial. It is known, that the whale hunting today is controversial and subject to international criticism and regulations. But the Inuit and Chukchi hunt is permitted by international law because of the whaling is the foundation of their culture and their life.
The contemporary story of elders Aleksandr and Aleksei blends seamlessly with that of “the woman who gave birth to a whale” and other ancient myths, told here in vivid animation, in this ongoing struggle for survival and preservation of a traditional lifestyle in one of the most remote places on earth.
The foundation of today's multi-billion dollar art market still reverberates with the beautiful lies of one of the most prolific art forgers of the last century.
When the award-winning filmmaker of "An Ordinary Hero", Loki Mulholland, dives into the 400 year history of institutional racism in America he is confronted with the shocking reality that his family helped start it all from the very beginning.
An in-depth feature length documentary of one of America's greatest and least understood authors, Nelson Algren. This never before told compelling life story reveals a unique literary voice through rare interviews, archival footage and the gritty noirish voice of Algren on Algren. Kurt Vonnegut and Studs Terkel, literary giants in their own right, sing songs of praise along with many of his old friends, which makes this film seem like a hymn from the grave. This stylishly produced film embeds us in the 1950's cold war world when Algren worked. Algren's touching love affair with Simone de Beauvoir weaves it's way through the film along with the damaging impact of FBI and CIA surveillance.