Hiding in the Walls unwinds the fraught history of lead poisoning in Baltimore and follows the adult survivors who are on a mission to reclaim the narrative.
A haunting story of the FBI's dark hand in American life. In 2015, Khalil Abu-Rayyan was just a young Muslim man in Detroit, Michigan: to get by, he delivered food for his family's pizzeria. Depressed and lonely, Khalil found solace in smoking weed and looking at extremist material online. Then two young women started messaging him, and he fell in love. But one of them suggested he start doing increasingly violent things. Nothing was as it seemed. And Khalil's life would never be the same. A documentary by Garret Harkawik for the Gravel Institute.
In 1968 Roger Smith ate a peach during a break from work. When he was finished he took out a pocketknife and began carving the peach pit into a tiny pig. 43 years later the retired meter reader and cattle rancher from Culloeka, Tennessee, has carved hundreds of peach seeds into hummingbirds, stingrays, gospel choirs, entire villages, even a baseball stadium with more than 100 figures. "Given enough time," says Smith, "I don't think there is anything you can't make out of a peach seed."
With rare access inside Pelican Bay State Prison, we hear inmates' experiences of living in long term solitary confinement. This short documentary offers a visceral snapshot of the day-in-the-life inside one of the most notorious supermax prisons in the U.S.
Over 90 percent of the available lands in the Greater Chaco region of the Southwest have already been leased for oil and gas extraction. Witness the Indigenous-led work to protect the remaining lands that are untouched by oil and gas, as well as the health and well-being of communities surrounded by these extractive industries.
With no roads connecting its coastal communities, a humble boat and its Irish crew move quietly in the background giving rare access to remote villages up into the Arctic Circle. In near 24-hour daylight, sailing by vast icebergs and sharing midnight encounters with humpback whales, we are invited into homes and communities along the way. These heartfelt interactions reveal a generous and inviting people battling to hold onto a culture that forms their identity. A hunting society turned capitalist, local hunters no longer feed their communities. As the ice disappears around them, what future beckons? Perhaps one that offers an easier type of living, but one that brings its own difficulties. This is a celebration of Greenland’s culture, a lament for a changing way of life and a yearning for a positive future for a culture facing such uncertain times.
The textures and complexities of everyday life in India unfold in Michael Camerini's richly observed story of two poor women and their efforts to improve their lives.
A West Virginia community is deeply divided over potentially life and death questions over a local chemical plant that fuels the area's fragile economy.
Lisa Herdahl, a Mississippi mother of six, is forced to sue her public school district in order to have The Bible removed from her childrens' classrooms.
African-American residents in Norco, Louisiana, who believe that increasing pollution is negatively impacting their health, demand to be relocated from under the shadow of a Shell oil refinery.
An unprecedented and unflinching look at how the citizens of South Africa are living with the AIDS epidemic, given the climate of governmental confusion and neglect.
On October 30, 1969, Pete O'Neal, a young Black Panther in Kansas City, Missouri, was arrested for transporting a gun across state lines. One year later, O'Neal fled the charge, and for over 30 years, he has lived in Tanzania as one of the last American exiles from an era when activists considered themselves at war with the U.S. government. Today, this community organizer confronts very different challenges and finds himself living between two worlds — America and Africa, his radical past and his uncertain future.
This documentary follows the life of a one-of-a-kind man, and his one-of-a-kind library. Luis Soriano is a Colombian schoolteacher who spends weekends taking his donkey, and book collection, to the poverty-ridden towns of Magdalena Province. Facing down drug dealers, dangerous creatures, and overbearing heat, Soriano bravely faces down fear to promote education and literature.
"First-Class Citizen" is a Swedish-Lithuanian documentary about power and control from the micro (family) to the macro (country) level. This documentary is a wake-up call to all of us who care.
Set in the high plateau of eastern Tibet, DROKPA is an intimate portrait of the lives and struggles of Tibetan nomads whose life is on the cusp of irreversible change as once lush grasslands are rapidly turning into deserts. The grasslands of the Tibetan plateau are home to the source of Asia’s major rivers. Nearly half of humanity depends on this water for survival. Tibetan nomads, known as DROKPA have roamed on this land for thousands of years.
In 1976, Hubert Smith set out with a group of researchers to visually document Yucatec Maya society within the village of Chican. This project resulted in the 4-part series, The Living Maya. During filming, however, it was impossible to ignore the use of sign language in the village. Smith and his team saw a lot of the deaf residents, filmed them often, and went back to have these sign exchanges translated. Now it is time to share a story solely about them.
The film exposes the life of women who have been trafficked in various parts of India. Some of them have been trafficked because of debt bondage and some for sexual exploitation.