Shot during the summer of 1970 at Fort Knox, Kentucky, Frederick Wiseman’s film Basic Training focuses on a group of men going through infantry training, showing how they are turned from civilians into soldiers. As well as being a unique portrait of the US army at work, the film is also a fascinating snapshot of a time and place at a defining moment in American history.
THE STORE is a film about the main Neiman-Marcus store and corporate headquarters in Dallas. The sequences in the film include the selection, presentation, marketing, pricing, advertising and selling of a vast array of consumer products including designer clothes and furs, jewelry, perfumes, shoes, electronic products, sportswear, china and porcelain and many other goods. The internal management and organizational aspects of a large corporation are shown, i.e., sales meetings, development of marketing and advertising strategies, training, personnel practices and sales techniques.
The story of a mom whose son healed from all allergies and asthma after consuming raw milk, and real food from farms. It depicts people all over the country who formed food co-ops and private clubs to get these foods, and how they were raided by state and local governments.
The sixth film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series illustrates Japan's occupation of China, including Madame Chiang Kai-Shek's stirring address before congress, the rape of Nanking, the great 2,000 mile migration, and Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers.
In March 1998 in Aspen, Colorado, the surviving members of the Monty Python team – John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin – shared a stage together for the first time in 18 years. Even more remarkably, Graham Chapman was there too....in an urn! The occasion for this reunion was the US Comedy Arts Festival Tribute to Monty Python, hosted by Robert Klein in front of a live audience.
Emily Hagins is making a zombie movie. It's feature-length, it's bloody, and the zombies don't run. Just like it should be. But there's just one difference between her film and every other zombie movie you've ever seen. Emily is twelve.
The story of the recovery of the negatives of thousands of photos taken by three photographers during the Spanish Civil War that were found seventy years later in a suitcase, inside a closet in Mexico City.
Khodorkovsky, the richest Russian, challenges President Putin. A fight of the titans begins. Putin warns him. But Khodorkovsky comes back to Russia knowing that he will be imprisoned, once he returns. When I heard about it, I asked myself: why didn't he stay in exile with a couple of billions? Why did he do that? A personal journey to Khodorkovsky.
Documentary filmmaker Doug Block had every reason to believe his parents' 54-year marriage was a good one. But when his mother dies unexpectedly and his father swiftly marries his former secretary, he discovers two parents who are far more complex and troubled than he ever imagined. 51 Birch Street is a riveting personal documentary that explores a universal human question: how much about your parents do you really want to know?
In a quest for a new, more humane society, a counter-culture revolution takes the world by storm. In the first of the InterReflections Trilogy, we look back to the modern world and wonder how it was we managed to survive as long as we had.
Over a quarter of a century since it began and a decade after it folded, this is the definitive film about Creation Records, one of the world's most successful and colorful independent labels. This is the story of the rock n roll dream and its accompanying nightmares. Millions of sales on both sides of the Atlantic, near bankruptcy, pills, thrills, spats, prats, success, excess, pick me ups, breakdowns and of course some of THE defining music of the late 20th Century. This is the definitive and fully authorised story of the UK's most inspired and dissolute label, from the Jesus & Mary Chain at the Living Room to Oasis at Knebworth.
In the years before Ronald Reagan took office, Manhattan was in ruins. But true art has never come from comfort, and it was precisely those dire circumstances that inspired artists like Jim Jarmusch, Lizzy Borden, and Amos Poe to produce some of their best works. Taking their cues from punk rock and new wave music, these young maverick filmmakers confronted viewers with a stark reality that stood in powerful contrast to the escapist product being churned out by Hollywood.
A documentary film released in 2000 about two American families with young deaf children and their conflict over whether or not to give their children cochlear implants, surgically implanted devices that may improve their ability to hear but may threaten their deaf identity.
Actor Val Kilmer narrates this powerful film exploring the methamphetamine epidemic that's ravaged blue-collar America. Putting a human face on the problem, filmmaker Justin Hunt reveals the damage being done by this rural drug of choice, as well as the steps being taken by communities across the nation to wipe out the scourge. From Wyoming to New Mexico, Montana and Oregon, American Meth paints a picture of both devastation and hope.
The dance performance “Kontakthof” bears the unmistakable signature of Pina Bausch: it deals with forms of human contact, encounters between the sexes, and the search for love and tenderness, with all its attendant anxieties, yearnings and doubts. It is a dance about feelings, which always pose a big challenge – particularly for young people. Teenagers from more than eleven schools in Wuppertal went on an emotional journey that lasted almost a year. Every Saturday, forty students aged between fourteen and eighteen years of age took part in rehearsals that were led by Bausch-dancers Jo-Ann Endicott and Bénédicte Billiet and intensely supervised by Pina Bausch herself.
This documentary offers a rare glimpse of the legendary Soviet filmmaker, Andrei Tarkosvky, at work. Tarkovsky made only seven films in his brief, but brilliant, career; Michal Leszczylowski's respectful movie chronicles him at work on his last film, The Sacrifice. Offering insight into Tarkovsky's working methods and transcendental aesthetics, the movie is a compelling account of the difficulties of film production. In the case of an uncompromising and visionary filmmaker like Tarkovsky, the practical problems of filmmaking are only magnified, as cast and crew struggle to realize the ambitious concepts in Tarkovsky's mind.
For more than 100 years, the Statue of Liberty has been a symbol of hope and refuge for generations of immigrants. In this lyrical, compelling and provocative portrait of the statue, Ken Burns explores both the history of America’s premier symbol and the meaning of liberty itself. Featuring rare archival photographs, paintings and drawings, readings from actual diaries, letters and newspapers of the day, the fascinating story of this universally admired monument is told. In interviews with Americans from all walks of life, including former New York governor Mario Cuomo, the late congresswoman Barbara Jordan and the late writers James Baldwin and Jerzy Kosinski, The Statue of Liberty examines the nature of liberty and the significance of the statue to American life. Nominated for both the Academy Award ® and the Emmy Award ®, The Statue of Liberty received the prestigious CINE Golden Eagle, the Christopher Award and the Blue Ribbon at the American Film Festival.
Guerilla filmmaker Brendan Toller unleashes I NEED THAT RECORD! THE DEATH (OR POSSIBLE SURVIVAL) OF THE INDEPENDENT RECORD STORE, "an elegy for a vanishing subculture...a lively, bittersweet film that examines - with caustic humor, brutal candor, and, ultimately, great affection - why roughly 3,000 indie record stores have closed across the nation over the past decade," (Johnathan Perry, Boston Globe). A tour-de-force tale of greed, media consolidation, homogenized radio, big box stores, downloading, and technological shifts in the music industry told through candid interviews, crestfallen record store owners, startling statistics, and eye-popping animation. Fat cats or our favorite record stores? You decide. Featuring- IAN MACKAYE, NOAM CHOMSKY, MIKE WATT, THURSTON MOORE, LENNY KAYE (Patti Smith), CHRIS FRANTZ (Talking Heads), GLENN BRANCA, PATTERSON HOOD (Drive By Truckers), PAT CARNEY (Black Keys) , LEGS MCNEIL, BOB GRUEN, BP HELIUM, and many indie record stores across the U.S.