A heartwarming tale about the turning point in the life of an elite business man in his fifties and a local train that has been running since 1911. Hajime is in line to be the next head of a prominent electronics company. He toils day and night over his work and has no time for his family. But one day, his mother in Shimane falls ill, and his best friend dies in an accident. Grief-stricken, Hajime returns home, where memories of his childhood dream come back to him. He had always wanted to be a train conductor and drive the local "bataden" Ichibata Electric Railway.
An autobiographical film taken from the experiences of writer-director Rob Moretti, CRUTCH is a coming-of-age tale about a young man's struggle with family problems and substance abuse. Behind a facade of suburban middle class perfection, David's home life is falling apart. As he tries to cope with the impossible situation, the troubled and impressionable teenager falls under the spell of Kenny, a georgous, thirty-something, has-been actor turned theatre coach. When Kenny's "support" escalates into seduction, David slowly decends into an abyss of drinking and drug addition from which he must escape if he is to survive. CRUTCH is a dramatic tale of the confusion of youth and the difficulties in finding oneself.
Ranged across several generations, the story begins with a wealthy merchant, Lind, and his wife travelling in the coldest depths of winter to christen their baby daughter. Attacked by wolves, they lose the baby, which is found by the Lapp Jaampa (a dominating performance by Tryggve Larssen) and subsequently raised by a rich reindeer herder,
Adapted from James Joyce's Ulysses, Bloom is the enthralling story of June 16th, 1904 and a gateway into the consiousness of its three main characters: Stephen Dedalus, Molly Bloom and the extraordinary Leopold Bloom.
Camp Victory, Afghanistan is the true story of the American Exit Strategy. Using 300 hours of footage shot over the course of three years, the film follows a battle-tested Afghan General and the steady stream of U.S. National Guard soldiers deployed to train the men of his newly formed battalion. It is the first film to examine the reality of building a functioning Afghan military-- but it is also a story about friendship and the unlikely bonds that form across cultural, political and social barriers.
Peter Karena, his wife Colleen, their six children and many horses live almost wild in the stunning beauty of New Zealand's rugged Ruahine Mountains. Until, that is, Peter's escalating battle with his own father has profound consequences for the whole clan.
Mickey Mouse Monopoly takes a close and critical look at the world these films create and the stories they tell about race, gender and class and reaches disturbing conclusions about the values propagated under the guise of innocence and fun. This daring new video insightfully analyzes Disney's cultural pedagogy, examines its corporate power, and explores its vast influence on our global culture. Including interviews with cultural critics, media scholars, child psychologists, kindergarten teachers, multicultural educators, college students and children, Mickey Mouse Monopoly will provoke audiences to confront comfortable assumptions about an American institution that is virtually synonymous with childhood pleasure.
Robinson is commissioned to investigate the unspecified "problem of England." The narrator describes his seven excursions, with the unseen Robinson, around the country. They mainly concentrate on ports, power stations, prisons, and manufacturing plants, but they also bring in various literary connections, as well as a few conventional landscapes.
This conservative documentary from John Ziegler poses a conspiratorial theory that President Obama was elected through mischievous actions by the media. As part of his theory, Ziegler posits that the press had to put forth a partisan agenda in order to portray vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin as inept and pandering.
Nigeria's film industry, Nollywood, is the third-largest in the world--an unstoppable economic and cultural force that has taken the continent by storm and is now bursting beyond the borders of Africa. "Nollywood Babylon" is a feature documentary detailing the industry's phenomenal success. Propelled by a booming 1970s soundtrack of African underground music, the movie presents an electric vision of a modern African metropolis and a revealing look at the powerhouse that is Nigerian cinema.
Nada, a beautiful French journalist on assignment in New York, records the life and work of an up and coming punk rock star, Billy. Soon she enters into a volatile relationship with him and must decide whether to continue with it, or return to her lover, a fellow journalist trying to track down the elusive Andy Warhol.
"I'm not black, I'm not white, not foreign, just different in the mind. Different brains, that's all," explains 15-year-old Billy in Jennifer Venditti's provocative coming of age film. Following Billy as he bicycles through the quiet streets of small town Maine, we watch him traverse the frustrating gap between imagination and reality, grappling with isolation and first-time young love. By turns exhilarating and disturbing, we see the world from the intimate view of an expressive and seemingly fearless outsider.
This documentary of repressive political realities in Cameroon begins with the 1990 publication of an open letter to President Biya calling for a national conference - and the immediate arrest of the letter's author and publisher. The narration then examines the nation's colonial history, beginning with the first German missionary in 1901, the establishment of schools, French occupation following World War I, the paucity of books written by and published by Cameroonians, and the repression of the CPU, a leftist organization of the 1950s and 1960s. Cameroon and its people are the lark, its feathers plucked first by colonialism and then by native strongmen: 'Alouette, je te plumerai.'
The notion that oil motivates America's military engagements in the Middle East is often disregarded as nonsense or mere conspiracy theory. In Blood and Oil, bestselling author and Nation magazine defense correspondent Michael T. Klare challenges this conventional wisdom and corrects the historical record. The film unearths declassified documents and highlights forgotten passages in prominent presidential doctrines to show how concerns about oil have been at the core of American foreign policy for more than 60 years -- rendering our contemporary energy and military policies virtually indistinguishable. In the end, Blood and Oil calls for a radical re-thinking of US energy policy, warning that unless we change direction, we stand to be drawn into one oil war after another as the global hunt for diminishing world petroleum supplies accelerates.
This is an interesting look at the Life and Times of car customizer/cartoonist Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. Through the use of many graphically enhanced photographs and "talking" cars, it is a loving look at the car culture in Southern California from the Early 50's to Ed's Passing in 2001.
In a society where "celebutantes" like Paris Hilton dominate newsstands and models who weigh less than 90 pounds die from malnutrition, female body image is one of the more dire problems facing today's society. "America the Beautiful" illuminates the issue by covering every base. Child models, plastic surgery, celebrity worship, airbrushed advertising, dangerous cosmetics - no rock is left unturned.