In Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, the Vida/Sida Cacica Pageant brings together members of the Puerto Rican community to celebrate its transgender participants. I Am The Queen follows Bianca, Julissa and Jolizza as they prepare for the pageant under the guidance of Ginger Valdez, an experienced transgender from the neighborhood. These trans women share stories of their transition, their relatives’ varying reactions, and how they find support from within the community. Family dynamics, cultural heritage, and personal identity all play a part in how the contestants face the daily struggle that comes from being true to themselves.
In the little town of Herzsprung - whose name harks back to an ancient legend of broken hearts - almost nothing has changed since German unification, except a rise in unemployment. Johanna, a young mother and widow, becomes one of the unemployed and lives on welfare. To make matters worse, she falls in love with a dark-skinned, roving adventurer and the whole village starts talking about it.
In this documentary companion to CHARLIE'S COUNTRY, Australian actor David Gulpilil tells the story of when his people's way of life was derailed by ours.
A woman waits for a man at a deserted railroad station somewhere in northern New England. It is the middle of winter. Snow is falling. The two drive to a remote farmhouse. Later two strange children appear at the window, and an old woman summons them away. Isolation, then alienation overcome the couple. The woman has a dream which comes true. She disappears. Nothing is explained. Only footprints remain in the snow that covers the supernatural landscape.
The Marina Experiment' is the result of over 10,000 photographs, super 8 home footage and reel to reel audiotape interrogations that director Marina Lutz's father made of her during her upper class upbringing in 1960s and 1970s Manhattan. A both eerie and infinitely fascinating archive that she herself has now sorted out and reassembled. Her father's transgressive voyeurism is turned against himself, while a courageous self portrait simultaneously grows out of the almost incestuously intimate 'home movies'. The result is a family exposé that can't be shaken off that easily, and which in an intelligent and absolutely unique way raises the question about the right to not be seen - a question that has become even more relevant in the present day.
The Day the '60s Died chronicles May 1970, the month in which four students were shot dead at Kent State. The mayhem that followed has been called the most divisive moment in American history since the Civil War. From college campuses, to the jungles of Cambodia, to the Nixon White House, the film takes us back into that turbulent spring 45 years ago.
A beautiful dancer hangs on the razor's edge between reality and fantasy as she asks her friends to help her figure out the passions and relationships that have shaped who they are and who they will become.
In 1963 in the countryside in England, fifteen men pulled off 'The Great Train Robbery' netting today's equivalent of $85million. This incredible film features Gordon Goody, one of the instigators of the crime, for the first time ever, revealing the identity of the missing mastermind behind Britain's most famous heist- the elusive and mysterious 'Ulsterman'.
A video essay exploring the frequency and meaning of that particular prop in a wide variety of Sirk movies. Is it a device that traps and keeps women in an artificial world with a limited point of view? Or is it a gateway to the past and the future, and a distorted but nevertheless real vision of the roles that woman are forced to play in society? It's an exploration of the texts and subtexts of commercial films and the subterranean and complicated ways that they affect us and can be read.
Tells the story of an idealistic young politician's rise and fall. Daam, a well-intentioned but vacillating European-trained politician must choose between two social paradigms exemplified by his two wives. The first, Gagnesiri, is the village beauty, who waits patiently for Daam. Unfortunately, they are unable to conceive a child, so Daam takes European-educated Kiné, who is eager to get ahead by marrying a politician. Daam becomes involved in a shady business deal with Président, a local businessman; when the details are made public, he is forced out in disgrace.
In 2014, scientists declared West Antarctic ice sheet melt unstoppable, threatening the future of our planet. A group of world-class researchers is in a race to understand climate change in the fastest winter-warming place on earth: the West Antarctic Peninsula. Trekking through dangerous and uncharted landscape, these scientists push the limits of their research and come to terms with the sacrifices necessary to understand this rapidly changing world.
This documentary film explores the revival of manual work through the passion of motorcycle enthusiasts who have found their way to a happy life. Shot in 16mm in California, Utah, Indonesia, Spain, Scotland and France, we have spent time with mechanics and custom shop founders trying to understand the difference between manual work and intellectual work. The unique satisfaction that result from doing something tangible, the sense of time, the relation between the form and the function, the joy of riding in a beautiful landscape and the community and friendship that motorcycle creates.
The Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing is one of the most famous bridges in China. It is also the most popular place in the world to commit suicide. For the past 11 years Chen Si has been patrolling this bridge, looking to provide aid for those who've gone there to end their lives. Incredibly, he has saved over 300 people since he began - nearly one every two weeks.
The American craft beer industry is booming like never before. One-and-a-half craft breweries open each day—but far fewer make it to year two. Follow along with in-depth profiles of passionate founders and brewmasters as they struggle to navigate and maintain their place in the industry and in the communities that surround them.
Follows several of Cuba's top drag racers as they struggle to prepare their classic American cars for the first official car race since the Cuban Revolution. It tells a personal, character-driven story that tackles how Cuba's recent reforms have affected the lives of these racers and their vibrant community.
Yasmine and Rachid, two young Parisians children of Algerian immigrants, are in love and live a quiet life in France. One day, Rachid disappears and Yasmine learns that he is in Algeria. She decides to follow him, in that country that she does not know, that is filled with violence. As she travels looking for Rachid, she falls deeper into the horror of a country where nothing seems normal, another world, where death is ever present.
C.S. Lewis's biographer A.N. Wilson goes in search of the man behind Narnia, a highly secretive man whose personal life was marked by the loss of the three women he most loved.
To fulfill the last wish of her deceased mother, grieving Holly seeks out love and finds it in Matthew; their relationship swiftly becomes very close and all-encompassing. After receiving the news of Matthew’s ailing mother, both arrive to provide care in her final days, only to be faced with a nightmarish reality spiraling out of control.
Sailing a Sinking Sea is a feature-length experimental documentary exploring the culture of the Moken people of Burma and Thailand. The Moken are seafaring people and one of the smallest ethnic minority groups in Asia. Wholly reliant upon the sea, their entire belief system, education, and economic and physical development revolve around water. Sailing a Sinking Sea illuminates the Moken lifestyle through recorded traditional music, folklore and conversations with the Moken people. Through intimate and dynamic cinematography and audio recordings, Sailing a Sinking Sea weaves a visual and aural tapestry of Moken mythologies and present-day practices.
A towboat drifts down the Mississippi River, due for the port of New Orleans. The water, the banks, the bright lights of a port ahead; the lure of a coming paycheck and a home-cooked meal. This is the world of BARGE. A green deckhand following his father into the family business. A former convict working his way upward job by job, in the hopes of being First Mate. A thirty-eight year veteran engineer in no hurry to retire. An ancient waterway pulling a double shift as the backbone of a national economy; a tangle of thick steel cables, tied together just right. As long as the boat’s moving, they’re making money. An intimate portrait of the machinery of American ambitions.