Impoverished, childless and living in a garbage dump, Miguel and Lina become instant celebrities when Lina miraculously becomes pregnant. But Lina gives birth to a fish, which increases her celebrity but leaves Miguel humiliated and the couple at odds. What follows is an illuminating examination of how this unusual family copes and compromises in the face of a modern-day miracle.
From silent film star Sessue Hayakawa to Harold and Kumar Go to Whitecastle, the Slanted Screen examines the portrayal Asian men in film and television, and how new filmmakers are now re-defining age-old stereotypes.
In this documentary, historians, politicians and actors (including Danny Glover and Sissy Spacek) try to illuminate the quixotic nature of founding father Thomas Jefferson, focusing on his views about slavery and rumored affair with his slave Sally Hemmings. Though many consider Jefferson America's most influential political logician, his life was a series of paradoxes. Edward Herrmann is featured as the voice of the conflicted aristocrat. [netflix]
More than 20 contemporary North American poets recite, sing, and perform their work. Early in the film, Charles Bukowski talks about the energy of poets and of a poem. These poets are the children of Walt Whitman and of Charles Olson, incantatory and oratorical, radical, sometimes incorporating contemporary political imagery. Black Mountain poets, the Beats, minimalists like John Cage, the wordless Four Horsemen, Tom Waits, and others capture aspects of poets as troubadours.
The Cola Conquest tells the story of Coca-Cola - the 'sublimated essence' of all that American stands for - and the century-long competition with its rival, Pepsi-Cola. Challenging, fast-paced, irreverent, serious and funny by turns, it explores the delicious paradox at the heart of Coke: How did an innocuous soft drink come to wield such enormous power and assume such significance in so many people's lives? What does it tell us about who we are and what we are becoming?
Montreal of another time is reborn into screen through images from a hundred of movies and shorts produced by the National Film Board of Canada while at its first four decades of existence. Port activities, musical shows, presence of Church, labors life, hockey fever and the best years of "Red Light" are few of the chapters of this collective family album.
A documentary that follows people from communities in the Southern United States in their various processes of becoming involved in social change, with special emphasis on the work the
An introduction to the pop culture history of comics and animation in Japan, particularly adult comics, and the obsessive fantasy world of comic & animation fans.
Rich in humor and regional color, this sometimes hilarious film uses the prism of language to reveal our attitudes about the way other people speak. From Boston Brahmins to Black Louisiana teenagers, from Texas cowboys to New York professionals, American Tongues elicits funny, perceptive, sometimes shocking, and always telling comments on American English in all its diversity. (PBS)
A documentary that re-frames Human Rights issues as the most pressing issue in childbirth today; calling for radical change to the world's maternity systems - this is the Mothers' Revolution. In many countries around the world, women are being denied the most basic human right of autonomy over their own bodies. They cannot choose how and where to give birth. Those that persist in their desire to have a normal, physiological birth are sometimes forced by judges to surrender to surgery or threatened with having their babies taken away by child welfare services. In many countries, if a woman wants to have a home birth supported by a midwife, those midwives face criminal prosecution. Some midwives, like Ágnes Geréb in Hungary, are even imprisoned. FREEDOM FOR BIRTH calls for radical reform to the world’s maternity systems so that these Human Rights violations stop and women are afforded real choice as to how and where they give birth.
This electrifying film documents the efforts of Vincent Bugliosi, one of our nation's foremost prosecutors, as he presents his case that former president George W. Bush should be prosecuted for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq because he deliberately took our nation to war under false pretenses. Based on Bugliosi's New York Times bestseller, the movie discloses shocking hidden details of how Bush and his people systematically lied to Congress and the country. He shows incontrovertible evidence that Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al committed a monumental crime under our constitution and the laws of this land. He leads us through a legal understanding of what is needed to bring a formal prosecution, setting the stage for what would be the biggest and most important trial in U.S. history.
Abigail Harm is a woman living in a fictionalized New York City, who, after being granted a wish by a strange visitor, asks for love and learns of a creature who might provide it. Inspired by the Korean folktale "The Woodcutter and the Nymph.
When a bus driver takes a break from his route, a very unlikely volunteer springs up to take his place -- a pigeon! But you've never met one like this before.