Miyamoto-cho is a community of Mom-and-Pop stores and family enterprises located near the center of Tokyo. Competition from supermarkets and shopping centers threatens the livelihoods of long-term residents. High land prices tempt owners to tear down old homes and replace them with apartment buildings; this in turn is changing the composition of the population. Against this backdrop, residents strive to maintain the close social ties, symbols of local identity, and community rituals that keep Miyamoto-cho from becoming just another mailing address. Theodore Bestor began his research here in 1979. His prize winning book of the same name is available through Stanford University Press. This documentary is one of a series depicting the variety of life in today's Japan in the context of human problems common to all industrial nations. A comprehensive study guide is available.
The spectacular avant-garde choreographies of flamenco dancer Rocío Molina push at the boundaries of dance and the visual arts. She travels the world to perform her partly improvised impulsos at unusual venues such as modern art museums. This bio-doc follows Molina in the months leading up to a new show at Chaillot National Theater in Paris.
In the movies since he was an infant, Chris Olsen appeared in films by some of the best directors of the 1950's. Even though he never became a famous child actor, he played a pivotal role in some of the most iconic movies of the era. Retired since the age of 14, he looks back on his life as a child actor, trying to find the thread that ties his movie roles together.
In the 1960s, frustrated by the growing problem of urban pollution, Athelstan Spilhaus, a visionary scientist and futurist comic strip writer, assembled a team of experts to develop a bold experiment: the Minnesota Experimental City (MXC). MXC would be the city of the future, a domed metropolis for 250,000 pioneering residents, built from scratch and using cutting-edge technology to prevent urban sprawl and pollution. Things didn’t quite go as planned, as explored in Chad Friedrichs’ fascinating look back at the would-be city of tomorrow.
The incredible story of a man, a mission, and an organization that transcended race and gender to save New York City from a pit of despair in the late 1970's and 1980's.
This is the story of a tiny country that made a decision to do something that no other country had ever done -- it decided to abolish its army and declare peace to the world. And this is the story of a young boy who grew up in that country, and how he ended up challenging -- and sometimes even convincing -- the greatest powers in the world to follow Costa Rica's example. "Oscar Arias: Without a Shot Fired" is a Don Quixote-like saga with great historical touchstones -- Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Cold War politics and Communism, Central American War and Peace. It follows a slight, academic, and most unlikely hero over the course of more than fifty years, as he travels the world in a quest to stop the spread of the weapons of war. In the end, it is a story about the triumph of reason, of the sparrow triumphing over the eagle, and how the impossible dream can sometimes come true.
The Gauchos del Mar brothers perform an unprecedented expedition by foot with 35kgs+ on their backs during 53 days on the easternmost tip of Tierra del Fuego Province, a pristine area where no one lives. The brothers have the goal of surfing a world-class wave never ridden before at the Cape San Diego Lighthouse, the most easterly point. To get there they overcome heavy terrains, scarcity of food and harsh climate. With no communication whatsoever they document the region and decide to share their message of environmentalism, avoiding consumerism and living simply in order to protect Península Mitre forever!
Traces the new Cold War between Russia and the West from the ban on American citizens adopting Russian children to the Kremlin’s anti-LGBTQ campaign, which positions the international marriage equality movement as a national threat.
MARY JANES: THE WOMEN OF WEED follows female 'ganjapreneurs', who we call Puffragettes (as in Pot + Suffragette), as they navigate the highs and lows of the legal US cannabis industry.
Renowned as the richest gold strike in North American mining history, the Klondike Gold Rush (1896-1899) set off a stampede of over 100,000 people on a colossal journey from Alaska to the gold fields of Canada's Yukon Territory. Filled with the frontier spirit, prospectors came and gave rise to what was one of the largest cities in Canada at that time - Dawson City. The boomtown, which became known as "the Paris of the North", earned the reputation as a place where lives could be revolutionized. Brought to life with excerpts from the celebrated book The Klondike Stampede - published in 1900 by Harper's Weekly correspondent Tappan Adney - and featuring interviews with award-winning author Charlotte Gray, and historians Terrence Cole and Michael Gates, The Klondike Gold Rush is an incredible story of determination, luck, fortune, and loss. In the end, it isn't all about the gold, but rather the journey to the Klondike itself.
In the land of the Rising Sun, love and relationships are in danger. A quarter of all Japanese aged 30 to 40 are virgins and 50% of the population admits to not having sex regularly. Unsurprisingly, this has led to birth rates plummeting. But what are the reasons for this detachment from the world of love and sex?
An exploratory journey highlighting the largely unrecognized yet hugely vibrant Pan European feminist movement that is very much alive today, from Turkey to Portugal, by the way of the Balkans, to Italy, Spain and Portugal.
On the night she broke up with her boyfriend, a Florida deputy sheriff, Michelle O'Connell was found dead from a gunshot in the mouth. Next to her was her boyfriend's semi-automatic service pistol. The sheriff's office called it suicide, but was it? FRONTLINE and The New York Times investigate this death of a young, single mother, and what can go wrong when the police are faced with domestic violence allegations within their own ranks.
“Microbirth” is a 60 minute documentary looking at the latest scientific research about the microscopic events happening during childbirth.
“Microbirth” reveals the latest scientific thinking on how best to “seed” a baby’s microbiome in order to build the strongest possible immune system. This cutting-edge science has the potential to not only improve the health of our children across a lifetime, but also across generations still to come.
We explore how Artificial Intelligence will change your job as new research shows how much of what you do could be done by robots. From truckies to lawyers & doctors, we bring affected workers face to face with A.I. experts.
The Grammar Of Happiness follows the story of Daniel Everett among the extraordinary 'nonconvertible' Amazonian Pirah tribe, a group of indigenous hunter- gatherers whose culture and outlook on life has taken the world of linguistics by storm. As a young ambitious missionary three decades ago, Dan, a red-bearded towering American, decamped to the Amazon rain forest to save indigenous souls. His assignment was to translate the book of Mark into the tongue of the Pirah, a people whose puzzling speech seemed unrelated to any other on Earth. What he learned during his time with the Pirah led him to question the very foundations of his own deep beliefs. As a 'born again' atheist, Dan divorced his devout Christian wife and became estranged from his children. Having lost faith and family, his new life is dominated by the desire to leave behind his legacy. Everett's most controversial claim is that the Pirah language lacks 'recursion' - the ability to build an infinite number of sentences.
From an official perspective, marginal youth culture did not exist in East Germany. The topic of subcultures was taboo in the GDR, and groups such as goths, skinheads, anti-skins, punks and neo-Nazis were dismissed as social deviations promoted by western countries. Director Roland Steiner had access to such young East Germans in the late 1980s. Over the course of four years, he brought them before the camera in an attempt to understand what drew them to these groups.