Chelsea on the Rocks celebrates the personalities and artistic voices that have emerged from New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel. Once considered an untouchable, impenetrable tower for writers, artists, musicians and mavericks, it has been recently claimed as a boutique hotel venture for a management company that shows disregard for its formidable history. –Cannes Film Festival
Hosted by Samuel L. Jackson, this in-depth documentary offers viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the history of the martial arts film -- from the genre's rebellious beginnings to high-flying modern epics. Jackson takes you through the best moments of 100 movies, including Charlie's Angels and Oscar winner Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Interviews with martial arts film veterans Sammo Hung, John Woo and Ang Lee round out the video.
Michel Recanati was a militant leader in the May, 1968 riots in Paris, organizing many groups to meet, discuss, and act on leftist principles both before and after the disturbances. He was imprisoned for a short while in 1973. Disillusioned after the failure of the demonstrations and the death of the only woman he had loved, his life seems to have changed from a period of hope and activism to one of bottomless despair. His friend, Romain Goupil wrote and directed this biographical documentary. Death at 30 received the 1982 Cannes Film Festival's Golden Camera Award for "Best First Feature-Length Film."
Seminal piece of documentary filmmaking by New Wave director Karel Reisz following the daily activities of members of the Lambeth Youth club in late-1950s London.
The documentary narrates the successes of the Dutch champion Johan Cruyff (three times winner of the Ballon d'Or), which in the seventies was a symbol of the great Dutch national soccer team, and representative of the so-called total soccer, expressed during the two World Finals in Monaco 1974 and Argentina 1978
On December 10th, 2006, General Pinochet dies unexpectedly at Santiago's Military Hospital. His decease triggers a 24 hours revival of political divisions that marked with violence and death Chilean recent history. With high quality original footage and testimonies of four characters that deeply experienced a journey of strong contrasts and surrealistic nuances, the film narrates in an innovative, exciting way the ending of a key chapter in Chilean history.
In September, 1959, six Europeans leave Cook's Bay on the southern coast of Dutch New Guinea, now West Papua or Irian Jaya, to trek north to the far side of the island. The journey (450 miles, as a crow flies) across unmapped territory took seven months; three Muyu porters died. Near both coasts, the expedition met villagers who invited them to observe rituals and live with them. In the interior, all villagers kept them at bay, and they depended on air lifts from Hollandia for food and supplies. They climbed above 10,000 feet, built 14 bridges, and fought leeches and malaria. The narrator focuses on describing Stone Age savages, headhunters, and cannibals.
100 Days. 100 gritty souls. 100 wild mustangs. That's the premise of the annual Extreme Mustang Makeover, a competition that challenges horse trainers - both pros and amateurs - to each tame a totally wild horse in order to get it adopted into a better life beyond U.S. Government corrals. Intimately following a handful of participants in the 2009 event from their first uneasy meeting with their horses and up through the competition and adoption, the film documents the deep and profound bonds that can develop between man and beast.
In At Night I Fly: Images from New Folsom, inmates at one of California's most maximum security prisons let us see their world. This world is less about dangerous drama and more, as one of them describes, "about isolation. About closure of both the mind and the heart. And the spirit." The documentary shows prisoners, most serving a life sentence, who refuse such closure and instead work to uncover and express themselves. Their primary tool is making art and the film takes us to New Folsom's Arts in Corrections' room, to prison poetry readings, gospel choirs, blues guitar on the yard, and to many more scenes of creation.
Route One is the first major U.S. highway. 5000 km along the Atlantic coast, from the Canadian border to the tip of Florida. Doc, a physician who spent many years in Africa, returns to the U.S. and decides to reconnect with his home country by walking the legendary Route One.
Two hunters set out on safari with their African guide. They observe zebras, an ostrich, and a hippopotamus, capture a monkey, and camp for the night. After a lion kills their goat and horse, they shoot it by the water’s edge and later kill a second. The animals are skinned, and the hunters relax with cigarettes beside their trophies. (Note: Produced by Nordisk Film in 1907, Løvejagten gained notoriety because founder Ole Olsen purchased lions from Copenhagen Zoo, released them on an island, and filmed their killing. Supplemented with zoo footage to simulate Africa, the film caused public outrage yet drew huge audiences, establishing Nordisk’s reputation worldwide.)
In May of 2011, Neil Young drove a 1956 Crown Victoria from his idyllic hometown of Omemee, Ontario to downtown Toronto's iconic Massey Hall where he intimately performed the last two nights of his solo world tour. Along the drive, Young recounted insightful and introspective stories from his youth to filmmaker Jonathan Demme. Through the tunes and the tales, Demme portrays a personal, retrospective look into the heart and soul of the artist.