The incredible story of the unlikely rise of The Drew League from humble beginnings in the crime and gang infested streets of South Central Los Angeles to the nation's foremost pro-am basketball league. Crossing racial, cultural and socioeconomic barriers, The Drew celebrates the value of basketball, persistence, loyalty and above all, community.
A sailing family makes 20 ocean voyages over two decades, sometimes following the path of Captain Cook, but more frequently following nothing but their own hearts and the siren call of adventure.
Although scientists and agribusiness have started touting edible insects as the future of sustainable food, the notion of eating bugs hasn’t exactly gained much popularity among the general public. Head Chef Ben Reade and Lead Researcher Josh Evans from the Nordic Food Lab in Denmark are looking to change that. With a focus on food diversity and deliciousness, they set out on a globe-trotting mission to take on the politics of the palate, sampling grubs in the Australian outback, pillaging giant wasp nests in Japan and attending food expos where entrepreneurs pitch their flavorless farmed crickets. Along the way, they put their own haute cuisine spin on local insect delicacies, whipping up dishes like cricket and grasshopper ravioli, maggot cheese gelato and bee larva ceviche.
Two best friends spent the last fifteen years touring the country in their performance art punk band. When one of them decides to quit, they both face deeper challenges than expected.
Last seen in the West End 15 years ago, Miss Saigon has become one of the most successful musicals in history, seen by 40 million people worldwide. From the process of casting 40 actors from 18 different countries, to the reinvention of the staging, including the famous helicopter scene, The Heat is Back On takes us on a journey through rehearsals right up to the star-studded opening night. Featuring interviews with legendary producer Cameron Mackintosh, authors Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg and many of the award-winning cast and creative team.
The Broken Spoke has hosted country greats like George Strait, Willie Nelson, Ernest Tubb, Bob Wills, George Jones, and Roy Acuff. A profile of “the last of the true Texas dance halls” and the tenacious family keeping it alive amid rapid urban growth.
With a career spanning decades Photographer Rose Hartman is known for her iconic photos from Studio 54 and the fashion world, her boisterous personality, and ever presence capturing the New York social scene. The film follows Rose through her life of entrée as she put the lives of the glamorous and famous on film that serves as one of the few visual histories of NYC.
In 1980s Los Angeles, a professional dwarf basketball team composed of recognizable-but-typecast actors finds itself the unwitting vanguard of a revolution to represent little people as something other than objects of curiosity.
An idealistic collective launches a TV channel in the very early days of portable video cameras. This wonderful lesson in journalism makes it clear just how perilous it is to promote your own view of society via autonomous media. From the tumultuous period of Woodstock, the Black Panthers, women’s lib and anti-Vietnam demonstrations.
Charles Lewis founded TapouT in 1997, prompting a whirlwind life that intersected the birth of a sport. Selling TapouT apparel out of the trunk of his car during road trips throughout California, a hot bed of mixed martial arts in the late 1990s, Lewis took on the superhero persona of “Mask" as he donned war paint on his face and wore outlandish comic book outfits. Mask's vision quickly came to represent hardcore aspects of MMA fandom at a time when the sport floundered under political pressure. The history of MMA cannot be told without mentioning Charles “Mask” Lewis, or the era in which he emerged. On March 11, 2009, Lewis was killed by a drunk driver in Newport Beach, Calif. To honor his contributions, the sport's dominant promoter, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), posthumously inducted "Mask" as the first and only non-fighter into the UFC Hall of Fame.
In an attempt to launch their careers, two young actors investigate a disturbing viral video of a French psychic's prophecy. As they shed light on the mysterious footage, their journey will test their friendship, threaten their lives and reveal a most troubling secret.
Digital Dissidents are the warriors of the digital age: republican patriots, radical anarchists and cyber-hippies fighting side by side for transparency and privacy in a digital world which is permeating our lives more and more. For this they are imprisoned, live in exile, and have lost careers and families. Why do they do it? What motivates them? What are they warning us about?
Forty years after its people were promised freedom by departing Spanish rulers, Western Sahara remains Africa's last colony. This film chronicles the everyday violence experienced by Sahrawis living under Moroccan occupation and voices the aspirations of a desert people for whom the era of colonialist never ended.
In 2013, United Methodist minister Frank Schaefer was defrocked for officiating at his son's same-sex wedding. Suddenly, the Reverend found himself an accidental LGBTQ activist. Considering all sides of the debate, this powerful documentary shows how the groundwork for a 2016 showdown that may transform American Christianity is being laid.
Between 1900 and 1920 more than 14 million immigrants arrived in the US, like Howard Zinn's parents. They came fleeing poverty or war, or racism, or religious persecution. They dreamed of a promised land, of wealth, or simply of a better life.
Althea Gibson’s life and achievements transcend sports. A truant from the rough streets of Harlem, Althea emerged as a most unlikely queen of the highly segregated tennis world in the 1950s. Her roots as a sharecropper’s daughter, her family’s migration north to Harlem in the 1930s, mentoring from Sugar Ray Robinson, David Dinkins and others, and fame that thrust her unwillingly into the glare of the early Civil Rights movement, all bring her story into a much broader realm of the American story.
Freedom From Choice explores the endless layers of backroom dealing that is the US lobbying industry. Through a series of thought-provoking interviews, experts from numerous industries explain in simple terms how the political 'revolving door' creates unfair regulations which affect their industry. Supplemented by recent news clips and archival footage, the experts paint a startling picture of the overregulation of modern American life.