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| Chilling... Intelligent... Hilarious. These are the elements of this classic collage documentary. Artfully culled from newsreel footage and government archives of the 1940`s and 50`s, The Atomic Cafe serves up the dark side of Cold War America in all its fear and paranoia, and manages to blend this with a deep black humour. A darkly comic look at a defining period in the 20th century. | |||||
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| Well-known Italian American actors, directors, writers and other film artists share what it's like being a 'Hollywood Italian', and, with film clips and insider commentary on Hollywood history, show how they use their background to make art from the alchemy of mob movies, Hollywood politics, and American pop culture. |
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| The classic, groundbreaking first-of-a-kind documentary BREASTS interviews twenty-two women (many of them topless) - ranging in age from 6 years-old to 84 and explores how breasts play a crucial role in the experiences of puberty, motherhood, sex, health, and aging. The documentary also includes archival footage - ranging from a racy 1920s cartoon to bra commercials to 1950s beauty pageants - that serve as chapter headings throughout the film. |
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| This is the story of Coca-Cola - the "sublimated essence" of all that American stands for - and its century-long competition with its rival, Pepsi-Cola. Challenging, irreverent, serious and funny by turns, we explore the delicious paradox at the heart of Coke: How did an innocuous soft drink, more than 99% sweetened water, come to wield such enormous economic and marketing power? What does it say to us about who we are and what we are becoming? |
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| This classic Ron Mann documentary profiles 22 of the most significant artists working in comic books in North America today. With interviews, historical footage and state-of-the-art animation, it traces the creative development of the incredibly popular comic medium. From Jack Kirby's Captain America via the irreverence of Mad Magazine, to the underground movement of the '60s, with it's "anything goes" cartoonists to the comic book explosion of the'80s. | |||||
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| Terry Zwigoff's all time classic CRUMB is a sometimes hilariously funny but often disturbing journey into the mysterious and creepy world of underground artist Robert Crumb. His twisted, violent and at times even outright pornographic cartoons are witnesses of his utter disgust of the American society and culture and made him worldfamous in the 60's when he created Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, the "Keep On Truckin' " cartoons and record sleeves for musicians like Janis Joplin. | |||||
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| She was beautiful, smart, and searching. He was an emerging genius in the world of photography. When they met, they fell instantly in love. Charis Wilson and Edward Weston transformed photography, and each other. | |||||
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| The Ramones were one of the hardest-working, most influential bands of all time. END OF THE CENTURY follows this unlikely quartet through three tumultuous decades of touring, recording and bickering: from the New York City underground music scene to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This seminal documentary depicts every rise, fall and petty squabble they had. With: all the Ramones' . . . plus Debbie Harry, Joe Strummer (in his last interview), Eddie Vedder, Linda Stein and many others. |
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| In the all-time classic Oscar winning FROM MAO TO MOZART, violinist Isaac Stern says "The best way to learn about another culture,is to and meet practitioners of one's own profession." And so, in 1979, he undertook a trip to China as an official guest of the government to give concerts, travel the countryside, and "say hello with music." Filmmaker Murray Lerner documented the events of this trip on celluloid, and the resulting movie won the 1981 Academy Award for Best Documentary. |
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| The world of marijuana, reported to be a $10 Billion to $30 billion industry in North America, comes vibrantly alive in this fact-filled and fascinating story of our love-hate relationship with this resilient weed, also known as grass, pot, or dope. GRASS is about the history of a hysteria and the longest-running and most disobeyed prohibition in the history of the USA. It is an epic tale of how Government bureaucrats created a climate which turned and continues to turns literally millions of users, at least technically, into criminals. | |||||
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| The all-time classic Maysles documentary GREY GARDENS is the unbelievable but true story of Mrs. Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie, living in a world of their own in their decaying 28-room East Hampton mansion known as "Grey Gardens," a place so far gone that the local authorities once threatened to evict them for violating sanitation codes. The women bicker and flirt like characters out of Tennessee Williams or Eugene O'Neill, a record of the powerful and complex relationship between mother and daughter. | |||||
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| Just 36, Selznick was already a legend. GONE WITH THE WIND changed the way movies were made in Hollywood. During that production however Selznick made his most lasting contribution to American film making, by bringing Alfred Hitchcock to Hollywood. The relationship exemplified the changing of the guard in Hollywood. David O. Selznick represented the studio system where the producer had complete control. Alfred Hitchcock was to become one of the first directors recognized for the unique authorship and control he commanded over every aspect of his movie making. | |||||
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| Italian born Laura Huxley, a teenage violin virtuoso, left the concert stage to become a renowned psychotherapist and author. In 1956 Laura married Aldous Huxley, literary giant and prophet of the 20th century. Huxley wrote BRAVE NEW WORLD in 1933. Laura and Aldous maintained a compelling personal and professional union until his death in 1963. Laura Huxley continued writing and giving seminars until her death in 2007 at the age of 96. Laura Huxley's candid recollections offer a compelling glimpse of her life with Aldous. |
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| Imaginary Witness tells for the first time the fascinating story of the American film industry's complex and contradictory responses to the horrors of Nazi Germany. Retracing 60 years of Hollywood filmmaking, utilizing carefully selected excerpts and told through first-hand accounts of directors, actors, writers, and producers, the film covers all of Hollywood's most important movies dealing with the issue. With Steven Spielberg, Sydney Lumet, Dan Curtis, Rod Steiger and many others. | |||||
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| In 1955 Tobias Schneebaum began a journey that brought him to the edge of "civilization" in Peru. With only the scant directions "keep the river on your right," Schneebaum sought out a remote mission and the Amarakaire Indians, rumored to be cannibals. When Schneebaum reemerged from the jungle a year later, naked and covered in body paint, the public was shocked to learn via TV talk shows that he had participated in local tribal war, complete with killing and cannibalism . . . |
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| If there was one photograph that captured the horrific nature of the Vietnam War it was that of a nine-year-old girl running naked down a road, screaming in agony from napalm burns that had eaten into her flesh. But ironically, the picture that moved millions all over the world to tears, and that played a major part in the success of the anti-Vietnam War movement, ultimately made a victim of Kim Phuc all over again. This is her life's story. |
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| For over forty years, South Africa was governed by the most notorious form of racial domination since Nazi Germany. When it finally collapsed, those who had enforced apartheid's rule wanted amnesty for their crimes. Their victims wanted justice. As a compromise, the Truth & Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was formed. As it emerges from its tragedy, this deeply moving OSCAR NOMINATED film shows a South Africa to the rest of the world that proves that even the most bitter of conflicts can be addressed through honesty and communication. | ||||||
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| Considered as "one of the most important documentaries ever made" MANUFACTURING CONSENT is as relevant today as it was when it first was released in the early 'nineties, maybe even more important. Funny, provocative and surprisingly accessible, Manufacturing Consent is an energetic fusion of images and ideas which explores the political life and ideas of the controversial American writer, linguist and social philosopher, Noam Chomsky, the author the N.Y. Times has called "arguably the most important intellectual alive." | ||||||
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| METALLICA: SOME KIND OF MONSTER follows the famous rock band as they undergo group therapy while preparing for the release of their latest studio album St Anger. Aiming significantly higher than a run-of-the-mill, backstage rock-doc about the heavy metal band undergoing a midlife crisis, MONSTER is an intimate portrait of the collective creative process (put together over three years during the making of St-Anger album), stripping bare the band's boisterous macho egos with the assistance of an 24/7 therapist. |
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| Multiple award winning documentary, following SUSAN TOM and her 11 adopted special-needs children from holidays to hospital visits , to the unexpected death of a troubled teenage son. Intensely moving film goes deep below the surface of an extraordinary family, in what turns out to be the most difficult year of their lives. |
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| Riveting exploration of the friendship between Elia Kazan and Arthur Miller that abruptly came to an end when Kazan testified during the time of the 1950's "blacklist". Collaborators and best friends for many years before, they had even shared a girlfriend in Marilyn Monroe. Kazan and Miller embodied the deep divisions of that era. No one who survived the blacklist emerged unscathed: morals were compromised, friends were turned upon, lives were ruined, and no one was without sin. | |||||
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| Homosexuals were one of the least known groups targeted for persecution by the Nazis, and one of the last to come forward with their stories. Both intimate in its portrayals and sweeping in its narrative PARAGRAPH 175 features elderly homosexual men who vividly describe their experiences during the Nazi era -- and reveal the long-term consequences of this hidden chapter of history. | ||||||
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| When US company AES purchased the privatized electricity company in Tbilisi, Georgia, manager Piers Lewis must now train the formerly communist population that, in this new world, customers pay for their electricity. The Georgians meanwhile, from meter readers to even the Energy Minister, devise ever more clever ways to get it for free. Amidst hot tempers and high drama, Lewis balances his love for the Georgian people with the hardships his company creates for them, as they struggle to build a nation from the rubble of Soviet collapse. |
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| Robert Alton Harris finally walked to his execution in San Quentin on April 21st 1992 for murders he committed back in 1978. PROCEDURE 769 (which is the administrative name for the death penalty) makes a major contribution to the topical issue of the death penalty by telling the story through the voices of the variety of the people who were the witnesses to his execution. |
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| Classic Maysles documentary SALESMAN follows door-to-door Bible salesmen as they walk the line between hype and despair. From Boston, where the company is based, then onto Chicago at a sales conference, and finally in the promising new "territory" of Miami, their mission is simple: to convince people to buy what one of them calls "still the best seller in the world." But although their customers are mostly middle- and worker-class Catholics even recommended by the local church, the Bible turns out to be a hard sell. | |||||
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| Powerful Oscar nominated documentary about when fate places people in the wrong place at the wrong time and when fear and suspicion fuel injustice. The once-famous case of the nine Scottsboro Boys is the tale of such a dramatic miscarriage of justice that started in the early 1930s: nine poor young black men, charges of white rape, a fancy New York Jewish defense lawyer, an all-white Alabama jury, sentences of death culminating in a dogged international (Communist inspired) campaign to free the "Scottsboro Boys". | ||||||
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| Classic among its kind, SILVERLAKE LIFE, was one of the first films ever to document living with Aids and death caused by it. An extraordinary video diary told with guts and humor by longtime companions Tom Joslin and Mark Massi, this powerful documentary celebrates the human spirit while capturing the emotional challenges of living with a fatal illness. | ||||||
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| SOUTHERN COMFORT is a true-life love story with a mind-bending twist. Set in rural Georgia, Robert Eads, a female-to-male transsexual cowboy, is dying from ovarian cancer... and over two dozen doctors refuse to help. Then, when he least expects it, Robert finds the love of his life in Lola, a male-to-female. A story of romance, prejudice and the new frontier of gender. | ||||||
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| Steve James (Hoop Dreams) guided as a volunteer problem child STEVIE Fielding, a traumatized hyperactive kid from a dysfunctional family. 10 years later James returns to Illinois and films STEVIE. As the story of STEVIE's impoverished, trailer-park life is revealed, the filmmaker and the audience get more than they bargained for. | ||||||
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| Errol Flynn remains one of the most fascinating characters ever to work in Hollywood. Remembered as much for his scandals as his acting, there was another side to Errol: writer, war reporter and even devoted family man. |
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| One of THE classis documentaries of the last decade, THE CELLULOID CLOSET is a riveting and entertaining look at Hollywood and how it has both reflected and defined the way we think about homosexuality. From comic sissies to lesbian vampires, from pathetic queens to sadistic predators, from the good to the bad. With over a hundred film clips of Hollywood classics and many priceless anecdotes by Tom Hanks, Shirley MacLaine, Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg, Tony Curtis and Gore Vidal. | ||||||
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| THE CORPORATION explores the curious history, inner workings, controversial impacts and potential future of corporations. This provoking, much-needed analysis of global commerce asks: What are the consequences for human beings, the environment, democracy, and the very survival of our planet if we grant immense power to an institution that is structurally amoral and whose prime directive is to create wealth for shareholders? Footage from pop culture, advertising, TV news, and corporate propaganda, show the corporation's grip on our lives. |
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| THE LAST CIGARETTE aims at smokers, ex-smokers, non-smokers, and potential smokers - in short: everyone. One billion people smoke every day. They are not, for the most part, ignorant of the dangers. Why do they do it? Simple physical addiction to nicotine explains why many continue to smoke, but, knowing the dangers, why did they ever start? Hollywood clips, vintage cigarette commercials, anti-smoking scare-films, Congressional battle-footage, and much more address these questions in a lighthearted (but clear!) way. |
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| A film about the passionate struggle of a small Italian community in Siena to win the town's annual event: Il Palio. The honour and respect of the neighbourhood are at stake, as they have not won for years. THE LAST VICTORY tells the moving story of their hopes, their personal convictions and their craving for good fortune. | ||||||
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| Courage, persistence and confidence in his own skills explain how John A. Alonzo went from being the son of a poor Mexican migrant worker to become one of the most acclaimed Hollywood cinematographers. |
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| An exceptional and poetic documentary about an ordinary day in an extraordinary swimming pool. Every hour, the category of swimmers changes. The day starts with young, pregnant women, quietly floating and contemplating the miracle inside their bellies. Then young parents and with their children. Later, it is the hour for gays and lesbians. At the end of the day, it is the elderly people's turn, thus reflecting the full cycle of life. |
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| Vividly recalling the tumultuous political and social climate of San Francisco in the 70s, THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK builds a brilliant, gripping portrait of what was really lost when San Francisco City Counsillor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were brutally murdered by fellow Counsillor Dan White in November 1978. Spellbinding and intensely moving from start to finish, this film is as relevant today as when it won the Academy Award in 1984. | ||||||
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| Leni Riefenstahl has secured her place in cinema history, but her story remains a sensitive topic as one of her most ardent admirers was Adolf Hitler. TRIMPH DES WILLENS and OLYMPIA glorified the Nazi Party and later would bring an abrupt end to her filmmaking career. Riefenstahl became an outcast after the war, but tried to pursue her artistic endeavors with characteristic determination and enthusiasm. Leni Riefenstahl died at the age of 101 in 2003. | ||||||
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| The TWIST changed an entire generation. You moved your hips, you gyrated, you let your partner go and swivel like crazy. Never before had white America played so loose with its body. Coming along right when rock and roll needed a new jolt, the twist fast became an international phenomenon, and signaled the end of America's WASP reserve. In a fast-paced mix of interviews and rare archival footage, TWIST features: Hank Ballard, American Bandstand Dancers, Chubby Checker, Joey Dee, Gladys Horton, Dee Dee Sharp, Mama Lu Parks & The Parkettes. | |||||
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| "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough" said Robert Capa. War photographer James Nachtwey has been close enough for twenty years. Frei followed him for two years. Nachtwey is in Kosovo when the houses are still ablaze; in Indonesia, where a family of beggars lives among the railway lines; and in Palestine in the midst of teargas and the young stone throwers. The spectator gets Nachtwey's unique perspective thanks to the miniature film camera attached to his photo camera, seeing what he sees. | ||||||
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