Empowered: Helping Native Youth See Their Power Within

For four years, the Jicarilla Apache Nation's Johnson O'Malley program, led by Lynn Roanhorse, and Holt Hamilton Films have joined forces to encourage, motivate, and empower Jicarilla Apache youth by providing hands-on learning and mentorship in the filmmaking process. Follow this exciting journey as Native American youth show the world they can do great things when EMPOWERED.

To Be or Not to Be: Klingons and Shakespeare

The story behind the translation and performance of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in Klingon.

Earth

An epic story of adventure, starring some of the most magnificent and courageous creatures alive, awaits you in EARTH. Disneynature brings you a remarkable story of three animal families on a journey across our planet – polar bears, elephants and humpback whales.

No Crying at the Dinner Table

Filmmaker Carol Nguyen interviews her own family to craft an emotionally complex and meticulously composed portrait of intergenerational trauma, grief, and secrets in this cathartic documentary about things left unsaid.

Now Is the Time

When internationally renowned Haida carver Robert Davidson was only 22 years old, he carved the first new totem pole on British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii in almost a century. On the 50th anniversary of the pole’s raising, Haida filmmaker Christopher Auchter steps easily through history to revisit that day in August 1969, when the entire village of Old Massett gathered to celebrate the event that would signal the rebirth of the Haida spirit.

Koyaanisqatsi

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.

Grid

A ritual of grids, reflections and chasms; a complete state of entropy; a space that devours itself; a vertigo that destroys the gravity of the Earth; a trap that captures us inside the voids of the screen of light: «That blank arena wherein converge at once the hundred spaces» (Hollis Frampton).

Legends of the Deep: Deep Sea Sharks

Groundbreaking documentary which follows a Japanese-led team of scientists as they attempt to shed light on the mysterious world of deep sea sharks. Only 50 specimens of the newly discovered 'megamouth' have ever been sighted. Over four years, scientists and film crews voyaged in midget submarines into the depths of Suruga Bay and Sagami Bay to film them. Prehistoric 'living fossil' sharks such as bluntnose sixgill sharks, goblin sharks and frilled sharks also lurk in the depths. As part of the investigation, a sperm whale carcass was placed at the bottom of the sea to attract these sharks, which were then studied and observed from the submersible vessels. Revealing in detail the previously unknown behaviour of deep sea sharks, the film unravels another of the intriguing mysteries of our planet's biodiversity.

Foster Child

Gil Cardinal searches for his natural family and an understanding of the circumstances that led to his becoming a foster child. An important figure in the history of Canadian Indigenous filmmaking, Gil Cardinal was born to a Métis mother but raised by a non-Indigenous foster family, and with this auto-biographical documentary he charts his efforts to find his biological mother and to understand why he was removed from her. Considered a milestone in documentary cinema, it addressed the country’s internal colonialism in a profoundly personal manner, winning a Special Jury Prize at Banff and multiple international awards.

Deep Blue

Deep Blue is a major documentary feature film shot by the BBC Natural History Unit. An epic cinematic rollercoaster ride for all ages, Deep Blue uses amazing footage to tell us the story of our oceans and the life they support.

Black Sun

Underscored by French film legend Delphine Seyrig’s evocative recitation of a Henri Michaux poem, Maureen Fazendeiro’s film is a mysterious, multi-textured portrait of eclipse spectators in Portugal.

Billy

In Zachary Epcar's fragmentary, soap opera-esque film, lounge music, lamps, coffee pods, and other accoutrements of modern life restage a story of domestic dreams and nightmares.

You Don't Back Down

In Nigeria, a young Canadian doctor serves in a local mission hospital and learns much from the experience. Stationed abroad under the Canadian University Service Overseas Plan, Dr. Alex McMahon and his schoolteacher wife find every day a fresh challenge. An interesting study of intercultural help.

Projections

The innovative and influential British filmmaker Derek Jarman was invited to direct the Pet Shop Boys' 1989 tour. This film is a series of iconoclastic images he created for the background projections. Stunning, specially shot sequences (featuring actors, the Pet Shop Boys, and friends of Jarman) contrast with documentary montages of nature, all skillfully edited to music tracks.

Afrocentricity

On the surface, this collection of shorts by up-and-coming African American filmmakers arrived at a perfect time. The cutting-edge products of the New Black Cinema of the early '90s had disappeared, giving way to embarrassingly stereotypical, scatological fare such as Booty Call and Next Friday. This feature-packed compilation (which includes production notes, interviews with all of the filmmakers, and audio commentary by four) attempts to prove that African American cinema is intent on moving past the lowbrow humor, as six of the seven shorts steer clear of any comedy.

Quest for the Ring

My Dad and the Volcano

Gavin built a giant volcano sculpture that's now in his dad's shed. Gavin seeks his dad's understanding but he's uninterested in modern art and refuses to participate in the documentary.

Somos animales

Tania and Cocteau, a cat that comes from the not too distant future, tell the story of the passage of animals through the world and their relationship with humans.

La ruta de don Quijote

A poetic journey through the paths and places of old Castile that were traveled and visited by the melancholic knight Don Quixote of La Mancha and his judicious squire Sancho Panza, the immortal characters of Miguel de Cervantes, which offers a candid depiction of rural life in Spain in the early 1930s and illustrates the first sentence of the first article of the Spanish Constitution of 1931, which proclaims that Spain is a democratic republic of workers of all kind.

Microcosmos

A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.