Unarmed Verses

Toronto filmmaker Charles Officer profiles the young people of Villaways Park, a housing project on brink of historic change.

Little White Lie

Lacey Schwartz grew up in a typical upper-middle-class Jewish household in Woodstock, NY, with loving parents and a strong sense of her Jewish identity - despite the open questions from those around her about how a white girl could have such dark skin. She believes her family's explanation that her looks were inherited from her dark-skinned Sicilian grandfather. But when her parents abruptly split, her gut starts to tell her something different. At age of 18, she finally confronts her mother and learns the truth: her biological father was not the man who raised her, but a black man named Rodney with whom her mother had had an affair.

Bukowski: The Last Straw

The Last Straw is a film documenting the very last live poetry reading given by Charles Bukowski at The Sweetwater, a music club in Redondo Beach, California on March 31, 1980

Beyonce & Jay-Z: Power Love

A merger of megastar music. Discover the story of multi-genre performer and fashion promoter, Beyonce Knowles sand the world's first hip hop billionaire, Jay-Z.

Radiant City

Since the end of World War II, one of kind of urban residential development has dominate how cities in North America have grown, the suburbs. In these artificial neighborhoods, there is a sense of careless sprawl in an car dominated culture that ineffectually tries to create the more organically grown older communities. Interspersed with the comments of various experts about the nature of suburbia

Wealth of a Nation

"This film explores how freedom of speech — including dissent — is afforded to all Americans, and shows freedom of expression in art, music, dance, architecture, and science. The film also emphasizes the importance of the individual’s contribution to the whole of society and demonstrates how a productive and creative society is formed by the open and respectful exchange of ideas. The film was written, produced, and directed by William Greaves" (National Archives).

Everything Will Be

Sundance award-winning director Julia Kwan’s documentary Everything Will Be captures the subtle nuances of a culturally diverse neighbourhood—Vancouver’s once thriving Chinatown—in the midst of transformation. The community’s oldest and newest members offer their intimate perspectives on the shifting landscape as they reflect on change, memory and legacy. Night and day, a neon sign that reads "EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT" looms over Chinatown. Everything is going to be alright, indeed, but the big question is for whom?

Acasă, My Home

In the wilderness of the Bucharest Delta, nine children and their parents lived in perfect harmony with nature for 20 years – until they are chased out and forced to adapt to life in the big city.

Moments Without Proper Names

Parks makes himself the subject, tracing his development as a person and an artist through a non-narrative abstract self-portrait that combines his photographs with his poetry, musical compositions and scenes from his films. It also features footage of Parks, plus interpretations of his personal reminiscences performed by actors Avery Brooks, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Joe Seneca.

The Point

This documentary is a portrait of Point St. Charles, one of Montreal’s notoriously bleak neighbourhoods. Many of the residents are English-speaking and of Irish origin; many of them are also on welfare. Considered to be one of the toughest districts in all of Canada, Point St. Charles is poor in terms of community facilities, but still full of rich contrasts and high spirits – that is, most of the time.

Ma bande magnétique arrière

Tokio - Die Stadtkultur von morgen

Tokyo, the largest city in the world, wants to create a new urban culture. It is returning to the urban traditions and building techniques of the small town. The aim is to create a new balance between megacity and small-scale garden city. Tokyo's architects are the driving force. They want to create a new urban culture with revolutionary ideas.

Mi Barrios Altos querido

Five stories about dignity in the capital of Peru. A local leader looking for someone to leave the post of her complex work, a tourist guide who is a patron of the architectural heritage and Creole music, an ex-delinquent rescued by the Evangelical Church, a teenage dancer of Afro-Peruvian music forced to emigrate and a muralist of Bellas Artes son of Andean migrants, they try to get ahead in Barrios Altos, the most feared – but also most beloved – historic neighborhood of Lima.

Treno di parole - Viaggio nella poesia di Raffaello Baldini

The œuvre of poet Raffaello Baldini (1924-2005) through the words of those who knew him, the poems he himself read, the fragments of his monologues, his beloved Romagna landscapes.

Changing Landscapes

A sophisticated and beautifully constructed account of landscape change in and around Paris in the early 1960s. The film raises complex issues about the meaning and experience of modern landscapes and the enigmatic characteristics of features such as canals, pylons and deserted factories. Rohmer also explores the role of landscape within different traditions of modern art and design and refers to specific architects, artists and engineers.

Though You May Not Know

An account of the life and work of the Spanish poet Luis García Montero; a journey through his experiences, his mentors, his influences and his contact with other artists, both from the literary world and from other disciplines.

Ghost Town to Havana

A rampant, street level story of mentorship and everyday heroism in tough circumstances. An inner city coach's son, estranged in his youth from his father, spends five years on ball fields in inner city Oakland and Havana, following the lives of two extraordinary youth baseball coaches, Roscoe in Oakland and Nicolas in Havana. The coaches meet on videotape and two years of red tape later, Coach Roscoe and nine Oakland players travel to Havana to play Coach Nicolas' team. For one week, the players and coaches eat, dance, swim, argue and play baseball together. But when the parent of an Oakland player is murdered back home, it brings back the inescapable reality and challenges of life in an American inner city.

Smudge

This short documentary follows three Indigenous women as they practice ancestral forms of worship: drumming, singing, and using sweetgrass. These ancient spiritual traditions may at first seem at odds with urban life, but to Indigenous people in Canada who are used to praying in natural settings, the whole world is sacred space.

I Love This Dirty Town

An authored film by Margaret Drabble about the rise of the suburbs and the failure of city planning.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen

A 1964 documentary portrait of Cohen in his pre-musician days as a poet and stand-up comedian.