A look at the life and music of legendary singer and civil rights activist, Mavis Staples.
Social & External
Self
Self (archive footage)
A Suitable Girl follows three young women in India struggling to maintain their identities and follow their dreams amid intense pressure to get married. The film examines the women's complex relationship with marriage, family, and society.
Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, Riefenstahl covers twenty-one athletic events in the first half of this two-part love letter to the human body and spirit, culminating with the marathon, where Jesse Owens became the first track and field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympics.
Part two of Leni Riefenstahl's monumental examination of the 1938 Olympic Games, the cameras leave the main stadium and venture into the many halls and fields deployed for such sports as fencing, polo, cycling, and the modern pentathlon, which was won by American Glenn Morris.
Follow punk-cabaret icon Amanda Palmer as she hits the stage at Red Rocks Amphitheater. Since her record-breaking $1.2 million crowd-funded Kickstarter campaign, Palmer (formerly of the Dresden Dolls) has carved out a path of fearlessness and independence outside the norms of the music industry.
A celebration of love and creative inspiration takes place in the infamous, gaudy and glamorous Parisian nightclub, at the cusp of the 20th century. A young poet, who is plunged into the heady world of Moulin Rouge, begins a passionate affair with the club's most notorious and beautiful star.
In 1965, passionate musician Glenn Holland takes a day job as a high school music teacher, convinced it's just a small obstacle on the road to his true calling: writing a historic opus. As the decades roll by with the composition unwritten but generations of students inspired through his teaching, Holland must redefine his life's purpose.
A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.
In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.
In the early 1900s, the fictional Catfish Row section of Charleston, South Carolina serves as home to a black fishing community. Crippled beggar Porgy, who travels about in a goat-drawn cart, loves the drug-addicted Bess, who lives with stevedore Crown, the local bully.
"Green Day: The Early Years" chronicles the rise of the world's most influential punk band, from their origins playing shows at Berkley's notorious Gilman Street venue in the late 80s, through the release of the platinum-selling Dookie in 1994.
The life and career of the hailed Hollywood movie star and underappreciated genius inventor, Hedy Lamarr.
Filmmaker Froukje van Wengerden’s 86-year-old grandmother shares a powerful memory from 1944, when she was just 14. As her story unfolds, we see a group of contemporary 14-year-old girls. Their procession of portraits permits the spectator to see simultaneously forward and back, into the future and towards the past. A miraculous testimonial that uses eye contact to focus the viewer inward and evoke unexpected emotions.
During the 1977 World Series, Sports Illustrated reporter Melissa Ludtke was denied access to the players' locker room. After a very public fight, the door was opened, but the debate about female journalists in the male sanctum of the clubhouse remained. Through interviews with pioneering female sports writers, Let Them Wear Towels captures the raw behavior, humorous retaliation, angry lawsuits and remarkable resolve that went into the struggle for equal access for women reporters.
A documentary on the late American entertainer Dean Reed, who became a huge star in East Germany after settling there in 1973.
The movie follows Bernie, a record producer who persuades his nephew Frankie to create a new rock star that will help Bernie overcome his work related ennui. Iggy, the burnt out roadie pillages the graves of various celebrities such as Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, and Sid Vicious, using the head of Elvis Presley to top things off. All goes according to plan until a mishap leads Iggy to steal Liberace's private parts instead of those of Jim Morrison. The monster is brought to life and is on the road to rock 'n' roll success when the Liberace side of the monster begins to assert itself, with tragic results. The result: a monster (Guggenheim) with the sex drive of a macho rock star and the sexual orientation of Liberace.
The film analyzes the efforts by the families of 9/11 victims to create the 9/11 Commission and what information was revealed by it in the 9/11 Commission Report.
Singapore GaGa is a 55-minute paean to the quirkiness of the Singaporean aural landscape. It reveals Singapore's past and present with a delight and humour that makes it a necessary film for all Singaporeans. We hear buskers, street vendors, school cheerleaders sing hymns to themselves and to their communities. From these vocabularies (including Arabic, Latin, Hainanese), a sense of what it might mean to be a modern Singaporean emerges. This is Singapore's first documentary to have a cinema release. With English and Chinese subtitles.
A grieving man receives a mysterious, personal invitation to meet with God at a place called 'The Shack'.
Sara, a cold college professor, and her husband, an ecstatic painter, spend a summer away from the city, straining their rocky relationship.
Fists of Freedom examines one of the 20th century’s most memorable moments — the dramatic “Black Power” demonstration of American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the victory stand at the 1968 Summer games in Mexico City. Using rare footage, archival photos and interviews with key figures from the era, revisit a pivotal event in American history.
Los Angeles, 1969. TV star Rick Dalton, a struggling actor specializing in westerns, and stuntman Cliff Booth, his best friend, try to survive in a constantly changing movie industry. Dalton is the neighbor of the young and promising actress and model Sharon Tate, who has just married the prestigious Polish director Roman Polanski…
Frank Drebin is persuaded out of retirement to go undercover in a state prison. There he has to find out what top terrorist, Rocco, has planned for when he escapes. Adding to his problems, Frank's wife, Jane, is desperate for a baby.
In Italy in the 1930s, sky pirates in biplanes terrorize wealthy cruise ships as they sail the Adriatic Sea. The only pilot brave enough to stop the scourge is the mysterious Porco Rosso, a former World War I flying ace who was somehow turned into a pig during the war. As he prepares to battle the pirate crew's American ace, Porco Rosso enlists the help of spunky girl mechanic Fio Piccolo and his longtime friend Madame Gina.
Eighties teenager Marty McFly is accidentally sent back in time to 1955, inadvertently disrupting his parents' first meeting and attracting his mother's romantic interest. Marty must repair the damage to history by rekindling his parents' romance and - with the help of his eccentric inventor friend Doc Brown - return to 1985.
A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the U.S.-Vietnam War has on his fellow recruits from their brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting in Hue.
In the future, an outbreak of canine flu leads the mayor of a Japanese city to banish all dogs to an island used as a garbage dump. The outcasts must soon embark on an epic journey when a 12-year-old boy arrives on the island to find his beloved pet.
The story of J. Robert Oppenheimer's role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.
During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.
The Yamadas are a typical middle class Japanese family in urban Tokyo and this film shows us a variety of episodes of their lives. With tales that range from the humorous to the heartbreaking, we see this family cope with life's little conflicts, problems, and joys in their own way.
101-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater tells the story of her life aboard the Titanic, 84 years later. A young Rose boards the ship with her mother and fiancé. Meanwhile, Jack Dawson and Fabrizio De Rossi win third-class tickets aboard the ship. Rose tells the whole story from Titanic's departure through to its death—on its first and last voyage—on April 15, 1912.
A true story about Frank Abagnale Jr. who, before his 19th birthday, successfully conned millions of dollars worth of checks as a Pan Am pilot, doctor, and legal prosecutor. An FBI agent makes it his mission to put him behind bars. But Frank not only eludes capture, he revels in the pursuit.
In 1970s Mexico City, two domestic workers help a mother of four while her husband is away for an extended period of time.
A burger-loving hit man, his philosophical partner, a drug-addled gangster's moll and a washed-up boxer converge in this sprawling, comedic crime caper. Their adventures unfurl in three stories that ingeniously trip back and forth in time.
The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.
Emperor Kuzco is turned into a llama by his ex-administrator Yzma, and must now regain his throne and his human form with the help of Pacha, a gentle llama herder.
As armies mass for a final battle that will decide the fate of the world--and powerful, ancient forces of Light and Dark compete to determine the outcome--one member of the Fellowship of the Ring is revealed as the noble heir to the throne of the Kings of Men. Yet, the sole hope for triumph over evil lies with a brave hobbit, Frodo, who, accompanied by his loyal friend Sam and the hideous, wretched Gollum, ventures deep into the very dark heart of Mordor on his seemingly impossible quest to destroy the Ring of Power.
Career criminal Johnny Clay recruits a sharpshooter, a crooked police officer, a bartender and a betting teller named George, among others, for one last job before he goes straight and gets married. But when George tells his restless wife about the scheme to steal millions from the racetrack where he works, she hatches a plot of her own.