A teacher chronicles his final year working in a school with a large underprivileged population.
Social & External
Self
A film about the Swiss Italian poet Fabio Pusterla and his creative poetic process, his struggle to find an honest language, one which adheres to the personal experience and is able to unfold a hidden truth that creates a strong and profound bond with the other, with his public.
Gripping, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful, Waiting for Superman is an impassioned indictment of the American school system from An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim.
Documentary about a district with social problems and an unconventional teacher, who tries to teach more than just knowledge.
Documentary depicts what happened in Rio de Janeiro on June 12th 2000, when bus 174 was taken by an armed young man, threatening to shoot all the passengers. Transmitted live on all Brazilian TV networks, this shocking and tragic-ending event became one of violence's most shocking portraits, and one of the scariest examples of police incompetence and abuse in recent years.
In Uganda, AIDS-infected mothers have begun writing what they call Memory Books for their children. Aware of the illness, it is a way for the family to come to terms with the inevitable death that it faces. Hopelessness and desperation are confronted through the collaborative effort of remembering and recording, a process that inspires unexpected strength and even solace in the face of death.
J and Jacky are good friends who attend the same school. J is from a single-parent family, and will be taken care by Jacky’s family whenever his mother has to return to Mainland to renew her visa; such kind of story is not an isolated case. These families have been uprooted for a “better future” in Hong Kong, but is this “future” that the children really long to have? A Chinese saying: “How does one understand the joy of fish, if one is not a fish?” Will the adults really understand what the children want?
In the vast expanse of desert East of Atlas Mountains in Morocco, seasonal rain and snow once supported livestock, but now the drought seems to never end. Hardly a blade of grass can be seen, and families travel miles on foot to get water from a muddy hole in the ground. Yet the children willingly ride donkeys and bicycles or walk for miles across rocks to a "school of hope" built of clay. Following both the students and the teachers in the Oulad Boukais Tribe's community school for over three years, SCHOOL OF HOPE shows students Mohamed, Miloud, Fatima, and their classmates, responding with childish glee to the school's altruistic young teacher, Mohamed. Each child faces individual obstacles - supporting their aging parents; avoiding restrictions from relatives based on traditional gender roles - while their young teacher makes do in a house with no electricity or water.
In a Europe traumatized by the First World War, educationalists point the finger of blame: the school, which produced “brave soldiers”. The task now is to build peace and develop a new education for a generation of children who, it is hoped, will never wage war again. How can we educate them without surveillance and punishment? How can we help them to emancipate themselves? To make children happy is to make them better adults, according to those who embarked on the adventure. Their names are Rudolf Steiner, Maria Montessori, Célestin Freinet, Alexander S. Neill, Ovide Decroly, Paul Geheeb or Janusz Korczak, each of them inventing educational methods. A Swiss pedagogue, Adolphe Ferrière, brought them together in the Ligue internationale de l'éducation nouvelle.
The film is a controversy on democracy. Is our society really democratic? Can everyone be part of it? Or is the act of being part in democracy dependent to the access on technology, progression or any resources of information, as philosophers like Paul Virilio or Jean Baudrillard already claimed?
Ten years ago, Tetsuya Miyamoto had a dream to change the world through puzzles. In his classroom in Yokohama, KenKen was born. Enter a world where puzzles matter. From Tokyo to New York, from the classroom to the puzzle page to the tournament floor, Miyamoto and the Machine takes you into the brain of the inventor and the players, all while the machines of business and technology crash into artistry and humanity. Miyamoto believes each handcrafted puzzle tells a story, and if you look hard enough between the rows, columns, and cages of KenKen, you can find the story of the sensei who started a global phenomenon.
Six blind Tibetan teenagers climb the Lhakpa-Ri peak of Mount Everest, led by seven-summit blind mountain-climber Erik Weihenmayer.
For some time now, there have been schools in Germany whose aim is not to segregate any child. Everyone should be integrated with their minor or major handicaps, advantages or weaknesses, whether highly gifted or severely disabled. Klassenleben tells the story of such a school, its teachers, its children and the immense challenge of learning. From winter to summer 2004, Hubertus Siegert and his film team accompanied class 5d at the Fläming elementary school in Berlin. At eye level with its protagonists, the film observes the learning and life of pupils with extremely different abilities in a class of 20 children, four of whom have learning difficulties or severe multiple disabilities, and 16 "normal pupils", including some so-called gifted pupils. Do lessons succeed in such a heterogeneous group? Is everyone motivated to learn where the competition is not between "gifted" children?
This documentary follows 8 teens and pre-teens as they work their way toward the finals of the Scripps Howard national spelling bee championship in Washington D.C.
We no longer see children running around playing in the alleys of Seoul. Starting from elementary school, children go to private classes after their school. However, we see these people who are making efforts to protect children’s right to be a child and play like a child.
Omondi lives in the biggest slum in East Africa. Everyday he sees airplanes fly over him. He dreams of becoming an airline pilot and flying far away.
Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming explains, demonstrates, and discusses the Eight Pieces of Brocade (jian shen ba duan jin), a qigong practice for health and wellbeing. The Eight Pieces of Brocade is a sequence of eight movements intended to build qi, promote blood circulation, assist the immune system, strengthen the internal organs, and energize the body. Dr. Yang teaches both sitting and standing variations of the practice.
A journey into the life of blind jazz musician Caitlin Smith as she explores how her voice as a musician and teacher has become a tool of identity, resilience, and empowerment.
Finland’s education system has consistently ranked among the best in the world for more than a decade. The puzzle is, why Finland? Documentary filmmaker, Bob Compton, along with Harvard researcher, Dr. Tony Wagner, decided to find out. The result of their research is captured in a new film, "The Finland Phenomenon: Inside the World’s Most Surprising School System". In the 60-minute film, Dr. Wagner guides the viewer through an inside look at the world’s finest secondary education system. A life-long educator and author of the best-selling book "The Global Achievement Gap," Dr. Wagner is uniquely qualified to explore and explain Finland’s success. From within classrooms and through interviews with students, teachers, parents, administrators and government officials, Dr. Wagner reveals the surprising factors accounting for Finland’s rank as the #1 education system in the world.
An educational film sponsored and distributed by the Los Angeles-based Narcotic Educational Foundation of America and directed by Gilbert Lasky with financial assistance of the Woman’s Relief Corps targets teachers as well as junior and senior high school students in the war on drugs. Narcotics are classified and effects of opiates, stimulants, and barbiturates are summarized and dramatized
As Russia launches its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, primary schools across Russia’s hinterlands are transformed into recruitment stages for the war. Facing the ethical dilemma of working in a system defined by propaganda and violence, a brave teacher goes undercover to film what’s really happening in his own school.
A comedic, brutally honest documentary following self-destructive TV writer Dan Harmon as he takes his live podcast on a national tour.
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman takes us inside Northeast High School as a fly on the wall to observe the teachers and how they interact with the students.
In this genre-bending tale, Errol Morris explores the mysterious death of a U.S. scientist entangled in a secret Cold War program known as MK-Ultra.
Artists in LA discover the work of forgotten Polish sculptor Stanislav Szukalski, a mad genius whose true story unfolds chapter by astounding chapter.
Against the darkening backdrop of New Delhi's apocalyptic air and escalating violence, two brothers devote their lives to protecting one casualty of the turbulent times: the bird known as the black kite.
A journalist and a photographer set out to memorialize the bedrooms left behind by children killed in school shootings.
An astonishing journey revealing the awesome power of the natural world. Over the course of one single day, we track the sun from the highest mountains to the remotest islands to exotic jungles.
A documentary about the making of season five of the acclaimed AMC series Breaking Bad.
Those who knew iconic funnyman John Candy best share his story, in their own words, through never-before-seen archival footage, imagery, and interviews.
From the heights of her modeling fame to her tragic death, this documentary reveals Anna Nicole Smith through the eyes of the people closest to her.
A look at the origins, history and conspiracies behind the "Majestic 12", a clandestine group of military and corporate figureheads charged with reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology.
Lyrical and powerfully personal essay film that reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother, her beloved dog, and such diverse subjects as family memories, surveillance, and Buddhist teachings.
JB Smoove and Martin Starr host a celebration of 20 years of "Spider-Man" movies, from the Sam Raimi trilogy to Marc Webb's movies and the trio from Jon Watts.
An impressionistic portrait of the iconic actor Harry Dean Stanton comprised of intimate moments, film clips from some of his 250 films and his renditions of American folk songs.
A documentary exploring the legacy of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the reasons it went from the black sheep of Star Trek to a beloved mainstay of the franchise, and a brainstorm with the original writers on what a theoretical eighth season of the show could look like.
The Captains is a feature-length documentary film written and directed by William Shatner. The film follows Shatner as he interviews the other actors who have portrayed starship captains in the Star Trek franchise.
A behind the scenes look into George Romero's groundbreaking horror classic Night of the Living Dead.
As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.
A documentary on a former Miss Wyoming who is charged with abducting and imprisoning a young Mormon Missionary.