An intimate documentary that follows Tig Notaro, a Los Angeles based comedian, who just days after being diagnosed with invasive stage II breast cancer changed the course of her career with a poignant stand-up set that became legendary overnight. It explores Tig's extraordinary journey as her career ignites and as her life unfolds in grand and unexpected ways, all the while continuing to battle a life-threatening illness and falling in love.
With the epic dimensions of a Shakespearean tragedy, The Queen of Versailles follows billionaires Jackie and David’s rags-to-riches story to uncover the innate virtues and flaws of their American dream. We open on the triumphant construction of the biggest house in America, a sprawling, 90,000-square-foot mansion inspired by Versailles. Since a booming time-share business built on the real-estate bubble is financing it, the economic crisis brings progress to a halt and seals the fate of its owners. We witness the impact of this turn of fortune over the next two years in a riveting film fraught with delusion, denial, and self-effacing humor.
What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Côte d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.
An Honest Liar tells the incredible story of the world-famous magician, escape artist, and world-renowned enemy of deception, James 'The Amazing' Randi. The film brings to life Randi's intricate investigations that publicly exposed psychics, faith healers, and con-artists with quasi-religious fervor. A master deceiver who came out of the closet at the age of 81, Randi created fictional characters, fake psychics, and even turned his partner of 25 years, Jose Alvarez, into a sham guru names Carlos.
Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.
Stories from survivors frame this documentary detailing the sex-trafficking trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, a socialite and accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein.
A portrait of Keith Richards that takes us on a journey to discover the genesis of his sound as a songwriter, guitarist and performer.
Comedian Tig Notaro unleashes her inner prankster in a playful stand-up special packed with funny anecdotes, parenting confessions and more.
The story of two brothers: one who’s devoted to his family, the other who’s obsessed with the Manson Family.
Five stories of love in times of quarantine. Five differently shaped love stories, from five different origins. Five stories about the importance of being with someone who makes you feel good in the midst of chaos. People, during these times of social isolation, doing everything possible to stay close. A film about connection: virtual and real.
The surprising and entertaining life of renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert (1942-2013): his early days as a freewheeling bachelor and Pulitzer Prize winner, his famously contentious partnership with Gene Siskel, his life-altering marriage, and his brave and transcendent battle with cancer.
Lyndon B. Johnson's amazing 11-month journey from taking office after JFK's assassination, through the fight to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act and his own presidential campaign, culminating on the night LBJ is actually elected to the office – no longer the 'accidental President.'
Jane Goodale has everything going for her. She's a producer on a popular daytime talk show, and is in a hot romance with the show's dashing executive producer Ray. But when the relationship goes terribly awry, Jane begins an extensive study of the male animal, including her womanizing roommate Eddie. Jane puts her studies and romantic misadventure to use as a pseudonymous sex columnist -- and becomes a sensation.
The film chronicles Nina Simone's journey from child piano prodigy to iconic musician and passionate activist, told in her own words.
James Reese has a good job as an ambassador's aid in France, but his real passion is a side gig—working in a minor role in the CIA. He would love to be a full-fledged agent and can't believe his luck when he lands an assignment with Charlie Wax. Trigger-happy Charlie soon has James crying for his desk job, but when he learns that the same guys they're trying to catch are after him, James realises that Charlie may be his only hope of survival.
A mystical, ancient dagger causes a notorious serial killer to magically switch bodies with a 17-year-old girl.
In the outskirts of Tokyo, a poor but close-knit group living on the fringes of society survives through shoplifting and odd jobs. When Osamu and his son take in a neglected young girl, their already fragile existence begins to unravel. As the family grows attached to her, buried secrets surface, forcing them to confront the true meaning of love, belonging, and what makes a family.
Storks deliver babies…or at least they used to. Now they deliver packages for a global internet retail giant. Junior, the company’s top delivery stork, is about to be promoted when he accidentally activates the Baby Making Machine, producing an adorable and wholly unauthorized baby girl...
In Justine’s family everyone is a vet and a vegetarian. At 16, she’s a gifted teen ready to take on her first year in vet school, where her older sister also studies. There, she gets no time to settle: hazing starts right away. Justine is forced to eat raw meat for the first time in her life. Unexpected consequences emerge as her true self begins to form.
Dr. Steven Murphy is a renowned cardiovascular surgeon who presides over a spotless household with his wife and two children. Lurking at the margins of his idyllic suburban existence is Martin, a fatherless teen who insinuates himself into the doctor's life in gradually unsettling ways.
In the final months of World War II, 14-year-old Seita and his sister Setsuko are orphaned when their mother is killed during an air raid in Kobe, Japan. After a falling out with their aunt, they move into an abandoned bomb shelter. With no surviving relatives and their emergency rations depleted, Seita and Setsuko struggle to survive.
Choenzey is a 47-year-old monk living in a Tibetan refugee monastery in South India. His spiritual master, Khensur Rinpoche, a revered high lama, has been dead for four years. According to Tibetan belief, he will soon be reincarnated. It is Choenzey's responsibility, as his closest disciple, to find the reincarnation and to look after him. The film follows Choenzey's search and his eventual discovery of an impish but gentle 4-year-old boy who is recognized by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan State Oracle to be the reincarnation. Without sentimentality, the film captures the moving relationship that develops between the erstwhile disciple and his young master. (columbia.edu)
Complete strangers meet in a room to act out their sexual desires.
Inside an inner-city Baltimore high school as teachers and students face the challenges of a 2002 education-reform act.
An eye-opening investigation into the making of Hollywood sex scenes, shedding light on the real-life experiences behind classic scenes of cinema and tracing the legacy of exploitation of women in the entertainment industry.
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.
Afghanistan's film history might well have have been lost forever, if not for the brave custodians who risked their lives to conceal films from the Taliban regime. This is a chronicle of their attempts to preserve and restore thousands of hours of film.
The life and work of Robert Frank—as a photographer and a filmmaker—are so intertwined that they're one in the same, and the vast amount of territory he's covered, from The Americans in 1958 up to the present, is intimately registered in his now-formidable body of artistic gestures. From the early '90s on, Frank has been making his films and videos with the brilliant editor Laura Israel, who has helped him to keep things homemade and preserve the illuminating spark of first contact between camera and people/places. Don't Blink is Israel's like-minded portrait of her friend and collaborator, a lively rummage sale of images and sounds and recollected passages and unfathomable losses and friendships that leaves us a fast and fleeting imprint of the life of the Swiss-born man who reinvented himself the American way, and is still standing on ground of his own making at the age of 90.
Every evening during exam season, as the sun sets over Conakry, Guinea, hundreds of school children begin a nightly pilgrimage to the airport, petrol stations and wealthy parts of the city, searching for light to study. This evocative and poignant documentary shows how children reconcile their daily lives in one of the worlds poorest countries with their desire to learn.
A study of life at Christmastime in Moose Factory, an old settlement mainly composed of Cree families on the shore of James Bay, composed entirely of children's crayon drawings and narrated by children.
Stonecarvers, masons, carpenters, smiths, electricians, woodworkers, restorers, goldsmiths: the extraordinary, never-ending saga of the fabrication of Milan Cathedral is portrayed in the light of the sacredness of a building that lives through times, rhythms, calendars and aspirations that merge with and transcend the labor of men and women. The anonymous, humble, painstaking everyday care required by a structure such as the Cathedral, over the years and still today, reveals the magnificence of human action that spans time and generations, holding within itself a grand humanist sentiment.
In 2000, a California State Prison inmate serving Life Without Parole (LWOP) approached the warden to request a dedicated yard for men serving life sentences that would break the code of violence dominating prison life. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) subsequently transformed Yard A at California State Prison into The Progressive Programming Facility, which inmates call The Honor Yard. The only one of its kind in the United States, this experimental prison yard is free of violence, racial tensions, gang activity and illegal drug and alcohol use.
Marsha P. Johnson was a drag queen, sex worker, and LGBT activist who fought at Stonewall and knew Andy Warhol. She was a New York fixture who made her motto her middle name: "Pay it no mind". This documentary about her life includes the last interview she gave before the suspicious circumstances of her death in 1992.
Follow Mike Birbiglia from Providence, R.I. to Washington, D.C. as he builds jokes based on personal truths, mixing comedy with revelations and anecdotes from family and his fellow comedians.
Rethinking Cancer is an educational documentary film that provides a rare look into the psychological and therapeutic journeys of five men and women who used biological alternative cancer therapies to overcome serious illness. Their stories represent successes that mainstream medicine and the public ought to know about. Four of the featured subjects had been diagnosed with cancer; two of these patients were considered terminal cases. The fifth patient had a severe case of Lyme disease. All five have outlived their diseases, between 15 and nearly 40 years, thus far.
From the first kiss to breakup, Almy and Hammer record their relationship on a reel-to-reel ¾” tape recorder and microphone. Winner of the Louise Riskin Prize at the 1976 San Francisco Art Festival.
The unlikely story of 106-year old Chinese American artist Tyrus Wong, and how he overcame poverty and racism in America to become a celebrated modernist painter, Hollywood sketch artist, and “Disney Legend” for his groundbreaking work on the classic animated film, Bambi.
Documentary about humans dealing with changing technology, the basic concepts of communication, cinema, and Akerman's mother, seen in her Brussels apartment.
Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel "Orlando: A Biography" follows the centuries-spanning life of a young nobleman who awakens to find that they a woman. Almost a century after its publication, Paul B. Preciado claims that fiction has become reality and Orlando's story lies at the root of all contemporary trans and non-binary life.
Join high school-aged girls from around the world as they try to better their community through technology and collaboration in this thrilling, heartfelt documentary. By 2017, the app market will be valued at $77 Billion. Over 80% of these developers are male. The Technovation Challenge aims to change that by empowering girls worldwide to develop apps for an international competition. From rural Moldova to urban Brazil to suburban Massachusetts, CODEGIRL follows teams who dream of holding their own in the world’s fastest-growing industry. The winning team gets $10K to complete and release their app, but every girl discovers something valuable along the way.
Intimate documentary exploring how Paul O'Grady's creation, Lily Savage, took mainstream TV by storm. Unravel the real story of Lily with insights from Paul's daughter and famous pals.