In 1999, 11-year-old Nisha Platzer lost her older brother, Josh, to suicide. Twenty years later, her search for a specialized medical treatment leads her to the door of someone who was once exceptionally close to Josh. And so it is that she finally has the chance to truly know her brother through his chosen family. Captured over five years in which synchronicities continually manifested, Platzer’s documentation of these encounters gently asserts that both grieving and healing are meant to be communal experiences.
The Richardson Olmsted Campus, a former psychiatric center and National Historic Landmark, is seeing new life as it undergoes restoration and adaptation to a modern use.
Iggy Pop reads and recites Michel Houellebecq’s manifesto. The documentary features real people from Houellebecq’s life with the text based on their life stories.
Lies can kill. Transgender Nuclear Suicide Sojourner is an exploration of propaganda, lies, and the overwhelming urge to end it all.
A collection of death scenes, ranging from TV-material to home-made super-8 movies. The common factor is death by some means.
At the beginning of the 1980s, a group of Germans ventured into a social experiment: in the remote hills of Umbria, they founded a self-sufficient community beyond consumerism and bland gainful employment. After 40 years, the rural commune still exists. Not all the plans have come to fruition over the years. How are the dropouts doing today?
A documentary about the singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt
A fist-person story of the director of the documentary, who talks about the loneliness that entails living with an eating disorder and her vision now thar she is entering into adulthood.
Traces the life and mental illness of New York artist and photographer Ruth Litoff, and her sister's struggle to come to terms with her tragic suicide.
Survivor and mental wellness advocate Kevin Hines explores the lasting effects of suicide focusing on breaking stigma, advocacy, and mental wellness.
A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.
Based on real near-death experiences, the afterlife is explored with the guidance of New York Times bestselling authors, medical experts, scientists and survivors who shed a light on what awaits us.
In 2011, Maine State Prison launched a pioneering reform program to scale back its use of solitary confinement. Bafta and Emmy-winning film-maker Dan Edge and his co-director Lauren Mucciolo were given unprecedented access to the solitary unit - and filmed there for more than three years. The result is an extraordinary and harrowing portrait of life in solitary - and a unique document of a radical and risky experiment to reform a prison. The US is the world leader in solitary confinement. More than 80,000 American prisoners live in isolation, some have been there for years, even decades. Solitary is proven to cause mental illness, it is expensive, and it is condemned by many as torture. And yet for decades, it has been one of the central planks of the American criminal justice system.
Describing herself as a 'street queen,' Johnson was a legendary fixture in New York City’s gay ghetto and a tireless voice for LGBT pride since the days of Stonewall, who along with fellow trans icon Sylvia Rivera, founded Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), a trans activist group based in the heart of NYC’s Greenwich Village. Her death in 1992 was declared a suicide by the NYPD, but friends never accepted that version of events. Structured as a whodunit, with activist Victoria Cruz cast as detective and audience surrogate, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson celebrates the lasting political legacy of Johnson, while seeking to finally solve the mystery of her unexplained death.
In Papua New Guinea, pig tusks and shell money are currencies which can buy most things. Henry Tokubak’s dream is to create the first bank where traditional money counts as legal tender.
The East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation has earned the John R. May Award for transforming neighborhoods and creating new economic opportunities for low-income communities. EBALDC's innovative projects weave together housing, economic development, and historic preservation, reaching deep into diverse communities. The John R. May Award honors organizational initiatives in response to a significant contemporary problem.
The third installment of the infamous "is it real or fake?" mondo series sets its sights primarily on serial killers, with lengthy reenactments of police investigations of bodies being found in dumpsters, and a staged courtroom sequence.
Rita Semel, interfaith pioneer and Jewish activist, is a recipient of the San Francisco Foundation Community Leadership Awards "for her life-long successes in creating healthy, just, and inclusive communities in the Bay Area and worldwide. She builds bridges of understanding between diverse religious and ethnic communities, and brings together the interfaith community to help alleviate poverty and end discrimination. Her catalytic leadership is felt far and wide, from the San Francisco Interfaith Council to the Global Council for the United Religions Initiative. Her legacy will be a more peaceful and compassionate world." - San Francisco Foundation
As a teenager in the '90s, Soleil Moon Frye carried a video camera everywhere she went. She documented hundreds of hours of footage and then locked it away for over 20 years.
James Franco interviews three experts on the poet Hart Crane, whose life was the subject of his feature The Broken Tower (2011).