Jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams was a genius ahead of her time. From child prodigy to "Boogie-Woogie Queen" to groundbreaking composer to mentoring some of the greatest musicians of all time, she never ceased to astound those who heard her play. But for a Black woman in the early 1900s, life as a star did not come easy.
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A tale of terror. Cathy Reed has been institutionalized most of her life because of Schizophrenia, as a child her parents thought she was possessed by demons and had her exercised by priests. Medical science saw different. Now decades later Cathy is freed, relocated to her own flat and given a chance to be independent. Once alone things are not what they all seem and when her nightmares turn real she questions her state of mind before she is left to face her demons.
A team from the intergalactic fast food chain Crumb's Crunchy Delights descends on Earth, planning to make human flesh the newest taste sensation. After they wipe out the New Zealand town Kaihoro, the country’s Astro-Investigation and Defense Service (AIaDS) is called in to deal with the problem. Things are complicated due to Giles, an aid worker who comes to Kaihoro the same day to collect change from the residents. He is captured by the aliens, and AIaDS stages a rescue mission that quickly becomes an all-out assault on the aliens’ headquarters.
"Behind every strong man is a strong woman!", Mumine shouts as her husband is arrested. She has 4 children, she's in her mid-30s, and she's the wife of a Crimean Tatar political prisoner. Muslim Crimean Tatars have been oppressed for a long time. They were deported under Stalin, allowed to return under Gorbachev, and since the occupation of Crimea in 2014 under Putin, they are being persecuted again. "Return" is a portrait of Mumine and Maye, two strong women struggling with the consequences of oppression. Their traditional understanding of their role as women does not stand in the way of their dedication. They possess strength, beauty and dignity. Only in their most intimate moments, they are overwhelmed by desperate helplessness.
The just-out-of-college, effete son of a no-nonsense steamboat captain comes to visit his father whom he's not seen since he was a child.
In 1944 Budapest, one of a group of four friends poses a hypothetical moral question to the others, an act that will unexpectedly alter their lives forever.
An alienated and misanthropic teenager gains sudden and unwanted celebrity status after he's taken hostage by terrorists where his indifference to their threats to kill him makes news headlines.
After his wife leaves him, a photographer has an existential crisis and tries to cope with his cousin's visit.
While vacationing in the countryside at his childhood home, a woman suddenly reveals to her husband that she is expecting a child – but not his.
A girl is at school. Suddenly it's as if she can't breathe. As she runs down the stairs we follow her into her mind. It takes us deep into dark woods.
A single man has worked most of his life in a supermarket. One night, he unexpectedly meets with his father, and the two are faced with the question of the reasons for their separation.
Brad is about to hook up with the girl of his dreams, but runs into a problem, no condom. So Brad sets out into the night to find one, running into many obstacles along the way, while not knowing his best friend, Leah is in love with him.
The three sons of devout Danish farmer Morten have widely disparate religious beliefs. Youngest son Anders shares his father's religion, but eldest son Mikkel has lost his faith, while middle child Johannes has become delusional and proclaims that he is Jesus Christ himself. When Mikkel's wife, Inger goes into a difficult childbirth, everyone's beliefs are put to the test.
A group of people find themselves trapped in the backwoods of West Virginia, fighting for their lives against a group of vicious and horribly disfigured inbred cannibals.
The uncle of an executed murderess relates four stories of his hometown, Oldfield, to a reporter. In the first, an elderly man pursues a romance with a younger woman, even to the grave and beyond. In the second, a wounded man on the run from creditors is rescued by a backwoods hermit who holds the secret to eternal life. In the third, a glass-eating carny pays the ultimate price for looking for love on the outside. And in the fourth, a group of Civil War soldiers are held captive by a household of orphans with strange intentions for them.
A documentary chronicling the Beatles' rehearsal sessions in January 1969 for their proposed "back to basics" album, "Get Back," later re-envisioned and released as "Let It Be."
The Cove tells the amazing true story of how an elite team of individuals, films makers and free divers embarked on a covert mission to penetrate the hidden cove in Japan, shining light on a dark and deadly secret. The shocking discoveries were only the tip of the iceberg.
The Night of San Lorenzo, the night of the shooting stars, is the night when dreams come true in Italian folklore. In 1944, a group of Italians flee their town after hearing rumours that the Nazis plan to blow it up and that the Americans are about to arrive to liberate them.
Two young Chicago hoodlums, Tom Powers and Matt Doyle, rise up from their poverty-stricken slum life to become petty thieves, bootleggers and cold-blooded killers. But with street notoriety and newfound wealth, the duo feels the heat from the cops and rival gangsters both. Despite his ruthless criminal reputation, Tom tries to remain connected to his family, however, gang warfare and the need for revenge eventually pull him away.
A Jewish woman named Jettel Redlich flees Nazi Germany with her daughter Regina, to join her husband, Walter, on a farm in Kenya. At first, Jettel refuses to adjust to her new circumstances, bringing with her a set of china dishes and an evening gown. While Regina adapts readily to this new world, forming a strong bond with her father's cook, an African named Owuor.
A photographer and a filmmaker challenge each other to shoot—one to photograph the other to film—two young actresses, one from Tokyo, the other from the countryside. The photographer seeks naturalism in his compositions, and Kawase observes and comments on his work. The competition between the photographer, the filmmaker, and the actresses creates a charged atmosphere.
A musical tour through the work of Aníbal "Pichuco" Troilo, one of the defining figures of tango and Argentinian music.
Teatro Amazonas is an elaborate, intriguing formalist experiment investigating the cinematic gaze and cultural exchange, and offering an unconventional ethnographic record of its Amazonian subjects engaged (and disengaged) in the act of spectatorship.
‘Podwórka’ captures six groups of neighbourhood youth as they play in seemingly deserted yards, offering an intimate portrait of daily life in Łódź, Poland. Shot with a fixed camera, this single-channel video projection highlights American artist Sharon Lockhart’s concern for the interrelationship between the still and the moving image.
'Hannah' tells the story of Buddhist pioneer Hannah Nydahl and her life bringing Tibetan Buddhism to the West. From her idealistic roots in 1960's Copenhagen to the hippie trail in Nepal, Hannah and her husband Ole became two of the first Western students of His Holiness the 16th Karmapa - the first consciously reincarnated lama of Tibet in 1110. Hannah went on to become an assistant and translator for some of the most powerful Tibetan lamas and a bridge between Buddhism in the East and the West.
Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. This first half of her two-part film opens with a renowned introduction that compares modern Olympians to classical Greek heroes, then goes on to provide thrilling in-the-moment coverage of some of the games' most celebrated moments, including African-American athlete Jesse Owens winning a then-unprecedented four gold medals.
Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. Where the two-part epic's first half, Festival of the Nations, focused on the international aspects of the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin, part two, The Festival of Beauty, concentrates on individual athletes such as equestrians, gymnasts, and swimmers, climaxing with American Glenn Morris' performance in the decathalon and the games' majestic closing ceremonies.
This short documentary is a celebration of life on planet Earth. Made from haunting visual images selected from 50 years of NFB productions, the film looks at human beings, their place on earth, and their deep interconnection with all other beings. Evocations of forces that threaten the planet and all its inhabitants also offer avenues for reflection.
A biography of the Portuguese-born Brazilian singer Carmen Miranda, whose most distinctive feature was her tutti-frutti hat. From her arrival in the US as the "Brazilian Bombshell" to her Broadway career and Hollywood stardom in the 1940s.
After giving birth, Joyce attempts to regain her position as a filmmaker while also caring for her new baby. The changes to both her and her husband’s professional lives are remarkable and frustrating. The new parents love the baby but must recognize the limitations she puts on their careers.
A documentary that explores the potential dangers of toxic chemicals in consumer products and the recent spike in unexplained health phenomena.
Spies of Mississippi tells the story of a secret spy agency formed by the state of Mississippi to preserve segregation and maintain white supremacy. The anti-civil rights organization was hidden in plain sight in an unassuming office in the Mississippi State Capitol. Funded with taxpayer dollars and granted extraordinary latitude to carry out its mission, the Commission evolved from a propaganda machine into a full blown spy operation. How do we know this is true? The Commission itself tells us in more than 146,000 pages of files preserved by the State. This wealth of first person primary historical material guides us through one of the most fascinating and yet little known stories of America's quest for Civil Rights.
Vienna’s Prater is an amusement park and a desire machine. No mechanical invention, no novel idea or sensational innovation could escape incorporation into the Prater. The diverse story-telling in Ulrike Ottinger’s film “Prater” transforms this place of sensations into a modern cinema of attractions. The Prater’s history from the beginning to the present is told by its protagonists and those who have documented it, including contemporary cinematic images of the Prater, interviews with carnies, commentary by Austrians and visitors from abroad, film quotes, and photographic and written documentary materials. The meaning of the Prater, its status as a place of technological innovation, and its role as a cultural medium are reflected in texts by Elfriede Jelinek, Josef von Sternberg, Erich Kästner and Elias Canetti, as well as in music devoted to this amusement venue throughout the course of its history.
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.
A Zen priest in San Francisco and cookbook author use Zen Buddhism and cooking to relate to everyday life.
"My Own Breathing" is the final documentary of the trilogy, The Murmuring about comfort women during the World War II directed by BYUN Young-joo. This is the completion of her seven years work. BYUN's first and second documentaries spoke of grandmothers' everyday life through the origin of their torment, while My Own Breathing goes back to their past from their everyday life. Deleting any device of narration or music, the camera lets grandmothers talk about themselves. Finally, the film revives their deep voices trampled by harsh history.
At the sea shore, a goat, a child, and a naked man. This is a photograph taken in 1954 by Agnès Varda. The goat was dead, the child was named Ulysses, and the man was naked. Starting from this frozen image, the film explores the real and the imaginary.
There are places that we don’t want to know anything about, places that we would rather pretend don’t exist at all. One such place is a dumpsite. From the humans’ point of view, it is a ghastly place, a stinking desert of trash. But it’s a desert that is teaming with life.
The film is a commemoration of the lost livelihood of the earth, the lost lives of the War and to the work of two of the cinema’s greatest artists.