Four strikingly different women undergo treatment at a comprehensive breast center presided over by the inimitable and searingly honest veteran surgeon Dr. Lauren Schnaper. She believes that fear, ignorance, and pink-ribbon culture are fueling an explosive rate of unnecessary mastectomies in America. Blending medical archival footage with extensive 'collateral damage' suffered by our four women - repeated loss of implants, blood infections caused by multiple surgical procedures, cosmetic nipple exchanges, reactions to cadaver's skin that is used to house breast implants - we learn that breast reconstruction post-mastectomy is no 'boob job.' As Dr. Schnaper advocates breast conservation and debunks breast cancer myths, so the myth of St. Agatha, the Sicilian martyred saint of the breast, offers a commentary on our own confused contemporary moment.
Year after year, just after the monsoon season has finished, thousands of families travel to a bleak desert in Gujerat, India, where they will stay for an endless eight months and extract salt from the earth, using the same painstaking, manual techniques as generations before them. Director Farida Pacha spent a season with one of these families, observing the very particular rhythms of their lives.
Through previously undiscovered private letters, photos and diaries that were found in the Himmler family house in 1945, the "The Decent One" exposes a unique and at times uncomfortable access to the life and mind of the merciless "Architect of the Final Solution" Heinrich Himmler.
A documentary on seniors at a high school in a small Indiana town and their various cliques.
Documentary filmmaker Amy Berg investigates the life of 30-year pedophile Father Oliver O'Grady and exposes the corruption inside the Catholic Church that allowed him to abuse countless children. Victims' stories and a disturbing interview with O'Grady offer a view into the troubled mind of the spiritual leader who moved from parish to parish gaining trust ... all the while betraying so many.
THE ARYANS is Mo Asumang's personal journey into the madness of racism during which she meets German neo-Nazis, the US leading racist, the notorious Tom Metzger and Ku Klux Klan members in the alarming twilight of the Midwest. In The ARYANS Mo questions the completely wrong interpretation of "Aryanism" - a phenomenon of the tall, blond and blue-eyed master race.
A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.
Over the past few years, Israel's ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territory and repeated invasions of the Gaza strip have triggered a fierce backlash against Israeli policies virtually everywhere in the world—except the United States. This documentary takes an eye-opening look at this critical exception, zeroing in on pro-Israel public relations efforts within the U.S.
The film follows the story of Jamie, a struggling butch lesbian actress who gets cast as a man in a film. The main plot is a romantic comedy between Jamie's male alter-ego, "Male Jamie," and Jill, a heterosexual woman on set. The film's subplots include Jamie's bisexual roommate Lola and her cat actor Howard, Lola's abrasive butch German girlfriend Andi, and Jamie's gay Asian friend David.
Germany in Autumn does not have a plot per se; it mixes documentary footage, along with standard movie scenes, to give the audience the mood of Germany during the late 1970s. The movie covers the two month time period during 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped, and later murdered, by the left-wing terrorists known as the RAF-Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction). The businessman had been kidnapped in an effort to secure the release of the orginal leaders of the RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. When the kidnapping effort and a plane hijacking effort failed, the three most prominent leaders of the RAF, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe, all committed suicide in prison. It has become an article of faith within the left-wing community that these three were actually murdered by the state.
Pensioners, lawyers, married couples and teenagers are all customers at the Angel Love Hotel in Osaka Japan. With unprecedented access into one of the most private and anonymous spaces in Japanese society, this film follows the love hotel's struggling manager and staff as the try to keep their hotel running, as well as revealing the intimate and private lives of the customers who visit.
Iverson is the ultimate legacy of NBA legend Allen Iverson, who rose from a childhood of crushing poverty in Hampton, Virginia, to become an 11-time NBA All-Star and universally recognized icon of his sport. Off the court, his audacious rejection of conservative NBA convention and unapologetic embrace of hip hop culture sent shockwaves throughout the league and influenced an entire generation. Told largely in Iverson's own words, the film charts the career highs and lows of one of the most distinctive and accomplished figures the sport of basketball has ever seen.
Carole Laganière dives deeply into personal territory in this beautifully crafted exploration of absence and loss and its painful effect on daily lives. Inspired by her mother’s steadily advancing Alzheimer’s and the inevitability of her estrangement, Laganière weaves their story with the stories of others wrestling with loss: Ines, an immigrant who returns to her birth country of Croatia to find the mother who abandoned her during the war; Deni, an American author who’s finally able to search for his Quebec roots; and Nathalie, who’s desperately looking for her missing sister. Through their experiences the film ponders how absence is often the catalyst for a quest—a quest for information, understanding and often acceptance. Through its many voices, Absences speaks to us of the immense fragility and resiliency of human emotions.
You’d never know this is your home away from home. The surveillance camera outside shows a drab reception area and an unremarkable street in Mexico City; inside, the lights flash, but the tables are empty. Yet preparations are soon underway and fixed categories cease to apply: stubble is removed, make-up applied and strands of hair are teased into place; the camera is trained not on the men themselves, but what they see in the mirror.
Do You Dream in Color? in this documentary follows four courageous blind high school students. This coming-of-age story see's the students as they strive to prove that their disability will not hold them back from achieving their dreams.
Short directed by Agnès Varda in 1986 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the French Cinematheque.
"One Last Hug" chronicles a three day summer camp for children learning to cope with the death of a loved one. With the guidance of trained professionals, grieving children as young as seven years old learn that their feelings are normal, and that by talking about them they can begin to heal. A testament to the healing power of shared sorrow, One Last Hug shows the often-unseen and particular experience of children's grief.
For several decades, gifted and incredibly prolific forger Mark Landis compulsively created impeccable copies of works by a variety of major artists, donating them to institutions across the country and landing pieces on many of their walls. ART AND CRAFT brings us into the cluttered and insular life of an unforgettable character just as he finds his foil in an equally obsessive art registrar.
War is Hell. Why would anyone want to spend their weekends there? Deep in the Oregon woods, the heat of a reenacted Vietnam battle sheds light on America's complicated relationship with war and its veterans.
Never before have we watched as much porn as today yet the traditional porn industry is dying. The arrival of web sites showing amateur clips has transformed the way porn is made and consumed. Behind this transformation lies one opaque multinational.