In the summer of 1977, NASA sent Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 on an epic journey into interstellar space. Together and alone, they will travel until the end of the universe. Each spacecraft carries a golden record album, a massive compilation of images and sounds embodying the best of Planet Earth. According to Carl Sagan, “[t]he spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” While working on the golden record, Sagan met and fell madly in love with his future wife Annie Druyan. The record became their love letter to humankind and to each other. In the summer of 2010, I began my own hopeful voyage into the unknown. This film is a love letter to my fellow traveler. - Penny Lane
On learning that her infant niece, Maya, is dying of a rare disease, newly pregnant Sharon decides she must return home to Buffalo, N.Y., to help out -- but instead, she steps into a hornet's nest of family turmoil. While Maya deteriorates, another crisis erupts when Karen -- Maya's mother -- becomes pregnant with the child of a former gang member in this cinema verité-style portrait of a family on the brink.
21 Below
2009
0
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.
The Corporation
2003
7
As the Syrian war continues to leave entire generations without education, health care, or a state, Lost in Lebanon closely follows four Syrians during their relocation process. The resilience of this Syrian community, which currently makes up one fifth of the population in Lebanon, is astoundingly clear as its members work hard to collaborate, share resources, and advocate for themselves in a new land. With the Syrian conflict continuing to push across borders, lives are becoming increasingly desperate due to the devastating consequences of new visa laws that the Lebanese government has implemented, leaving families at risk of arrest, detention, and deportation. Despite these obstacles, the film encourages us to look beyond the staggering statistics of displaced refugees and focus on the individuals themselves.
Lost in Lebanon
2017
8
The 1960s was an extraordinary time for the United States. Unburdened by post-war reparations, Americans were preoccupied with other developments like NASA, the game-changing space programme that put Neil Armstrong on the moon. Yet it was astronauts like Eugene Cernan who paved the uneven, perilous path to lunar exploration. A test pilot who lived to court danger, he was recruited along with 14 other men in a secretive process that saw them become the closest of friends and adversaries. In this intensely competitive environment, Cernan was one of only three men who was sent twice to the moon, with his second trip also being NASA’s final lunar mission. As he looks back at what he loved and lost during the eight years in Houston, an incomparably eventful life emerges into view. Director Mark Craig crafts a quietly epic biography that combines the rare insight of the surviving former astronauts with archival footage and otherworldly moonscapes.
The Last Man on the Moon
2016
6
While serving with the African Union, former Marine Capt. Brian Steidle documents the brutal ethnic cleansing occuring in Darfur. Determined that the Western public should know about the atrocities he is witnessing, Steidle contacts New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof, who publishes some of Steidle's photographic evidence.
The Devil Came on Horseback
2007
7
If your bedroom has become too small a stage for your air guitar antics, take inspiration from the competitors featured here as they battle their way from the inaugural U.S. Air Guitar Championship to the world championship in Oulu, Finland. Along the way, filmmaker Alexandra Lipsitz documents the fierce rivalries that develop as would-be rock legends vie for top honors in technical accuracy, stage presence and "airness."
Air Guitar Nation
2006
6
This documentary profiles the life and career of Pat Summitt, the NCAA's winningest basketball coach, who resigned from her post at the University of Tennessee in 2012 due to early-onset Alzheimer's disease.
Pat XO
2013
8
This insightful Home Box Office documentary profiles some American children afflicted with Tourette's syndrome -- a hereditary neurological disorder manifested by recurrent, involuntary vocal and motor tics. More than a dozen youngsters ranging from ages 6 to 13 discuss the stigma of Tourette's, what it's like to grow up with the condition, control measures and the challenges they face to be viewed as normal.
I Have Tourette's But Tourette's Doesn't Have Me
2005
7
The Academy Award® nominee Cosmic Voyage combines live action with state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery to pinpoint where humans fit in our ever-expanding universe. Highlighting this journey is a "cosmic zoom" based on the powers of 10, extending from the Earth to the largest observable structures in the universe, and then back to the subnuclear realm.
Cosmic Voyage
1996
7
With more than 27 years of service, the space shuttle Discovery has clocked more time in space than any other shuttle. She has flown more than 148 million miles, and has become one of the most storied spacecraft in American history. Join us as we celebrate her remarkable past and follow her final flight: to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. It's an emotionally charged mission full of logistical challenges. Discovery is a robust, but very fragile aircraft, and getting her to D.C. in one piece will require some innovative engineering.
Shuttle Discovery's Last Mission
2013
6
Under the neon lights in a gay-friendly neighborhood of New York City, four young African-American lesbians are violently and sexually threatened by a man on the street. They defend themselves against him and are charged and convicted in the courts and in the media as a 'Gang of Killer Lesbians'.
Out in the Night
2014
4
While in San Francisco for the promotion of her last film in October 1967, Agnès Varda, tipped by her friend Tom Luddy, gets to know a relative she had never heard of before, Jean Varda, nicknamed "Yanco". This hitherto unknown uncle lives on a boat in Sausalito, is a painter, has adopted a hippie lifestyle and loves life. The meeting is a very happy one.
Oncle Yanco
1967
7
This film is an album of Native womanhood, portraying a proud matriarchal society that for centuries has been pressured to adopt different standards and customs. All of the women featured share a belief in the importance of tradition as a source of strength in the face of change.
Mother of Many Children
1977
7
American Experience presents Summer of Love, a striking picture of San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district during the summer of 1967 -- from the utopian beginnings, when peace and love prevailed, to the chaos, unsanitary conditions, and widespread drug use that ultimately signaled the end. Academy Award-nominated filmmakers Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco (Daughter from Danang) examine the social and cultural forces that sparked the largest migration of young people in America's history.
Summer of Love
2018
0
A woman reads letters written to her by her imprisoned lover over a seascape. In this dialogue between images and text, absence, expectation and the desire for freedom are expressed.
Nos horizons
2022
0
The film 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 original 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.
Deutschland im Herbst
1978
6
An in-depth documentary about the making of David Cronenberg's feature film, Cosmopolis (2012), an adaptation of Don DeLillo's novel of the same name.
Citizens of Cosmopolis
2012
6
Using her husband's struggle with cancer as a case in point, filmmaker Linda Garmon explores the status of the fight against the devastating disease and looks at the lives of the medical professionals dedicated curing it. Interweaving personal testimony with science, this compelling documentary also includes a panel discussion with cancer experts led by broadcast journalist and cancer survivor Linda Ellerbee.
The Truth About Cancer
2008
0
I left Lebanon in 2006. For the past 10 years I lived in 7 countries, 10 cities, and 21 homes. I slept in 21 beds, cooked in 21 kitchens, cleaned 21 bathrooms, stared at 21 windows, wrote on 21 desks, and locked 21 doors behind me. I packed all of my life into two suitcases and a backpack. The rest stayed behind. Somebody somewhere uses my bed, somebody somewhere has my shoes. I was there. But now I am here.
Sokun Al Sulfuhat
2016
7
With moving stories from a range of characters from her Kahnawake Reserve, Mohawk filmmaker, Tracey Deer, reveals the divisive legacy of more than a hundred years of discriminatory and sexist government policy to expose the lingering "blood quantum" ideals, snobby attitudes and outright racism that threaten to destroy the fabric of her community.
Club Native
2008
0