This documentary, filmed over a 10-year period, centers on the debate over censorship as it follows Vancouver's Little Sister's Bookstore and its 20-year struggle with Canada Customs over the seizure of books. In the face of bigotry, bombings and repeated book seizures, it wages the most important legal battle in history against Canada Customs.
Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, Riefenstahl covers twenty-one athletic events in the first half of this two-part love letter to the human body and spirit, culminating with the marathon, where Jesse Owens became the first track and field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympics.
Olympia - Fest der Völker
1938
6
Part two of Leni Riefenstahl's monumental examination of the 1938 Olympic Games, the cameras leave the main stadium and venture into the many halls and fields deployed for such sports as fencing, polo, cycling, and the modern pentathlon, which was won by American Glenn Morris.
Olympia - Fest der Schönheit
1938
6
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.
The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson
2017
7
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.
Love Hotel
2014
6
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.
Dig!
2004
6
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.
In the Realms of the Unreal
2004
7
A Zen priest in San Francisco and cookbook author use Zen Buddhism and cooking to relate to everyday life.
How to Cook Your Life
2007
5
The Oystermen of Pointe a la Hache, Louisiana. This town of nearly 300 is struggling to survive following the BP Oil Spill that left their crop dead, finances in ruin and culture facing extinction. This community has a history of being overlooked by the State, and therefore, are taking matters into their own hands, to assure their voice is heard so that they may not otherwise vanish
Vanishing Pearls: The Oystermen of Pointe à la Hache
2014
8
He’s from a place so old it’s been called the cradle of mankind. She’s led a privileged life in America without hardship or pain. Together these two unlikely friends embark upon a journey from the heights of Mt. Kilimanjaro to the depths of an AIDS ravaged village where even the smallest children become outcasts at the mere hint of the disease and malaria is an ever-present threat. As Venance and Kristen experience the ancient culture, heart-breaking poverty, and eternal spirituality of Venance’s motherland, the ability of the Tanzanian people to love, dream, and persevere in the face of overwhelming hardship triggers a life-changing transformation in Kristen—one that brings her face to face with her own mortality and will ultimately cause thousands of lives to be saved. Tanzania: A Journey Within is a dramatic, emotional, and visually stunning odyssey that will challenge and inspire you.
Kwanini
2014
0
Finding love is never easy. For Ravi Patel, a first generation Indian-American, the odds are slim. His ideal bride is beautiful, smart, funny, family-oriented, kind and—in keeping with tradition—Indian (though hopefully raised in the US). Oh, and her last name should be Patel because in India, Patels usually marry other Patels. And so at 30, Ravi decides to break up with his American girlfriend (the one who by all accounts is perfect for him except for her red hair and American name) and embark on a worldwide search for another Patel longing to be loved. He enlists the help of his matchmaker mother, attends a convention of Patels living in the US and travels to wedding season in India. Witty, honest and heartfelt, this comedy explores the questions with which we all struggle: What is love? What is happiness? And how in the world do we go about finding them?
Meet the Patels
2014
7
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.
Iverson
2014
7
Acclaimed Montreal band Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra is one of a growing number of rock groups to have accepted an infant into their touring tribe. Touring with children is both costly and complicated, yet SMZ are determined to combine family life and being on the road with the band's deep political commitment.
Come Worry with Us!
2013
6
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.
Absences
2014
0
In 1959, Jean Cocteau looked back on his artistic journey for the Télé Monte-Carlo television show Tout la vérité, rien que la vérité. The program ends with a tasty anecdote about television that Cocteau describes as a “box of tricks”. A few weeks later, in the same Victorine studios, Cocteau directed most of the sequences for his last opus: The Testament of Orpheus (1959).
Toute la vérité, rien que la vérité : Jean Cocteau
1959
0
When Sarah accidentally proposes to her girlfriend in Provincetown, the mixup turns their loving relationship into a minefield of marital exploration.
The Ring Thing
2017
3
See for yourself what happens behind the doors of America's zaniest ex-gay residential program. Peterson Toscano presents his one-man comedy. Through seven characters Toscano takes you on a comic tour of the Homo No Mo Halfway House, a Christian residential 12-Step program that attempts to save men and women from the "evil snares of homosexuality" through bizarre rules, gender realignment, and brain numbing reconditioning. From the daily rap sessions on appropriate male dress to the surreal Family and Friends Weekend, prepare yourself for a rocky and raucous tour of the house, and see for yourself if our hero comes OUT alive! Based on Toscano's real life experience floundering in various Ex-gay ministries, he weaves together humor, program jargon and outrageous eye witness accounts to form a piece that is hilarious, poignant and inspirational. Having premiered the play in Memphis in 2003, Toscano traveled for five years in North America and Europe presenting it hundreds of times.
Doin' Time in the Homo No Mo' Halfway House
2008
0
Documentary about four Chinese lesbian women who seek contract marriages with gay men, and form of their lesbian and gay community and fulfill their desires.
奇缘一生
2013
0
After casting painter and video artist Mania Akbari as the central figure of his groundbreaking Ten (2002), and then witnessing her outstanding debut as a feature film director in 20 Fingers (2004), Abbas Kiarostami urged her to direct a sequel to the film. In Dah be alaveh Chahar (10 + 4), though, circumstances are different: Mania is fighting cancer. She has undergone surgery; she has lost her hair following chemotherapy and no longer wears the compulsory headscarf; and sometimes she is too weak to drive. So the camera follows her to record conversations with friends and family in different spaces, from the gondola she had famously used in her first feature to a hospital bed.
10 + 4 (Dah be alaveh chahar)
2007
4
For the last quarter century, Houston native Arden Eversmeyer journeyed across the country to record hundreds of oral "herstories" with a mostly invisible population that is rapidly disappearing. Old Lesbians honors Arden's legacy by animating the resilient, joyful voices she preserved in the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project, from first crush to first love, from the closet to coming out, and finally from loss to connection.
Old Lesbians
2023
7
Shut Up and Sing is a documentary about the country band from Texas called the Dixie Chicks and how one tiny comment against President Bush dropped their number one hit off the charts and caused fans to hate them, destroy their CD’s, and protest at their concerts. A film about freedom of speech gone out of control and the three girls lives that were forever changed by a small anti-Bush comment
Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing
2006
6