Zeitgeist Films
Description
"The film depicts the last six days (February 17-22, 1943) in the life of Sophie Scholl from her own perspective: that of a courageous and vibrant young woman who is willing to face death for her belief in her ideals and those of the White Rose, an underground resistance movement to which she belongs. Through their resistance and protest against the Nazi regime, Sophie and her fellow members of the White Rose become synonymous with civil courage and...
Description
A month after receiving a fatal diagnosis in January 2015, Oliver Sacks sat down for a series of filmed interviews in his apartment in New York City. For eighty hours, surrounded by family, friends, and notebooks from six decades of thinking and writing about the brain, he talked about his life and work, his abiding sense of wonder at the natural world, and the place of human beings within it. Drawing on these deeply personal reflections, as well...
Description
"What Remains returns to follow the creation of Mann's new seminal work: a photo series revolving around various aspects of death and decay. Never one to compromise, Sally Mann reflects on her own personal feelings toward death as she continues to examine the boundaries of contemporary photography. Shown at her home on her family farm in Virginia, she is surrounded by her husband and now grown children, and her willingness to reveal her artistic process...
5) Following
Description
Is the fragmented tale of an unemployed young writer who trails strangers through London, hoping that they will provide inspiration for his first novel. He gets more than he bargained for with one of his unwitting subjects, who leads him down a dark, criminal path. Special features included.
Description
A tour de force journey through the China's most tumultuous period. First televised on PBS, this award-winning documentary series presents an astonishingly candid view of a once-secret nation with rare archival footage, insightful historical commentary and stunning eyewitness accounts from citizens who struggled through China’s most decisive century. Monumental in scope, CHINA: A CENTURY IN REVOLUTION is critical viewing for anyone interested in...
7) Privilege
Description
Yvonne Rainer's sixth feature is a genuinely subversive movie about menopause. Out of a subject that has been virtually invisible on film, Rainer has fashioned a witty, risky work about sexual identity and the unequal economies of race, gender and class. Winner of the Filmmakers Trophy in the Dramatic Category at the **Sundance Film Festival.**
Description
In China, it is simply known as “The River.” But the Yangtze—and all of the life that surrounds it—is undergoing a truly astonishing transformation wrought by the largest hydroelectric project in history, the Three Gorges Dam. Canadian documentary filmmaker Yung Chang returns to the gorgeous, now-disappearing landscape of his grandfather’s youth to trace the surreal life of a “farewell cruise” that traverses the gargantuan waterway....
Description
Filmmaker Astra Taylor accompanies some of today’s most influential thinkers on a series of unique excursions through places and spaces that hold particular resonance for them and their ideas. Peter Singer’s thoughts on the ethics of consumption are amplified against the backdrop of Fifth Avenue’s posh boutiques. Slavoj Zizek questions current beliefs about the environment while sifting through a garbage dump. Michael Hardt ponders the nature...
Description
A riveting and poignant journey, YOUNG & RESTLESS IN CHINA tracks the lives of nine ambitious young Chinese professionals who are struggling to make it in this very tumultuous and rapidly changing society. Whether defying Eastern cultural traditions in pursuit of more Western values, struggling through government protocols to start a new business, or fighting to preserve the environment, this new generation is caught between the bonds of their nation’s...
Description
Astonishingly gripping, LET THE FIRE BURN is a found-footage film that unfurls with the tension of a thriller. On May 13, 1985, a longtime feud between the city of Philadelphia and controversial radical urban group MOVE came to a deadly climax. By order of local authorities, police dropped military-grade explosives onto a MOVE-occupied rowhouse. TV cameras captured the conflagration that quickly escalated—and resulted in the tragic deaths of eleven...
12) Exposed
Description
Looks at eight boundary-breaking burlesque stars who use their naked bodies as canvases. These cutting-edge artists combine politics, satire, and physical comedy to challenge the audience's notions of gender identity, disability, and sexuality. Nominated for Best Documentary/Essay Film at the 2013 **Berlin International Film Festival**. *"The performance footage is indeed eye-popping, though the greatest jolt comes from seeing these larger-than-life...
13) Payback
Description
Margaret Atwood’s visionary work *Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth* is the basis for this riveting and poetic documentary on “debt” in its various forms—societal, personal, environmental, spiritual, criminal, and of course, economic. Filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal (*Manufactured Landscapes*) strikingly interweaves these debtor/creditor relationships: two families in a years-long Albanian blood feud; the BP oil spill vs. the Earth;...
Description
Twelve short works by Tony Buba, the director of LIGHTNING OVER BRADDOCK, chronicling the rise and fall of Braddock, PA. Includes J. ROY: NEW AND USED FURNITURE, about an indefatiguable entrepreneur who has failed at a dozen businesses; SWEET SAL, an engaging portrait of part-time hustler; the hilarious WASHING WALLS WITH MRS G., a hilarious film starring Buba’s grandmother; and THE MILL HUNK HERALD, a trip inside a Steel Valley workers’ magazine...
Description
“He has other reputations as well—as an academic, as a maker of curious artifacts, as a cataloguer of the bizarre and as a librarian of the absurd.” Peter Greenaway might well have been describing himself in this thumbnail sketch of Canton Remodell, a character in an unmade project. Before his international arthouse hits like THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER, Greenaway made a series of highly inventive films that established all the...
Description
To explore the ramifications of terrorism, Rainer employs an extended therapy session—in which an American woman speaks to a series of psychiatrists—to evoke the daily experiences of power and repression. Winner of the Independent/Experimental Film and Video Award at the **Los Angeles Film Critics Associations Awards.**
Description
A striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris. The film follows him through China, as he shoots the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution. With...
Description
Tom of Finland is one of the major icons of the gay world. His provocative erotic drawings have had an enormous influence on gay identity, attitude and self-understanding. This ground-breaking work combines interviews with Tom (prior to his death in 1992) and his leather men acolytes with hundreds of his original drawings and steamy fantasy scenes inspired by his work. Winner of the Special Jussi Award for Best Documentary at the **Jussi Awards.**...