Zeitgeist Films
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
"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...
4) 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.
6) 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
“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 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...
10) Examined Life
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
This documentary follows the charismatic Qi Moxiang, a former boxing star and state coach who recruits young fighting talent from the impoverished farms and villages across Sichuan province. A select few boys (and girls) are sent to national training centers, with the hope of discovering China's next Olympic heroes. But will these potential boxing champions leave it all behind to be the next Mike Tyson? Their rigorous training, teenage trials and...
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) Afghan Star
Description
After thirty years of war and five devastating years of Taliban rule, pop culture is beginning to return to Afghanistan. Since 2005, millions have been tuning in to Tolo TV's wildly popular American Idol-style series Afghan Star. Like its Western predecessors, people compete for a cash prize and record deal. More surprisingly, the contest is open to everyone across the country despite gender, ethnicity or age. Two thousand people audition, including...
Description
Eight times a week, from 1960 to 2002, the Sullivan Street Playhouse in New York City’s Greenwich Village played midwife to a musical theater ritual that attracted theater-goers from across the globe. That show was the legendary and beloved Fantasticks, and for 42 years and 17,162 performances, a legion of performers—including future luminaries such as F. Murray Abraham, Ricardo Montalban, Elliott Gould, Liza Minnelli, Glenn Close, Richard Chamberlain...
Description
A film portrait of the creative community of women writers, artists, photographers and editors (including Colette, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas) who flocked to the Left Bank of Paris in the early decades of the 20th century. Utilizing groundbreaking research and newly discovered home movies, PARIS WAS A WOMAN re-creates the mood and flavor of this female artistic community in Paris during its most magical era. Winner of the Siegessäule...
17) Forbidden Films
Description
1,200 feature films were made in Germany’s Third Reich. According to experts, some 100 of these were blatant Nazi propaganda. Nearly seventy years after the end of the Nazi regime, more than 40 of these films remain under lock and key. Director Felix Moeller interviews German film historians, archivists and film-goers in an investigation of the power and potential danger of cinema when used for ideological purposes. Utilizing clips from the films...
19) Uprising
Description
In January 2011, millions of Egyptians took to the streets in a spontaneous eruption against thirty years of oppression under the regime of Hosni Mubarak. Communicating via Facebook and Twitter, the largely peaceful protesters braved tear gas, beatings, and live bullets in the hope of facing down security forces and overthrowing the government. Over eight hundred lost their lives, and several thousand were arrested and tortured by security forces....
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.**...