Documentary on the life and accomplishments of the members of this uniquely talented musical family. The film focuses on the Figueroa family’s history within the context of its creative universe, dating back to the 19th century. Through the use of photographs, historic film footage, recordings, sheet music, newspaper clippings, and posters, the musical trajectory of the family is brought to life and their role in transforming the musical history of Puerto Rico and the world is portrayed.
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In 1954, before his senior year of high school, Wilt Chamberlain took a summer job that would change his life, working as a bellhop at Kutsher's Country Club, a Jewish resort in the Catskill Mountains. An unexplored and pivotal chapter in the life of one of basketball's greatest players, and a fascinating glimpse of a time when a very different era of basketball met the Borscht Belt in its heyday.
Electro-Pythagorus is an intimate and subjective portrait of the late Martin Bartlett, the Canadian electronic music pioneer who studied with Pauline Oliveros, David Tudor, John Cage, and Pandit Pran Nath. His contribution as an interdisciplinary composer, educator, and founding member of Western Front, though undoubtedly extensive, is in danger of being erased from cultural memory since his death from AIDS in 1993. Navigating an array of archival materials including letters, correspondences, notebooks, personal photos, and a huge body of unreleased music and field recordings held at the archives of Simon Fraser University, Electro-Pythagoras is a journey through the evolution of Bartlett’s musical time and space, softly guided by Luke Fowler’s insightful camera and montage—creating an experimental portrait that defies one-dimensionality.
Agnes may not seem like someone with much to laugh about. For one thing, she has albinism - a lack of pigment in the skin, hair and eyes - and her appearance has provoked prejudice from family, friends and strangers since she was born. But despite all odds, Agnes refuses to lead a life of sorrow. This fascinating and inspiring documentary also shares the stories of seven other people's individual experiences of living their lives with albinism in Kenya, a predominantly black society. While each person's story is unique, they all have one thing in common: they know what it is like to stand out uncomfortably from the crowd.
A film about teenagers with growing pains, who discover their own voice and talent through riding and grooming toy horses.
Documentarian Jose Sanchez-Montes turns his attention towards the late Cuban musician Ignacio Villa, known throughout the world as Bola de Nieve (Snowball), with this 2003 biographical documentary entitled simply Bola de Nieve. A master pianist, Bola de Nieve was a mainstay through the middle portion of the 20th century, with his music almost omnipresent in South America cinema throughout those formative decades. With Bola de Nieve's famous statement "I'm a sad person, but my songs sound happy" in mind, Sanchez-Montes also looks at the influence of the musician's African heritage and homosexuality upon Bola de Nieve's unique musical style.
A collection of film clips from horror movies and interviews with the actors and directors who made them.
Tenor saxophone master Sonny Rollins has long been hailed as one of the most important artists in jazz history, and still, today, he is viewed as the greatest living jazz improviser. In 1986, filmmaker Robert Mugge produced Saxophone Colossus, a feature-length portrait of Rollins, named after one of his most celebrated albums.
All the feature is given prestige to by the narration in Caetano Veloso's voice, that also signs one of the segments of the project. São Paulo is the largest city of the Southern Hemisphere, with an incessant dynamics of cultural mixtures, with immigrants of all the world and migrants of all parts of Brazil. The gathering of these peculiarities are seen through the 13 film directors's sensibilities and their segments.
After five years studying in Paris, Arash has not adjusted to life there and has decided to return to Iran to live. Hoping to change his mind, his two friends Hossein and Ashkan convince him to take a last trip through France.
For First Nations communities, the headdress bears significant meaning. It's a powerful symbol of hard-earned leadership and responsibility. As filmmaker JJ Neepin prepares to wear her grandfather's headdress for a photo shoot she reflects on lessons learned and the thoughtless ways in which the tradition has been misappropriated.
In the 1920s, Angela Murray Gibson chose an unusual location to embark on a career in silent filmmaking: her tiny hometown of Casselton, North Dakota. She had previously helped Mary Pickford as an advisor and assistant director on The Pride of the Clan (1917), which Mary Pickford produced and starred in. She opened North Dakota's first movie studio, and she had the audacity to be a woman in an industry dominated by men.
Australian filmmaker Sophia Turkiewicz investigates why her Polish mother abandoned her and uncovers the truth behind her mother's wartime escape from a Siberian gulag, leaving Sophia to confront her own capacity for forgiveness.
Helke Sander interviews multiple German women who were raped in Berlin by Soviet soldiers in May 1945. Most women never spoke of their experience to anyone, due largely to the shame attached to rape in German culture at that time.
The Kitades run a butcher shop in Kaizuka City outside Osaka, raising and slaughtering cattle to sell the meat in their store. The seventh generation of their family's business, they are descendants of the buraku people, a social minority held over from the caste system abolished in the 19th century that is still subject to discrimination. As the Kitades are forced to make the difficult decision to shut down their slaughterhouse, the question posed by the film is whether doing this will also result in the deconstruction of the prejudices imposed on them. Though primarily documenting the process of their work with meticulous detail, Aya Hanabusa also touches on the Kitades' participation in the buraku liberation movement. Hanabusa's heartfelt portrait expands from the story of an old-fashioned family business competing with corporate supermarkets, toward a subtle and sophisticated critique of social exclusion and the persistence of ancient prejudices.
A portrait of a hard rocking band known for their substance-fueled live performances on their evolutionary journey to become one of the greatest cult rock bands of our time.
"Ars longa, vita brevis" – art is long, life is short. This is one of Japanese music icon Ryuichi Sakamoto's favorite quotes, and the message that he leaves for viewers at the end of his final concert film, shot before he succumbed to cancer in March 2023. Consisting of only Sakamoto and his piano, Opus features the final live performances of 20 songs that Sakamoto meticulously curated to encapsulate his distinguished 40-year career.
"Green Day: The Early Years" chronicles the rise of the world's most influential punk band, from their origins playing shows at Berkley's notorious Gilman Street venue in the late 80s, through the release of the platinum-selling Dookie in 1994.
The life and career of the hailed Hollywood movie star and underappreciated genius inventor, Hedy Lamarr.
A chronological look at films by, for, or about gays and lesbians in the United States, from 1947 to 2005, Kenneth Anger's "Fireworks" to "Brokeback Mountain". Talking heads, anchored by critic and scholar B. Ruby Rich, are interspersed with an advancing timeline and with clips from two dozen films. The narrative groups the pictures around various firsts, movements, and triumphs: experimental films, indie films, sex on screen, outlaw culture and bad guys, lesbian lovers, films about AIDS and dying, emergence of romantic comedy, transgender films, films about diversity and various cultures, documentaries and then mainstream Hollywood drama. What might come next?
When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.