A countercultural icon, Hoffman is remembered as one of the greatest radicals of the civil rights and anti-war movements of the sixties. In this film, which documents the first interview he gave in 1980 when he decided to reveal his identity after spending seven years in hiding, he traces the evolution of political activism in America. "My name is Abbie... orphan of America."
Emmett Till was brutally killed in the summer of 1955. At his funeral, his mother forced the world to reckon with the brutality of American racism. This short documentary was commissioned by "Time" magazine for their series "100 Photos" about the most influential photographs of all time.
The “Prophecy of the 7th Fire” says a “black snake” will bring destruction to the earth. For Winona LaDuke, the “black snake” is oil trains and pipelines. When she learns that Canadian-owned Enbridge plans to route a new pipeline through her tribe’s 1855 Treaty land, she and her community spring into action to save the sacred wild rice lakes and preserve their traditional indigenous way of life. Launching an annual spiritual horse ride along the proposed pipeline route, speaking at community meetings and regulatory hearings. Winona testifies that the pipeline route follows one of historical and present-day trauma. The tribe participates in the pipeline permitting process, asserting their treaty rights to protect their natural resources. LaDuke joins with her tribe and others to demand that the pipelines’ impact on tribal people’s resources be considered in the permitting process.
The Road Forward is an electrifying musical documentary that connects a pivotal moment in Canada’s civil rights history—the beginnings of Indian Nationalism in the 1930s—with the powerful momentum of First Nations activism today. Interviews and musical sequences describe how a tiny movement, the Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood, grew to become a successful voice for change across the country. Visually stunning, The Road Forward seamlessly connects past and present through superbly produced story-songs with soaring vocals, blues, rock, and traditional beats.
Olive trees have been a key element of life for populations in Palestinian land for generations. Since the creation of the state of Israel, historical inhabitants and trees face the uproot of their lives and culture. This documentary shows popular struggles in occupied Cisjordan through the testimonies of Palestinian families and the activists that protect them during olive harvest.
An apocalyptic sound of roaring machines incessantly intrudes into the habitats of man and nature. Barren landscapes and deserted villages linger in hypnotic restlessness. A self-destructive system meets resistance.
In 2011, the villagers of Imider shut down a water pipeline to Africa's biggest silver mine to save their oasis. Eight years later, they sing while harvesting the fruits of their militancy.
This is the first generation of Russian youth to have grown up after the fall of the Soviet Union, and are looking inwards to the Eastern Bloc for inspiration, rather than the wider Western world. With designers like Gosha Rubchinskiy popularising post-Soviet style around the world, we discover what effect the former Soviet Union has had on modern creativity, the impact of this cultural explosion on the rest of the world, and what it is to be young in Russia today.
In 1989, a group of avant-garde artists who had collaborated in private for years received permission to organize their own exhibition at the National Art Museum of China. However, one of the terms was to exclude performance artists from participating. The seven artists who were left out took action. At the opening ceremony, their lives changed as the sounds of gunfire rang out.
Keith Haring: The Message was released in conjunction with the Keith Haring retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. Directed by famed designer, Madonna stylist and Haring confidante Maripol, The Message goes pretty deep into both the artist and the city and times he’ll forever be identified with: New York City, circa the 1980s. The focus, as the title indicates, is upon the “struggles that animated” Keith Haring’s work, his activism – in a word, his “message.”
A regular Wednesday night in Tokyo's subway. The train is filled with more and more people...
At underground film of the 1st Popular Festival of Catalan Poetry filmed in the Proce Theater in Barcelona on May 25, 1970, in solidarity with political prisoners. The participating poets were: Agustí Bartra, Joan Oliver (Pere IV), Salvador Espriu, Joan Brossa, Francesc Vallverdú and Gabriel Ferrater.
Poet Layli Long Soldier crafts a searing portrait of her Oyate’s connection to the Black Hills, through first contact and broken treaties to the promise of the Land Back movement, in this lyrical testament to resilience of a nation.
The workers of Safai Karmachari Andolan, led by Roman Magsaysay Award winner activist Bezwada Wilson, are on a mission to eradicate manual scavenging, a practice in which lower-caste men and women manually clear human excrement from gutters, and liberate those forced into this occupation by dint of their birth.
A look into the world of body piercing and suspension and the people who do it.
A documentary focused on Melbourne's music scene around the year 2006. Features bands such as HTRK, The Stabs, Cosmic Psychos, Rod Cooper, and Love of Diagrams.
This is Poe and Král's first effort, shot on small-gauge stock, before their more well-known endeavor The Blank Generation (1976) came to be. A "DIY" portrait of the New York music scene, the film is a patchwork of footage of numerous rock acts performing live, at venues like Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, the dive bars of Greenwich Village and, of course, CBGB.
This documentary on the "youth movement" of the late 1960s focuses on the hippie pot smoking/free love culture in the San Francisco Bay area.
Feeling disgruntled, a group of punks start a litter picking group to counter the amount of litter their community faces.
Humanity on Trial follows humanitarian Salam Aldeen as he is accused of human smuggling by the Hellenic Coast Guard.