Ebony Goddess: Queen of Ilê Aiyê follows three women competing to be the carnival queen of Ilê Aiyê, a prominent and controversial Afro-Brazilian group with an all-black membership. The selection is based on Afro-centric notions of beauty, in counterpoint to prevailing standards of beauty in Brazil, a country famous for slim supermodels and plastic surgery. Contestants for the title of Ebony Goddess dress in flowing African-style garments, gracefully performing traditional Afro-Brazilian dances to songs praising the beauty of black women.
Festive Land examines one of the largest and most extraordinary popular celebrations in the world, the week-long Carnival that brings more than two million people to the streets of Salvador, the capital of Bahia, in northeastern Brazil. Carnival is the most expressive showcase of the unique cultural richness of Bahia, where African culture has survived, prospered, and evolved, mixing with other Brazilian influences to create forms found nowhere else in the world. The film captures this unique cultural energy through extraordinary footage of musical performances, dances, religious manifestations, and street celebrations. At the same time, Carnival reflects the racial and social tensions of Brazil's heterogeneous society. At first glance there appear to be two million people chaotically mixed on the streets, but a more detailed look reveals how patterns of segregation driven by racial, social and economic differences continue in Carnival.
The execution was scheduled and the last meal consumed. The coolness of the poisons entering the blood system slowed the heart rate and sent him on the way to Judgement. He had paid for his crime with years on Death Row waiting for this moment and now he would pay for them again as the judgment continued..
Ann Dexter, daughter of an itinerant Haiti waterfront character, Carl Dexter, brings a golden idol, which her father her stolen at a voodoo ceremony, to Bill Buchanan, who is known along the waterfront as a man eternally on a treasure hunt. He agrees to let Ann accompany him in search of the treasure after a native he befriended gives him directions and certain voodoo secret charms. They follow an underwater passage to an island where they find a Pagan tribe. They learn that the golden idol is a burial symbol representing the dead and that hundreds of idols are at the bottom of the sacred burial lake.
Two male best friends have their relationship tested when it turns out that one is in love with the other.
The Secret Service abducts a "rocket scientist" to better protect him against gangsters acting for Chinese agents.
Freeform is the first student film by artist Jacob Sizemore. The narrative follows a woman in a mask as she longs to be free. The video is set to the musical piece Reach by Jeremy Levin.
A young prostitute, Gullan Svan, is murdered one night. The police suspects that the murderer is a student, since she had a lot of students as customers. The murderer stole a picture of Gullan after he killed her, a picture which later is found in a rented tuxedo when the tuxedo is returned. Four students decide to solve the case, but it seems that the truth is even closer than they first suspected... Plot by Mattias Thuresson
Milly Cohen lives in modest circumstances with her grandmother Cathy and her little brother Kevin. After the death of her parents, she gave up her art studies and works for the antiques dealer Philip Barnes, a handsome but uncouth bachelor. Philip only realizes that Milly has become the pearl of the store when she quits - due to her boss's unfriendliness and her brother's serious illness. Philip doesn't get on well with the new assistants. He realizes that he has fallen in love with Milly. When he tries to win her back, Milly has already accepted her old boyfriend's proposal of marriage.
A female eye doctor and a male film director run into each other on the airplane to Milan. The two were lovers in the past, and are now in their middle ages. After their chance encounter in Torino, they travel around Tuscany together, appreciating the works of Caravaggio. They begin to notice they are hiding their own wounds from each other. In Korea, he goes to her eye clinic, and they confess love to each other for the first time. In the end, they go their separate ways.
A glimpse of life as seen through young people at a Zimbabwean children's home.
Lin is a plain-clothes cop in the crime-riddled district of Mongkok who bungles a vice operation directed at mainland prostitues. He falls for a ditsy hooker who tells him the love of her life is a killer who once svaed her life in a shootout.
Romana fancies a proper holiday and convinces the Doctor to visit the leisure planet Argolis, where a takeover by the Argolins' historic enemy is underway.
Traces of a body draw a camera across a landscape of stone and walls.
Aubri Callahan is an aspiring comedian and ghost writer for Bella Delmonico, acclaimed stand up comic and owner of the Vista Theater. Performing at the Vista is a key step on the way to stardom and despite her natural talent, Aubri patiently waits for her time to shine, writing jokes for Bella in the shadows of the comedic giants that came before her. When The Vista Theater Variety Show lands in Aubri’s lap she must plan the whole event and find a headliner all before Christmas eve, just three weeks away.
I left Lebanon in 2006. For the past 10 years I lived in 7 countries, 10 cities, and 21 homes. I slept in 21 beds, cooked in 21 kitchens, cleaned 21 bathrooms, stared at 21 windows, wrote on 21 desks, and locked 21 doors behind me. I packed all of my life into two suitcases and a backpack. The rest stayed behind. Somebody somewhere uses my bed, somebody somewhere has my shoes. I was there. But now I am here.
A documentary exploring the "respectable" and "immoral" stereotypes of women in Indian society told from the point of view of 2 strip-tease dancers in a cabaret house in Bombay.
In America, size matters. The bigger you are, the more power you have, especially in the business world. Anat Baron takes you on a no holds barred exploration of the U.S. beer industry that ultimately reveals the truth behind the label of your favorite beer. Told from an insider’s perspective, the film goes behind the scenes of the daily battles and all out wars that dominate the industry.
Before the internet. Before social media. Before breaking news. The victims of Thalidomide had to rely on something even more extraordinary to fight their corner: Investigative journalism. This is the story of how Harold Evans fought and won the battle of his and many other lives.
From both local and global perspectives, this documentary examines the harsh realities behind the mounting water crisis. Learn how politics, pollution and human rights are intertwined in this important issue that affects every being on Earth. With water drying up around the world and the future of human lives at stake, the film urges a call to arms before more of our most precious natural resource evaporates.
Birth: it's a miracle. A rite of passage. A natural part of life. But more than anything, birth is a business. Compelled to find answers after a disappointing birth experience with her first child, actress Ricki Lake recruits filmmaker Abby Epstein to explore the maternity care system in America
Some 220 miles above Earth lies the International Space Station, a one-of-a-kind outer space laboratory that 16 nations came together to build. Get a behind-the-scenes look at the making of this extraordinary structure in this spectacular IMAX film. Viewers will blast off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center and the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Russia for this incredible journey -- IMAX's first-ever space film. Tom Cruise narrates.
The story of Pocahontas has been passed down through the centuries. Her relationship with John Smith has been characterized as a romance that united two cultures and created lasting peace. However, the life of this American Indian princess was anything but a fairytale. Join us as we look beyond the fiction and reveal the real story of Pocahontas, a tale of kidnapping, conflict, starvation, ocean journeys, and the future of an entire civilization.
Home movies, photographs, and recited poetry illustrate the life of Tupac Shakur, one of the most beloved, revolutionary, and volatile hip-hop MCs of all time.
Jon Stewart performs a solo standup routine, telecast live from Miami, Florida.
Following a series of intimate conversations between a former couple who lived through two years of domestic abuse, A Better Man infuses new energy and possibility into the movement to end violence against women.
Egyptian Jeanne d’Arc’ is a creative documentary that explores issues of female emancipation in ‘post post-revolutionary’ Egypt. Beginning with the return journey to Cairo of a filmmaker long absent from her own country, the film weaves a series of intimate portraits composed of interviews, poetic voice-over and dance; exploring themes of oppression, guilt and faith with Egyptian women, many of them artists. Reflecting on Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 film ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’ – in which the female figure is martyred by the patriarchal forces surrounding her – ‘Jeanne’ is a contemporary commentary that melds documentary and dance with poetic storytelling and myth to arrive at the core of the filmmaker’s enquiries into the circumstances of women in Egypt today.
"If buildings could talk, what would they say about us?" CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE offers six startling responses. This 3D film project about the soul of buildings allows six iconic and very different buildings to speak for themselves, examining human life from the unblinking perspective of a manmade structure. Six acclaimed filmmakers bring their own visual style and artistic approach to the project. Buildings, they show us, are material manifestations of human thought and action: the Berlin Philharmonic, an icon of modernity; the National Library of Russia, a kingdom of thoughts; Halden Prison, the world's most humane prison; the Salk Institute, an institute for breakthrough science; the Oslo Opera House, a futuristic symbiosis of art and life; and the Centre Pompidou, a modern culture machine. CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE explores how each of these landmarks reflects our culture and guards our collective memory.
A group of passionate young environmentalists spend 100 days in the jungles of Borneo in effort to save the rainforests and its endangered orangutans in this Australian documentary...
The five acting students have not seen each other for 36 years. Now they face each other again and look back on the past together. What experiences have they had? What were their successes? What would they rather have done without?
While serving with the African Union, former Marine Capt. Brian Steidle documents the brutal ethnic cleansing occuring in Darfur. Determined that the Western public should know about the atrocities he is witnessing, Steidle contacts New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof, who publishes some of Steidle's photographic evidence.
If your bedroom has become too small a stage for your air guitar antics, take inspiration from the competitors featured here as they battle their way from the inaugural U.S. Air Guitar Championship to the world championship in Oulu, Finland. Along the way, filmmaker Alexandra Lipsitz documents the fierce rivalries that develop as would-be rock legends vie for top honors in technical accuracy, stage presence and "airness."
"Plastic Paradise" is an independent documentary film that chronicles Angela Sun's personal journey of discovery to one of the most remote places on Earth, Midway Atoll, to uncover the truth behind the mystery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Along the way she encounters scientists, celebrities, legislators and activists who shed light on what our society's vast consumption of disposable plastic is doing to our oceans -- and what it may be doing to our health.
Germany in Autumn does not have a plot per se; it mixes documentary footage, along with standard movie scenes, to give the audience the mood of Germany during the late 1970s. The movie covers the two month time period during 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped, and later murdered, by the left-wing terrorists known as the RAF-Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction). The businessman had been kidnapped in an effort to secure the release of the orginal leaders of the RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. When the kidnapping effort and a plane hijacking effort failed, the three most prominent leaders of the RAF, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe, all committed suicide in prison. It has become an article of faith within the left-wing community that these three were actually murdered by the state.