Sheryl Swoopes famously has been labeled as the female Michael Jordan, but that's only part of the story. On the court, she was nearly as dominant as Jordan, winning a national championship with Texas Tech, three Olympic gold medals, three MVP awards and four consecutive championships with the Houston Comets of the WNBA, the league she helped start. She even had a Nike shoe named after her, the Air Swoopes. Off the court, she has had a life full of transitions. She gave birth to her son, Jordan, during the inaugural season of the WNBA. Later, she divorced her high school sweetheart and became the highest-profile athlete in her sport to acknowledge she was gay. She has struggled with love, money and personal identity, but has never lost her spirit. In this portrait, you will meet someone who is not your everyday superstar, but a woman who has defied a multitude of labels.
Sheryl Swoopes famously has been labeled as the female Michael Jordan, but that's only part of the story. On the court, she was nearly as dominant as Jordan, winning a national championship with Texas Tech, three Olympic gold medals, three MVP awards and four consecutive championships with the Houston Comets of the WNBA, the league she helped start. She even had a Nike shoe named after her, the Air Swoopes. Off the court, she has had a life full of transitions. She gave birth to her son, Jordan, during the inaugural season of the WNBA. Later, she divorced her high school sweetheart and became the highest-profile athlete in her sport to acknowledge she was gay. She has struggled with love, money and personal identity, but has never lost her spirit. In this portrait, you will meet someone who is not your everyday superstar, but a woman who has defied a multitude of labels.
2013-07-30
7
In transition... on and off the court
A strange meteor lands in Japan and unleashes hundreds of insect-like "Legion" creatures bent on colonizing the Earth. When the military fails to control the situation, Gamera shows up to deal with the ever-evolving space adversary. However the battle may result in Gamera losing his bond with both Asagi and humanity.
A mother of two gathers her loved ones to celebrate her birthday in her big house near the Loire Valley. The festivities are disrupted by the arrival of her daughter, who is known for her unpredictable outbursts.
Set in the year 2065 and tells the story of a man who enters an old holographic booth, intending to take a nap, but accidentally activating the resident sexual hologram.
Disowned in the past by his father, Kurt Menliff, a cruel and sadistic nobleman, returns to the family castle to reclaim his inheritance.
The Imjin War reaches its seventh year in December of 1598. Admiral Yi Sun-shin learns that the Wa invaders in Joseon are preparing for a swift withdrawal following the deathbed orders of their leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Determined to destroy the enemy once and for all, Admiral Yi leads an allied fleet of Joseon and Ming ships to mount a blockade and annihilate the Wa army. However, once Ming commander Chen Lin is bribed into lifting the blockade, Wa lord Shimazu Yoshihiro and his Satsuma army sail to the Wa army’s rescue at Noryang Strait.
San Francisco filmmaker Konrad Steiner took 12 years to complete a montage cycle set to the late Leslie Scalapino’s most celebrated poem, way—a sprawling book-length odyssey of shardlike urban impressions, fraught with obliquely felt social and sexual tensions. Six stylistically distinctive films for each section of way, using sources ranging from Kodachrome footage of sun-kissed S.F. street scenes to internet clips of the Iraq war to a fragmented Fred Astaire dance number.
Ruth Butler, a clerk in an emporium, marries Jimmy Rutledge and thereby greatly displeases his mother, the owner of the emporium, because of Ruth's lowly origins. Renaud Graham, one of Mrs. Rutledge's friends, becomes interested in Ruth, forces his way into her apartment, and attempts to make violent love to her. Jimmy walks in on their embrace and, suspecting the worst, leaves Ruth. In the family way, Ruth finds refuge in a boardinghouse where she meets Al Bryant, an aspiring writer. Ruth tells Al her life story, and he makes it into a bestselling novel and then into a play. Jimmy sees the play and comes to his senses, winning Ruth's forgiveness.
An accountant beleaguered by personal and professional problems gets involved with a femme fatale and her mysterious psychiatrist.
Linkin Park have taken their expansive rock show to seemingly every corner of the globe, but they've never played Moscow's Red Square (to be fair, very few acts ever have). But now, thanks to the power of Michael Bay and "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," they can finally cross it off their list.
Isabelle, a geneticist recovering from a toxic marriage, is raising her only daughter, Zoe, with her contentious ex-husband. Zoe means everything to her mother and so when tragedy strikes the fractured family, Isabelle travels to Russia in seeking the help of a world-renowned fertility physician who Isabelle believes can help bring back her little girl.
As viable water is depleted on Earth, a mission is sent to Saturn's moon Titan to retrieve sustainable H2O reserves from its alien inhabitants. But just as the humans acquire the precious resource, they are attacked by Titan rebels, who don't trust that the Earthlings will leave in peace.
The story of a middle-aged woman with small children whose life is shaken up when two free-spirited twenty-somethings move in across the street.
Upon arriving at the Digital World after the "reboot", the Digidestined are hunted by a new villain. Meanwhile, Sora is troubled by her partner Digimon's indifference towards her.
When Jaime, a gay teenager, is sent to live in a community of Jehovah's Witnesses in small-town Quebec, she falls madly in love with a devout Witness girl. The two embark on an intense affair with consequences that will reshape the rest of their lives.
Three Italian retirees embark on a journey to find a new country to live in.
Joe—a down-on-his-luck truck driver haunted by the memory of his deceased wife and child—meets Julie, a spiritually gifted woman who enlists his help in a desperate effort to find the lost soul of her comatose daughter. But the spirit of Joe's dead wife proves stronger, possessing the young woman's body and determined to settle her unfinished business with the living.
A 1988 documentary film directed by Alexander Sokurov, about the later life and death of Soviet Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. The film was originally intended to mark the 50th birthday of Tarkovsky in 1982, which would have been before his death. Controversy with Soviet authorities about the film's style and content led to significant delays in the production.
Amanda is a divorced woman who makes a living as a photographer. During the Fall of the year Amanda begins to see the world in new and different ways when she begins to question her role in life, her relationships with her career and men and what it all means. As the layers to her everyday experiences fall away insertions in the story with scientists, and philosophers and religious leaders impart information directly to an off-screen interviewer about academic issues, and Amanda begins to understand the basis to the quantum world beneath. During her epiphany as she considers the Great Questions raised by the host of inserted thinkers, she slowly comprehends the various inspirations and begins to see the world in a new way.
Documentary about red-bereted Jimmy Mirikitani, a feisty painter working and living on the street, near the World Trade Center, when 9/11 devastates the neighborhood. A nearby film editor, Linda Hattendorf, persuades elderly Jimmy to move in with her, while seeking a permanent home for him. The young woman delves into the California-born, Japan-raised artist's unique life which developed his resilient personality, and fuel his 2 main subjects, cats and internment camps. The editor films Jimmy's remarkable journey.
Long Tack Sam was an internationally renowned Chinese acrobat and magician. He overcame isolation, poverty, cultural and linguistic barriers, extreme racism and world wars to become one of the most successful vaudeville acts of his time. His showmanship was unrivalled, yet he refused to appear in movies because of the way Chinese were portrayed at the time. A celebration of the spirit of Long Tack Sam's magic and art, this richly textured first person road movie is an exhilarating testament to his legacy and a prismatic tour through the 20th Century. It all begins in a small village in China... https://www.nfb.ca/film/the_magical_life_of_long_tack_sam/
Actress Rosie Perez makes a stunning directorial debut in this heartfelt tribute to Puerto Rican pride. She takes an in-depth look at the complex and often controversial history of Puerto Rican-U.S. relations. By turns shocking and celebratory, this wide-ranging documentary examines such rich themes of the Puerto Rican experience as family, language, and racism, all with careful consideration of historical context.
The life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survived the Nazi reign as a trans woman and helped start the German gay liberation movement. Documentary with some dramatized scenes. Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.
After Prisoners of the war and On the Heights all is Peace, this film concludes Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi's trilogy on the first world war. From the emblem of totalitarianism to individual physical suffering, the directors use this representation of man's rampaging violence to draw up an anatomical inventory of the damaged body and examine the consequences of the conflict on children, from 1919 to 1921. From the deconstruction to the artificial reconstruction of the human body, they try to understand how humanity can forget itself and perpetuate these horrors.
An Israeli woman living in Amsterdam investigates why fans of the Ajax soccer team have appropriated the nickname "Superjews" – complete with Star of David hats, Israeli flags and songs like "Hava Nagila." We meet hooligans, an Ajax archivist, former Ajax president Uri Coronel and a Holocaust survivor. Who is the "real" Jew: the non-religious Israeli woman with an aversion to her own country's flag, or the "Jews" who flock to the stadium and dedicate their lives to the team? Superjews is about identity, the use of symbols, and what it means to be or feel Jewish. Filmmaker Nirit Peled takes on the role of narrator and guide in the land of Ajax, against the backdrop of her present-day life in Amsterdam and her past in Israel, a country she is very critical of. Though she is initially turned off by the "Superjew" phenomenon, her viewpoint becomes more nuanced as she learns more about it, and she manages to gain perspective on how she personally relates to the cult of Jews.
July 2006. Another war breaks out in Lebanon. The directors decide to follow a movie star, Catherine Deneuve and a friend, actor and artist Rabih Mroue;, on the roads of South Lebanon. Together, they will drive through the regions devastated by the conflict. It is the beginning of an unpredictable, unexpected adventure...
Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.
Tash and Kylene are two Indigenous women with a dream to make it to the Arnolds – an amateur bodybuilding competition being held in Australia for the first time.
In this entrancing documentary on performance artist, photographer and underground filmmaker Jack Smith, photographs and rare clips of Smith's performances and films punctuate interviews with artists, critics, friends and foes to create an engaging portrait of the artist. Widely known for his banned queer erotica film Flaming Creatures, Smith was an innovator and firebrand who influenced artists such as Andy Warhol and John Waters.
Vitor and Gustavo decided, in January 2020, to start a long-distance relationship, and were planning to meet again in a few months. Until COVID stopped them. This is the story of how they overcame the difficulties of time and distance through a lot of love and through Whatsapp audio messages.
“Last Men Standing,” the first feature-length documentary from The San Francisco Chronicle, Northern California’s largest newspaper was selected for entry into a series of prestigious LGBT festivals being held in the U.S. and Canada this spring. One of the few newspapers to write, direct and produce a feature-length documentary, this film follows the lives and experiences of eight long-term AIDS survivors.
Claire Denis goes to Eastern Chad to the Breidjing camp, the home of 40,000 refugees from Darfur. With great humility, she tells the stories of these men and women, victims of one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes that this century has seen so far.
In Finland, a small child is waiting for his time to begin. His heart is broken. A major heart surgery is expected. There is a fight against time. The boys parents are wandering in the corridors of the hospital. The heart is stopped during the surgery operation. Le Locle, a village in Switzerland acts as the heart of watch industry. Narrow streets of the village carry vital parts to watches and nowdays also into human bodies, for example pacemakers. Village is formed as a big factory line and appears as a time-twisting machine. There pieces are refined and workers hands turns the time on and off.
'History is always made in the middle of the night. And when it happens, you are so damned tired, that you couldn't care less,' says Robert Cooper, an EU peace negotiator whose job it is to get Serbia and Kosovo to reach an agreement about peaceful coexistence. National pride and compromise are on everyone's lips, and much is at stake: Kosovo wants to come closer to independence, the Serbs have been promised EU membership if they can reach an agreement, and the EU tries to strengthen its credibility. But how far is each party willing to go? It is the unique characters that make this fascinating film about a delicate political game so vivid and loveable. The stoic, Serbian negotiator has a great passion for rock music, his colleague from Kosovo does not want to miss out on his daily visit to the hairdresser, and Cooper himself has a closet full of ties - one for every conceivable occasion.
Lenka and Míra Hřib are a young married couple with two small children. They are both interested in ecology and sustainable life.
An observational documentary about Jakub Špalek and all his activities, victories and losses in the years 1989 to 1999.
A documentary film following several years in the life of Jan Potměšil who has become a very popular actor at an early age, representing the type of a young sporty intellectual. After a serious car crash in 1989, he ended up on a wheelchair. He was 23 years old at the time. After a year of rehabilitation, he returned to the stage. Excelling in “Flowers for Algernon”, he continuously acts in the production in front of sell-out crowds across the country. He also lives his personal life, experiencing new loves and breakups, is engaged in civic affairs and returns to the hospital now and then. The film aims to give a non-pathetic image of a life lived to the full despite adversity.