On March 11, 1959, Lorraine Hansberry’s 'A Raisin in the Sun' opened on Broadway and changed the face of American theater forever. As the first-ever black woman to author a play performed on Broadway, she did not shy away from richly drawn characters and unprecedented subject matter. The play attracted record crowds and earned the coveted top prize from the New York Drama Critics’ Circle. While the play is seen as a groundbreaking work of art, the timely story of Hansberry’s life is far less known.
On March 11, 1959, Lorraine Hansberry’s 'A Raisin in the Sun' opened on Broadway and changed the face of American theater forever. As the first-ever black woman to author a play performed on Broadway, she did not shy away from richly drawn characters and unprecedented subject matter. The play attracted record crowds and earned the coveted top prize from the New York Drama Critics’ Circle. While the play is seen as a groundbreaking work of art, the timely story of Hansberry’s life is far less known.
2017-10-14
6.2
Artist. Activist. Rebel. Visionary.
Zora Neale Hurston, path-breaking novelist, pioneering anthropologist and one of the first black women to enter the American literary canon (Their Eyes Were Watching God), established the African American vernacular as one of the most vital, inventive voices in American literature. This definitive film biography, eighteen years in the making, portrays Zora in all her complexity: gifted, flamboyant, and controversial but always fiercely original.
A behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of Ming-liang Tsai’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone.
Wael is a psychiatry student by day and nightclub worker,he gets acquainted with Salwa in the hospital where he trains and falls in love with her. He feels that there's a big story behind her admission to the hospital and tries to help her despite all the obstacles she faces.
When David King purchases a house in the hills far above the angst of Los Angeles, he gets much more than he bargained for when strange and unexplainable occurrences in and around the house begin to take control of his daily life
Canadian Pacific I is made up of a series of slowly dissolved shots done from the same framing over several months. The camera frames a window with a railway yard in the foreground, a bay in the space behind it, and misty mountains in the extreme distance. Trains occasionally pass by in the foreground. Huge ships move across the bay. Blue mists hover over the mountain heads.
A young woman recalls a day when she was attacked by three men on her way home, but daily life must resume its course.
Based on the story of the famous Mormon leader, it follows Brigham Young and his challenge to transport his people across the Rocky mountains to settle in Salt Lake City. The plot focuses on two fictitious characters, Jonathan Kent and Zina Webb and the hardships they have to face along the way.
In 1944, at Himmler's command, a film was shot in Terezín, meant to give the impression that the rumors of extermination camps were enemy propaganda. In the film titled "The Führer Gives a City to the Jews", Terezín was depicted as a town handed over into free Jewish self-administration.
In this beautiful and thought-provoking film, artist and film maker Roz Mortimer leads us on a hypnotic journey to the High Arctic. Using historical texts, medieval maps and contemporary first person accounts, Mortimer explores the traditional relationship Inuit have to the earth and gently challenges our Western relationship to science and knowledge. This poetic and visually stunning film weaves epic scenes of contemporary Inuit life with startling throat singing performances and staged tableaux set within the frozen Arctic landscape.
In the heart of central Europe are some of the world’s most impenetrable military strongholds. In France, 160 megastructure fortresses still line the country’s borders 3 centuries after they were constructed. As solid as ever, how did they withstand attack after attack? Was the secret in their materials? Their shape? In fact, the strength and resilience of these megastructures is due to the genius of one man: Sébastien le Prestre de Vauban.
Karthik, is from a middle-class family and is doing his MCA final year. He is an outstanding student with high ambitions. He works part-time in a courier company and takes care of his expenses. He also yearns for beautiful classy girls. Anbu Selvi is from a rural landlord's family and is doing her B.Com in Trichy. Her pranks and her outgoing personality makes her father Rathnam fear that she might bring disrepute to the family name and so he decides to give her in marriage to his friend's son, Karthik.
Set in Paris, Under My Skin stars John Garfield as a washed-up jockey who has stolen money from a crooked gambler (Luther Adler).
A big city food critic finds herself stuck in a small town for Christmas where she discovers a life-changing hot chocolate recipe.
Returning to his grandmother's ranch, this northerner falls in love with the daughter of a great criminal. He will have to confront murderous gunmen trying to steal his land and the woman he adores.
When a group of Urban Explores get the chance of a lifetime to explore one of the world's most haunted asylums, they encounter something truly evil, that will not let them leave and will push them to the edge of sanity.
A cat, being sent out for the night, begins to make trouble for some birds. He later has a nightmare that the birds grow and begin to extract their revenge.
A historic three-day race riot erupted in two African American neighborhoods in the northern, mid-sized city of Rochester, New York. On the night of July 24, 1964, frustration and resentment brought on by institutional racism, overcrowding, lack of job opportunity and police dog attacks exploded in racial violence that brought Rochester to its knees. Combines historic archival footage, news reports, and interviews with witnesses and participants to dig deeply into the causes and effects of the historic disturbance.
Spies of Mississippi tells the story of a secret spy agency formed by the state of Mississippi to preserve segregation and maintain white supremacy. The anti-civil rights organization was hidden in plain sight in an unassuming office in the Mississippi State Capitol. Funded with taxpayer dollars and granted extraordinary latitude to carry out its mission, the Commission evolved from a propaganda machine into a full blown spy operation. How do we know this is true? The Commission itself tells us in more than 146,000 pages of files preserved by the State. This wealth of first person primary historical material guides us through one of the most fascinating and yet little known stories of America's quest for Civil Rights.
1970 short documentary covering the first New York gay pride parade celebrating one year after Stonewall.
A documentary on the late American entertainer Dean Reed, who became a huge star in East Germany after settling there in 1973.
Short documentary examining a Black community’s decades-long battle to hold onto their land as city officials wielded eminent domain to establish and expand Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia.
This film shines a light on a sorry and oft-forgotten chapter in US history— the forced sterilization of 7,600 people thought to have “undesirable” genetic make-ups. The film follows researchers & journalists who delved into dusty archives to bring North Carolina’s extensive eugenics program into the sunlight. When the journalists succeed in connecting those files to living survivors and the vast network of perpetrators are revealed, a grassroots movement begins, tirelessly insisting the state confront its nefarious past. The documentary— four years in the making, brings into focus the human tragedy that unfolded behind closed doors for decades and gives voice to survivors who believed their poverty would leave their stories untold and their pain unrecognized.
Oscar nominated documentary short from 2008
Steal This Film focuses on Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde, prominent members of the Swedish filesharing community. The makers claimed that 'Old Media' documentary crews couldn't understand the internet culture that filesharers took part in, and that they saw peer-to-peer organization as a threat to their livelihoods. Because of that, they were determined to accurately represent the filesharing community from within. Notably, Steal This Film was released and distributed, free of charge, through the same filesharing networks that the film documents.
Weaving together the voices of women entangled in the criminal justice system, along with leading scholars on prison abolition, this film provides a critical analysis of the disfunctionality and violence of the prison system.
The story of Estelle Ishigo, one of the few Caucasians interned with Japanese Americans during World War II. The wife of a Japanese American, Ishigo refused to be separated from her husband and was interned along with him. Based on the personal papers of Estelle Ishigo and her novel Lone Heart Mountain.
In the fall of 1962, a dramatic series of events made Civil Rights history and changed a way of life. On the eve of James Meredith becoming the first African-American to attend class at the University of Mississippi, the campus erupted into a night of rioting between those opposed to the integration of the school and those trying to enforce it. Before the rioting ended, the National Guard and Federal troops were called in to put an end to the violence and enforce Meredith's rights as an American citizen.
"Africa Light" - as white local citizens call Namibia. The name suggests romance, the beauty of nature and promises a life without any problems in a country where the difference between rich and poor could hardly be greater. Namibia does not give that impression of it. If you look at its surface it seems like Africa in its most innocent and civilized form. It is a country that is so inviting to dream by its spectacular landscape, stunning scenery and fascinating wildlife. It has a very strong tourism structure and the government gets a lot of money with its magical attraction. But despite its grandiose splendor it is an endless gray zone as well. It oscillates between tradition and modernity, between the cattle in the country and the slums in the city. It shuttles from colonial times, land property reform to minimum wage for everyone. It fluctuates between socialism and cold calculated market economy.
The film is a controversy on democracy. Is our society really democratic? Can everyone be part of it? Or is the act of being part in democracy dependent to the access on technology, progression or any resources of information, as philosophers like Paul Virilio or Jean Baudrillard already claimed?
Crump's mission to raise the value of Black life as the civil lawyer for the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Black farmers and banking while Black victims, Crump challenges America to come to terms with what it owes his clients.
The black power salute by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Mexico Olympics was an iconic moment in the US civil rights struggle. Far less known is the part in that episode in history played by Peter Norman, the white Australian on the podium who had run second — and the price paid afterward by all three athletes.
THE BLACK LIST: VOL. 2 profiles some of today's most fascinating African-Americans. From the childhood inspirations that shaped their ambitions, to the evolving American landscape they helped define, to the importance of preserving a unique cultural identity for future generations, these prominent individuals offer a unique look into the zeitgeist of black America, redefining the traditional pejorative notion of a blacklist.
French documentary campaigning for the liberalization of abortion and contraception, directed by Charles Belmont and Marielle Issartel in 1973.
An in-depth look at the culture of Los Angeles in the ten years leading up to the 1992 uprising that erupted after the verdict of police officers cleared of beating Rodney King.