Doom Island is a personal perspective on Martin's life and autism and schizophrenia from the inside, in a language we can all understand: film. Viewers join Martin when he began film making using Rick Schmidt's book in 1988 and along the way see Martin experience love, grief, and try to figure out existential meaning through the unique perspectives afforded by autism and psychosis, and even join him on a journey to Switzerland to visit a mysterious nuclear physics research laboratory, where the God Particle was discovered. "One of my favorite indie works, beautifully made, original, and as perfectly personal as it gets." Rick Schmidt author of 'Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices: How to Write, Produce, Direct, Film, Edit and Promote a Feature-Length Film for Less Than $10,000.'
Martin Ostrom
Mary Kelly
Mom
Dad
Pauline Wauthy
Jean-Claude Wauthy
Rick Schmidt
Psych Nurse
Lab Technician
Taxi Driver
The film is dedicated to the philosopher, doctor, scientist of the East and poet Abu-Ali Ibn-Sin, who lived in Bukhara in the 10th century and was known in Europe under the name of Avicenna. Bukhara. Eighteen-year-old doctor Ibn Sina saves the emir from a fatal illness. Refusing gold and honors, the young man only asks for admission to the emir's book depository as a reward. The study of the works of ancient scientists, philosophers, doctors, observations of nature, numerous experiments increase the knowledge of Ibn Sipa. The treacherous attack on Bukhara by the troops of the ruler of Ghazna Mahmud, who devastated the city and set the world's greatest book depository on fire, forced Ibn-Sina to leave his homeland. After many years of wandering, he, together with his student and assistant Juzjani, comes to the capital of Khorezm, Gurganj, to declare war on the plague raging here...
The story of Dian Fossey, a scientist who came to Africa to study the vanishing mountain gorillas, and later fought to protect them.
The true story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man ever elected to public office. In San Francisco in the late 1970s, Harvey Milk becomes an activist for gay rights and inspires others to join him in his fight for equal rights that should be available to all Americans.
No one expects much from Christy Brown, a boy with cerebral palsy born into a working-class Irish family. Though Christy is a spastic quadriplegic and essentially paralyzed, a miraculous event occurs when, at the age of 5, he demonstrates control of his left foot by using chalk to scrawl a word on the floor. With the help of his steely mother — and no shortage of grit and determination — Christy overcomes his infirmity to become a painter, poet and author.
The story of the famous and influential 1960s rock band and its lead singer and composer, Jim Morrison.
The turbulent personal and professional life of actor Peter Sellers (1925-1980), from his beginnings as a comic performer on BBC Radio to his huge success as one of the greatest film comedians of all time; an obsessive artist so dedicated to his work that neglected his loved ones and sacrificed part of his own personality to convincingly create that of his many memorable characters.
An American Army Major goes AWOL to Hong Kong for an outlawed martial arts contest called the Kumite.
The life of Camille Claudel, a French sculptor who becomes the apprentice of Auguste Rodin and later his lover. Her passion for her art and Rodin drive her further away from reason and rationality.
A family in eco-fever. The Schuhmann Weils are radical environmentalists and mother their 19-year-old son like a small child. One day, when a chunk of ice hits the family home and the family seek shelter in a bomb shelter, Tom seizes the opportunity to escape to freedom and self-determination...
In the highlands of Scotland in the 1700s, Rob Roy tries to lead his small town to a better future, by borrowing money from the local nobility to buy cattle to herd to market. When the money is stolen, Rob is forced into a Robin Hood lifestyle to defend his family and honour.
The television production captures the last decade of the life of the now world-renowned painter Karel Purkyně (1834 - 1868) and his struggle for the possibility of creative expression. After studying in Paris, he returns to Prague. He is not recognized, has no success and actually lives on the support of his father, the famous physiologist Jan Evangelista Purkyně. The only understanding he finds is in his admirer Maria, whom he marries. But he loses her too due to his emotional involvement with another woman. He dies too young and leaves behind a work whose artistic value will only be appreciated much later, at the beginning of the twentieth century.
While researching his book In Cold Blood, writer Truman Capote develops a close relationship with convicted murderers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith.
The story of James Thornwell, whose accusation that the U.S. Army used mind control drugs on him to force him to confess to stealing secret documents while stationed in Orleans, France, in 1961, led Congress to award him $625,000 in damages nearly 20 years later.
The Hitler Gang adopts the style of a gangster film as it charts Adolf Hitler’s rise from small-time politico to dictator of Germany.
A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television.
New York gangster Ben 'Bugsy' Siegel takes a brief business trip to Los Angeles. A sharp-dressing womanizer with a foul temper, Siegel doesn't hesitate to kill or maim anyone crossing him. In L.A. the life, the movies, and most of all strong-willed Virginia Hill detain him while his family wait back home. Then a trip to a run-down gambling joint at a spot in the desert known as Las Vegas gives him his big idea.
The story of Bobby Sands, the IRA member who led the 1981 hunger strike during The Troubles in which Irish Republican prisoners tried to win political status.
When Maggie's sister Jenna saddles her with an autistic newborn named Cody she touches Maggie's heart and becomes the daughter she has always longed for. But six years later Jenna suddenly re-enters her life and, with her mysterious new husband, Eric Stark, abducts Cody. Despite the fact that Maggie has no legal rights to Cody, FBI agent John Travis takes up her cause when he realizes that Cody shares the same birth date as several other recently murdered children.