Just as the original hobos of the early 20th century were scorned the mainstream of society, so too are today's train riders. FREELOAD is a dive into a beggar's existence. It is a ride through America's backyard. It is a musical endeavor that feels like a drama. It is a sociological examination of the ignored.
Plan 9 is the story of Nilbog, a small town with a big story. The beginning of an invasion! However, instead of lasers, space ships, and epic force, these aliens have a different plan for the inhabitants of Earth. To resurrect their dead as their own army set with but one goal… To wipe out all mankind! Only the townsfolk on this Halloween night stand in the way of total domination. From the police department, to those trapped in a convenient store, and even those trying to stay alive in the streets, this night will decide the fates of all who walk the planet and thought they were the top of the food chain.
After an alleged malpractice that led to the death of his brother, heart surgeon Daniel Guth took the consequences: he gave up his beloved job and retreated into the solitude of nature. At his place of refuge, the Salzburg mountains, the heiress to a private clinic is desperately looking for a capable chief physician. Daniel declines the post, although he finds the woman attractive. When a boy is seriously injured in a bus accident, he is confronted with his trauma again.
The pharmacist Peter Pille and Colonel Sejrsberg's beautiful niece, Inger, are in love. Unfortunately, the Colonel is against the idea of an engagement and generally detests men who court young girls. Peter Pille finds out that the Colonel's negative attitude is due to jealousy and envy, because he himself has never really had luck with the ladies. Maybe a homemade love potion will do the trick? (stumfilm.dk)
In a desolate place called the Badlands, four men stand off with guns drawn, their fingers ready at the trigger. Among them are a fugitive seeking redemption, a son out to avenge his father's murder, a loyal servant with a secret and a murderous criminal hired to kill with a vengeance. This is their story...in a place where revenge, deception and cruelty are a way of life.
Sylvester Cat chases Tweety Bird into busy city streets as he himself is being chased by a bulldog. All three are in an accident and taken to an animal hospital, each with a broken leg.
A homeless veteran discovers his sister's killer is back on the streets after being released from prison earlier than expected, sending him on a downward spiral of vengeance.
When sixty-year-old Karel Pluhař meets Marie, a woman who is unhappy in many ways, he feels that if he seizes this opportunity, regardless of petty interests and inhibitions, he may find himself on the threshold of new happiness.
Three cosmonauts bid farewell to their loved ones and embark on a journey into space, where they encounter discoveries in uncharted territory yet to be explored by humankind.
A documentary short following director Jean-Luc Godard on the set of Contempt.
B., a film-maker and insomniac, decides to rescue his hours of insomnia from the void by filming his quest for sleep. The insomniac asks questions about these different states of consciousness and about the difficulties humans have in synchronising their social rhythms and biological ones.
The Goal Is To Live is an infinitely-looping assemblage constructed out of repurposed content from the popular show How It’s Made, which chronicles the factories that create everyday objects. The film takes Dina Kelberman’s practice of accumulation and recontextualization into a large-scale time-based work for the first time. Reorganizing short clips into a long Rube-Goldberg-like narrative, and featuring a hypnotic minimalist soundtrack by Rod Hamilton and Tiffany Seal, the film portrays a mesmerizing and surreal process in which materials are transformed in myriad ways.
“The Last Days of Contrition (35 minutes black and white 1988) is an exploration of the Canadian and American landscapes, and the relationship between the two. The narrative deals with a journey through timeless, vacant American landscapes (baseball stadiums, Venice Beach, Mojave Desert, and a US Missile Base). The photographic strategy is influenced by a consciousness of light, a quintessential characteristic of American photography. I documented the American landscape in the tradition of the early formalist photographers (Walker Evans, Paul Strand, etc.) allowing there to be content in form. The Last Days of Contrition straddles two cultural forces while developing an understanding about our Canadian origins and muses. (RK)
A hot summer day. A half-unpacked house. A mother who needs room to breathe, and a child who needs space to truly exist. As the afternoon heat turns oppressive, time seems to move entirely differently for each person.
The subconscious of a man try to recollect the idea of himself.
After losing 12 sheriffs in twelve days, the town of Lizzard Gizzard Gulch makes Woody sheriff number 13, with the task of arresting notorious bank robber Dirty McNasty.
Documentary - Ernest Borgnine, star of the classic train movie Emperor of the North, hosts and narrates this remarkable examination of the uniquely American Hobo.
In their vehicle, Laurie, Kristy and Linda live alone on the American roads. Like thousands of modern American nomads who can no longer afford to pay for their housing. With no money to spare, these three sixty-year old women are fleeing, in their own way, a part of their history that has left a deep mark on them. Driving away, they try to regain some form of peace. But as the miles and seasons pass, despite their impressive temerity and resilience, their quest for a better future is challenged by unexpected events that hit a country in crisis. Will they nevertheless manage, at the end of the road, to find the serenity they are looking for, in order to become someone again?
Poignant stories of homelessness on the West Coast of the US frame this cinematic portrait of a surging humanitarian crisis.
The film explores the destruction of a unique train station in Zurich and the construction of the new prison and police centre in its place. From the perspective of the filmmaker’s window, and with testimony from prisoners awaiting deportation, the film probes how we deal with the extinction of history and its replacement with total security.
A look at NYC’s gentrification and growing inequality in a microcosm, Class Divide explores two distinct worlds that share the same Chelsea intersection – 10th Avenue and 26th Street. On one side of the avenue, the Chelsea-Elliot Houses have provided low-income public housing to residents for decades. Their neighbor across the avenue since 2012 is Avenues: The World School, a costly private school. What happens when kids from both of these worlds attempt to cross the divide?
It's a sensitive, moving doc chronicling the life of Tétrault's brother Philip , a Montreal poet, musician and diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. A promising athlete as a child, Philip began experiencing mood swings in his early 20s. His extended family, including his daughter, share their conflicted feelings love, guilt, shame, anger with the camera. They want to make sure he's safe, but how much can they take?
With the 2010 Olympics approaching, will the world get to know Vancouver's darkest secret? 'Streets of Plenty' chronicles one man's perilous journey to live in Vancouver's downtown east side ghetto. The rules of this twisted social experiment? Starting with only a pair of underwear, he must survive the harsh winter streets for 31 days. He has no money, no friends, no family, and most importantly, no home. He must navigate the institutions, policies and services alongside the thousands of people that call Vancouver's streets home.
A glimpse into a refreshingly different sex education class in the Netherlands.
The Great American Hobo produced in 1980 features the music of Supertramp's "Take the Long Way Home" documenting the men and women who rode freight trains. Shot in 14 states and culminates with the Hobo Convention in Britt Iowa. Premiered the Independent Eye series for PBS in 1980.
Every now and then, we get a teacher who doesn't just connect with us -- they make us a better person in the world. Jeffrey Wright of Louisville, Ky. is one of those teachers. He uses wacky experiments to teach high school kids about science and the universe. But it's his own personal story about his relationship with his disabled son that shows his students the true meaning of life.
COMEDY CONFESSIONS takes you on a journey into the lives of three struggling comedians who have decided to pursue their dreams of careers in stand-up comedy despite the harsh realities of being homeless. For these comedians, their cars are lifesavers providing safety and shelter at night and transportation to auditions and performances during the day. Their daily struggle to avoid sleeping on the street is startlingly juxtaposed with the extravagant wealth of the opulent mansions they park in front of at night. One of them, Tiffany Haddish will achieve her dreams to become a true Hollywood movie star, the other two, Doc Jones and Steve Lolli find the lure of the spotlight takes an unforgiving toll on their hopes and ambitions. This honest and touching movie is told in their own words revealing the passions, dedication and pains that drive them.
Year-round Metal Enjoyment explores the New England origins of North American freight train graffiti, tracing the narratives of several members of the prolific YME and Circle T crews, and giving unparalleled access into the fastest growing subculture in the graffiti movement. Challenged by the illegal nature of their passions, dangerous locales, and the pressures of a society that will not accept or understand them, these artists reveal what drives them to return, time after time, to execute their artwork on a canvas that is forever changing, moving and vanishing into oblivion. Both snapshot of a fading history and love-letter to the trains themselves, Year-round Metal Enjoyment captures the voices, faces and thoughts of artists, railfans and train-workers alike, while showcasing the unlikely beauty of the trains in their environment.
Jörg is one of the many homeless living near the Vatican. But there is something unusual about him: he appears and talks like a sort of holy man, prophesying, among other things, his next reincarnation as Jesus Christ. This transformation will enable him to drastically change the way things are on this Earth. However, beneath the delusions of omnipotence of a man fighting for glory and universal justice, we find a lonely and pained individual, frightened by the great mystery that awaits all of us.
Street Life documents the lives of Chinese migrants in Shanghai, one of the world’s largest and most vibrant cities, now symbolic of China’s economic might. The film centers on Nanjing Road, one of China’s oldest commercial streets and today a popular destination for tourists and moneyed Chinese. The street has also become a Mecca for uprooted and homeless Chinese, who make ends by collecting garbage and recyclables. These characters and their stories are the focus of the film. The central character in Street Life is a migrant known as “Black Skin.” Black Skin faces numerous pressures in the course of the film, including police violence. In the end, these pressures are too much for him to bear and he goes mad. Black Skin’s story intersects with those of fellow bottle collectors, enterprising thieves and even a young boy who has been abandoned.
It is winter at an emergency shelter for the homeless in Lausanne. Every night at the door of this little-known basement facility the same entry ritual takes place, resulting in confrontations which can sometimes turn violent. Those on duty at the shelter have the difficult task of “triaging the poor”: the women and children first, then the men. Although the total capacity at the shelter is 100, only 50 “chosen ones” will be admitted inside and granted a warm meal and a bed. The others know it will be a long night.
The film explores the turbulent lives of homeless persons in Cologne, Germany. Through their personal belongings the homeless share with the viewer their memories and emotions, and provide insight into the secrets of survival on the street.
A hotel in the centre of town is a war-time home and refuge for many of Sarajevo's homeless people. Every morning they leave the hotel and wander around the destroyed city gathering again at the defunct hotel in the afternoon. This film follows their separate fates through the bitter comparing of images of the bums with those of dogs abandoned by their owners and now left et the mercy of the war ravaged streets of Sarajevo.
Tomasz Biernacki’s thought-provoking documentary about the homeless crisis in Seattle. Deftly interweaving in-depth stories of community members who are living the crisis on the streets with interviews of political leaders and community advocates, vivid images of the current state of affairs and a poignant examination of the roots of homelessness in the region, Biernacki paints a picture of a city struggling to come to grips with an unprecedented emergency, and finds a few glimmers of hope.
Climbing gently from the tidewater ports near Portland, Oregon is the Columbia River Gorge'a wide, flat-water river passage that provides access to the inland agricultural regions of Washington and Oregon and divides the two states along most of their border. It is a spot of unparalleled beauty that hosts two railroad lines: BNSF to the north and Union Pacific along the southern shore. In Columbia River Gorge Volume I: BNSF's Fallbridge Subdivision, Pentrex explored the BNSF side of the Gorge, heading east from Vancouver, Washington to the arid desert mountains near the John Day Dam. Now, in Volume 2, we jump across the river to head back west toward Portland following Union Pacific's Portland Subdivision.