Biography of Nova Scotia born contralto Portia White, who in the 1940' and 50's was often compared to the American Marian Anderson, covering her singing and teaching careers. Uses archival film and TV footage, excerpts from recordings, and interviews with family, friends, pupils and her accompanist, to portray a talented, dignified woman, her career shortened by mismanagement and ill health, but who left an important heritage that is remembered by those who knew her.
Biography of Nova Scotia born contralto Portia White, who in the 1940' and 50's was often compared to the American Marian Anderson, covering her singing and teaching careers. Uses archival film and TV footage, excerpts from recordings, and interviews with family, friends, pupils and her accompanist, to portray a talented, dignified woman, her career shortened by mismanagement and ill health, but who left an important heritage that is remembered by those who knew her.
2000-01-01
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0.0This short documentary chronicles a four-month period between 1979 and 1980 when residents of Hawaii's Sand Island "squatter" community attempted to resist eviction from the Honolulu shoreline - resulting in displacement, arrests, and the destruction of a community.
7.5Glamorous and hugely popular Joan Crawford raised herself from brutal poverty to Academy Award-winning stardom by guts, determination and hard work. During her 50-year career, she made over 80 films. But her obsessive perfectionism led to the later caricature of coat-hanger-wielding harridan that even the adoration of fans could not counter. Still, she has endured as one of the most popular icons of the movies, an early role model to a million young women who aspired to her image of stylish magnetic power and unquestioned independence.
5.0Afghanistan's film history might well have have been lost forever, if not for the brave custodians who risked their lives to conceal films from the Taliban regime. This is a chronicle of their attempts to preserve and restore thousands of hours of film.
7.0The life and work of Robert Frank—as a photographer and a filmmaker—are so intertwined that they're one in the same, and the vast amount of territory he's covered, from The Americans in 1958 up to the present, is intimately registered in his now-formidable body of artistic gestures. From the early '90s on, Frank has been making his films and videos with the brilliant editor Laura Israel, who has helped him to keep things homemade and preserve the illuminating spark of first contact between camera and people/places. Don't Blink is Israel's like-minded portrait of her friend and collaborator, a lively rummage sale of images and sounds and recollected passages and unfathomable losses and friendships that leaves us a fast and fleeting imprint of the life of the Swiss-born man who reinvented himself the American way, and is still standing on ground of his own making at the age of 90.
6.7Documentary about humans dealing with changing technology, the basic concepts of communication, cinema, and Akerman's mother, seen in her Brussels apartment.
0.0A documentary that surprisingly reveals that breast cancer is often a beginning of life.
8.0The film follows intrepid reporters Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn and actor/advocates Malin Akerman, Mia Farrow, Ronan Farrow, Jennifer Garner, Regina Hall, Ashley Judd, Blake Lively, Eva Longoria, and Alfre Woodard to Colombia, Haiti, Kenya, and throughout the United States as they uncover the harshest forms of gender-based oppression and human rights violations, as well as the effective solutions being implemented to combat them.
0.0Causes and consequences of the assassination that happened in Sarajevo a hundred years ago still continue to reverberate in Europe. On June 28, 1914 Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire Franz Ferdinand sparking World War I that marked the start of the 20th century. As Sarajevo commemorated the centennial of the assassination, different people had different interpretations of what happened in the city a century ago and different emotions about it. ONE DAY IN SARAJEVO tells about various perspectives of the anniversary in Sarajevo combining and contrasting footage filmed by citizens of Sarajevo (with small cameras and mobile phones) with scenes from feature films about the assassination by directors from Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the United Kingdom
8.0What would drive someone to drop everything and move into a city park in lower Manhattan? In the fall of 2011 hundreds of people did just that as a public protest against corporate greed and with the hope of creating an alternative society. Occupy Wall Street started as an under attended protest that quickly caught fire and capturing international headlines, the imaginations and hearts of people across the globe. Almost overnight the movement transformed the national dialog about economic inequality and corporate corruption. The slogan 'We are the 99 percent' instantly became part of the national lexicon. This documentary is an intimate portrait of several key players who helped create the movement and their wild ride through the rise and fall of Occupy Wall Street.
0.0Documenting the demolition of Cabrini Green, Chicago's most infamous public housing development, through the stories of three public housing residents whose lives are turned upside down in the name of progress.
4.8This film focuses on how a group of African American pioneers became respected masters in a subculture dominated by Chinese and white men.
7.3Documentary about the history, people, and culture of New Yorks' Bowery Street and neighborhood.
0.0In this funny and moving documentary, acclaimed film-maker Daisy Asquith tells the very personal story of her mother's conception after a dance in the 1940s on the remote west coast of Ireland. By exploring the repercussions of this act, Daisy and her mother embark on a fascinating and emotional adventure in social and sexual morality. Her grandmother, compelled to run away to have her baby in secret, handed the child over to 'the nuns'. Daisy's mum was eventually adopted by English Catholics from Stoke-on-Trent. Her grandmother returned to Ireland and told no-one. The father remained a mystery for another 60 years, until Daisy and her mum decided it was time to find out who he was. Their attempts to find the truth make raw the fear and shame that Catholicism has wrought on the Irish psyche for centuries. It leads Daisy and her mum to connect with a brand new family living an extraordinarily different life.
0.0This documentary from Min Sook Lee follows a poverty-stricken father from Central Mexico, along with several of his countrymen, as they make their annual migration to southern Ontario to pick tomatoes. For 8 months a year, the town's population absorbs 4,000 migrant workers who toil under conditions, and for wages, that no local would accept. Yet despite a fear of repercussions, the workers voice their desire for dignity and respect.
0.0Jeju-do is the largest of Korean islands and lies between Korea and Japan. There, for hundreds of years, women dive without breathing apparatus, to the ocean floor and collect shellfish, octopus, and urchins that they sell. The divers are in their sixties and seventies and their daughters do not want to inherit their work, lifestyle, and health problems that go with diving. As a filmmaker I was privileged to meet many of these women and dive with them. Their stories of hardship and pride confirmed my desire to record this unique and ancient tradition.
Even though women make up 51 percent of the U.S. population, only about 4 percent of movies are directed by women. Of the 220 TV shows, representing about 3500 total episodes, only 14 percent were directed by women. Bloomberg interviewed several female directors in Hollywood, from Oscar winners to the director of "Twilight" to explore the various forms of sexism and discrimination they have faced in Hollywood, and what they are trying to do to change things
5.7After witnessing the arrest of her father for publishing "subversive" material against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, Valentina escapes taking a sack of gold coins with her in order to hand it over to rebel Francisco I. Madero, who is in San Antonio, Texas. That is how Valentina begins a long journey as a member of a traveling circus, where she finds love next to Victor, who, fascinated by the cinematographer, films everything that occurs before his eyes, in times of great political turbulence.
0.0Jessye Norman Sings Carmen is a gripping vérité study of the famous dramatic soprano’s approach to mastering Bizet’s heroine in recording sessions with Seiji Ozawa and the Orchestre National de France. Musical segments include performances of three arias and the great duets between Carmen and Don José
8.0Inside an inner-city Baltimore high school as teachers and students face the challenges of a 2002 education-reform act.