What Did You Take?(1971)

North by Current(en)

Filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown following the death of his infant niece and the subsequent arrest of his brother-in-law as the culprit. Using the audio-visual approaches of essay film, first-person cinema vérité, staged actions, and decades of home movies, Madsen navigates a town steeped in opioid addiction, economic depression, and religious fervor, while using the act of filmmaking to rebuild familial bonds and reimagine justice. Posing empathy as a tool for creating a more just world, North By Current does not seek to investigate a crime, but creates a relentless portrait of an enduring pastoral family, poised to reframe and reimagine narratives about incarceration, addiction, trans embodiment, and ruralness.

Picture Proof(en)

Examines the intergenerational impact of addiction by chronicling the love, labor, loss, and uncertainty of one woman’s struggle to live a life of sobriety. Weaving together moments of glee, fulfillment, acceptance, sorrow, and disappointment, this documentary takes an intimate look at the bonds that hold one family together and a disease that threatens to tear them apart.

Megacities(en)

Megacities is a documentary about the slums of five different metropolitan cities.

Donauspital(de)

The daily workins of Austria's Danube Hospital.

Empathy(en)

Em is an escort girl and a heroin addict. From New York to Los Angeles via Pittsburgh, Em’s daily life is revealed.

Dig!(en)

A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.

On Call(fr)

At the consulting service for immigrants at the Avicenne Hospital in suburban Paris, we observe the sorrow and powerlessness of the immigrants who come here.

Ibogaine: Rite of Passage(en)

Ibogaine is a plant extract that stops drug addiction. In this documentary, a 34-year-old heroin addict undergoes ibogaine therapy with Dr Martin Polanco at the Ibogaine Association, a clinic in Rosarito, Mexico. In Gabon, where use of the iboga root is traditional, a Babongo woman's tribe uses the plant to help her recover from a depressive malaise. Director Benjamin De Loenen interviews people formerly addicted to heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine, who share their perspectives about ibogaine treatment.

Coma(en)

Four young Americans who've each suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury emerge from their comas at a New Jersey medical facility. Their eyes may be open, but now the real challenge for each of the patients, their families, their doctors and their therapists begins. Brain healing isn't predictable, we're told, and certainly is not guaranteed. So with each 'major' step forward that is observed (opening one's eyes, bending a thumb upon command, vocalizing a word, answering a question correctly) comes a sense of jubilant relief and hope from the families of these patients, but as we soon see, the more a patient progresses, the more difficult things can be for all involved. Moments of faith & hope contrast with disappointments & frustrations, moments of confidence with moments of doubt. It's difficult to watch, and unimaginable to have to ever live through.

Mudflat(en)

Years ago, artists would walk around the muck at the edge of the San Francisco Bay in Emeryville, and build loads of sculptures out there on the flats, created from driftwood and found objects that drivers would enjoy as they motored south on the old Highway 17 (known in numerous radio ads as 'Highway 17, The Nimitz'). Grabbing material off someone else’s work was considered fair game and part of the fun, and contributed a kinetic dynamic to the ongoing display. Now the place is a park, and the sculptures are gone, but you can see what it used to be like in this neat and funny documentary by Ric Reynolds, augmented by Erich Seibert’s wonderful musique-concrète/time-lapse sequences. The flashback circus sequence includes Scott Beach and Bill Irwin. Sculptors interviewed include Walt Zucker, Tony Puccio, Robert Sommer, Ron & Mary Bradden, and Bob Kaminsky.

The Hippie Temptation(en)

CBS TV news special hosted by Harry Reasoner explores the way-out world of the Hippies and the Haight-Ashbury psychedelic 1960s LSD scene. Footage of LSDs users experiencing bummer trips. The Diggers, the Oracle and cool street and Golden Gate Park scenes with hippies tripping out. The Grateful Dead are interviewed and are shown performing "Dancin' in the Streets" on a flatbed truck in Golden Gate Park. The Hippie Temptation!

Wooks(en)

An acid-soaked journey to the edge of madness with the wise and wild Wooks of America’s hippie underbelly.

The Family(en)

Anne Hamilton-Byrne was beautiful, charismatic and delusional. She was also incredibly dangerous. Convinced she was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, Hamilton-Byrne headed an apocalyptic sect called The Family, which was prominent in Melbourne from the 1960s through to the 1990s. With her husband Bill, she acquired numerous children – some through adoption scams, some born to cult members – and raised them as her own. Isolated from the outside world, the children were dressed in matching outfits, had identical dyed blonde hair, and were allegedly beaten, starved and injected with LSD. Taught that Hamilton-Byrne was both their mother and the messiah, the children were eventually rescued during a police raid in 1987, but their trauma had only just begun.

The Saga of Macrame Park(en)

Alexandra Jackonetti recounts the building of a children's playground of macrame in Bolinas, Calif., including her conception of the project and the process of obtaining community financial support, knotting of macrame, and erection of the structure.

Sicko(en)

A documentary about the corrupt health care system in The United States who's main goal is to make profit even if it means losing people’s lives. "The more people you deny health insurance the more money we make" is the business model for health care providers in America.

The Man The Myth The Bellend(en)

Bellend Productions'(TM) 1X Nominated Documentary "The Man The Myth The Bellend" Directed by Rhys Walkington is the first ever Bellend Productions(TM) Film and is a documentary about the Life of "The Man The Myth The Bellend."

The Business of Recovery(en)

The Business of Recovery examines the untold billions that are being made off of families in crisis. With little regulation or science, addiction treatment has become a cash cow business that continues to grow while deaths pile up.

Der lange Weg ans Licht(de)

Hi, My Name is Dicky(en)

Hi, My Name is Dicky is a sports documentary about hockey player Richard Clune, and his struggle with substance use disorder while playing in the National Hockey League (NHL). The story begins in Toronto, where we learn about his typical Canadian childhood, then moves onto his teenage experience with the Ontario Hockey League’s (OHL) Sarnia Sting. During his time in the OHL, Rich developed a crippling addiction to drugs and alcohol, which threatened to derail both his personal life and professional career. Shortly after debuting in the NHL with the Los Angeles Kings, Rich made the choice to get sober, embarking on a wild journey to the rehab clinic back home in Canada, from his brother's dormitory in Worcester, Massachusetts. Sober for over ten years, the viewer learns how Rich leads a fascinating life off the ice, and has become a mentor to many players in the NHL, now in the twilight of his career playing for his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs.

The Weird World of LSD(en)

The 60s equivalent of Reefer Madness and all those other 30s drug exploitation flicks. Apparently, dropping acid leads to stripteases, cat fights, promiscuous sex, playing with kittens, and being convinced your dinner is much larger than it actually is. This is all illustrated in a series of silent sketches accompanied by a droll narrator who seems positively doped out of his mind.