Brilliantly mixing animated sequences and archival footage, Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre paints a touching portrait of virtuoso pianist Oscar Peterson.
In the heart of Saigon, there's a place where promises are still written in blood.
A young woman was buried alive with the intention of killing, but she survived by chance. hears the cries of her little girl and fights to stay alive for her daughter. But this incident will enlighten a new worldview for her.
White Space was created as a variation on the theme of Creation. The work uses the Creation story of Adam as a guide ("formed man from the dust of the ground"). A human head appears as animated 'dust' as it emerges from and descends into a chalky white pool. While the non-narrative short film can viewed as the original "man" being created, there are also references to science-fiction and the head takes on a ghostly ethereal quality...like an alien being from another planet. Influences of David Lynch as well as the repetitious music of minimalist composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich can also be seen. In addition to directing the video, Jym Davis also appears in the work.
The Rangers are after Yackey and his gang. Posing as an outlaw, Dave arrives as Panhandle's prisoner and works his way into the gang. Tex arrives and joins Wright's committee. Tex plans a trap for the gang but things go awry when the gang catches Tex and the Committee catches Dave and both are about to be hung.
A wreathmaker slips on ice and injures her arm which puts her holiday wreath deliveries in jeopardy until a selfless neighbor steps up to keep her business afloat.
A compilation of scenes from films, television and short-subjects going back to the 1920s regarding teen dating, sex and sexually transmitted diseases.
In Iraq 2003 Corporal Martin Webster filmed fellow soldiers beating Iraqi youths during rioting in Al Amara. Two years later, a British newspaper obtained his footage. The story that ran led to outrage across the world.
1865, the American Civil War has just ended. The last remaining members of a now destitute Southern family journey to California. The guilt and scars they carry from the war are deeper and more painful than the loss of their family fortune and home. The war is over, but the battle to survive has just begun, they are in search of a new life, a new fortune, a new world and something else that they do not yet understand, the redemption of their very souls. Written by Joseph Paul Stachura
Return to Horror Hotel is an anthology feature with 4 segments. One is about giant a bedbugs, one is about a magical charm that turns girls beautiful, one is about a WWII sailor who hasn't aged and one is about a terrorizing severed hand.
Soka Afrika is a feature length documentary film celebrating African football in the run up to World Cup 2010. Following the different paths of aspiring young African players from South Africa, Ivory Coast, Egypt and Cameroon, Soka Afrika explores the power of football to influence Africa for better or worse. Follow Kermit Erasmus and Ndomo Sabo as they pursue very different routes to potential stardom and witness as a former Cameroon international makes it his mission to save those hopefuls falling through the cracks.
Sahara Takako is a lawyer who specialises in civil cases. She hates to lose and will use whatever means necessary to pursue the truth. Despite her competence, she is mocked as a rotten lawyer for defending companies that exploit their employees and winning many of these lawsuits. One day, Takako gets an unexpected request from a veteran lawyer, Harayama Masao. He would like her to take over the defence of a woman because he is in poor health and needs to be hospitalised. This woman is Shirakawa Kumako, who has been in the public eye. Called “Onikuma” by the public, which is a play on her maiden name, Onizuka, she faces charges of killing her husband Fukutaro, the owner of an established Atami restaurant, for insurance money.
This is a lonely New Year's Eve for Hank Williams as he spends it en route to a huge New Years Day concert in Ohio. Hank Williams died that night on the road. A fictional biography is shown in flashback.
A portrait of the Larrieu brothers at work shot during the post-production of their film Tralala.
Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording "Daybreak Express", this is a five-minute short of the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated subway station in New York City.
Behind his polite exterior lies a formidable leader with a ruthless character, ready to do anything to make China the world's leading power by the People’s Republic’s centenary in 2049. This well-documented portrait of the Chinese president gives an unprecedented insight into his politics and shows how Xi Jinping's personal journey has shaped his choices as he steers China towards world domination.
Inside Out In The Open is an hour-long documentary about a form of jazz, popularly known as free jazz. The film is an exploration of that music through the voices and performances of over twenty such musicians, from those who were its first generation to younger musicians joining the tradition.
Traces the rise of life on earth from primordial ooze to the present.
Seán McLoughlin was a lonely kid in rural Ireland. Now, he’s Jacksepticeye, one of the world’s biggest YouTube stars. When he embarks on his first world tour, Seán contemplates his journey, his upbringing, and the nature of modern online celebrity and fandom as he meets the people across the world who changed his life and whose lives he’s changed with his videos and the community they’ve built.
Weed. Marijuana. Grass. Pot. Whatever you prefer to call it, America’s relationship with cannabis is a complicated one. In his directorial debut, hip hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy presents an unparalleled look at the racially biased history of the war on marijuana. A range of celebrities and experts discuss the plant’s influence on music and popular culture, and the devastating impact its criminalization has had on Black and Latino communities. As more and more states join the push to legalize marijuana, this documentary dives deep into the glaring racial disparities in the growing cannabis market.
The documentary film on the life and legacy of Rahsaan Roland Kirk – a one of a kind musician, personality, activist and windmill slayer who despite being blind, becoming paralyzed, and facing America’s racial injustices - did not relent.
A documentary that explores the challenges that a life in music can bring.
In this entertaining Puppetoon animated short film, a young boy, Jasper, gets trapped inside a pawnshop at midnight. All the musical instruments come to life and play jazz. A whooping wooden Indian chief self-animates as well, and goes on the warpath.
Sylvia Kristel – Paris is a portrait of Sylvia Kristel , best known for her role in the 1970’s erotic cult classic Emmanuelle, as well as a film about the impossibility of memory in relation to biography. Between November 2000 and June 2002 Manon de Boer recorded the stories and memories of Kristel. At each recording session she asked her to speak about a city where Kristel has lived: Paris, Los Angeles, Brussels or Amsterdam; over the two years she spoke on several occasions about the same city. At first glance the collection of stories appears to make up a sort of biography, but over time it shows the impossibility of biography: the impossibility of ‘plotting’ somebody’s life as a coherent narrative.
An intimate portrait filmed across 10 years of Mary, a charismatic and complex woman, born and raised in rural Kansas, USA. She runs a curiosity shop out of her front yard, builds giant furniture and dreams of becoming an artist one day.
In this rotoscope animation, Tom Waits sings about "The One That Got Away."
Trapped in their frames and monitored by a menacing curator, two paintings long to escape from the art gallery's white walls. As the paintings lock eyes across the room, an unspoken connection between them sets the stage for revolution. With a distinctive blend of live-action and animation, this short film by Evan Bode employs surreal metaphor to explore ideas about power, resistance, queer identity, visibility, and liberation from constructed borders.
In 1999, on the occasion of the centenary of Ellington's birth, Franco Maresco commissioned Steve Lacy to perform ten songs by the Duke, which were recorded and filmed in Palermo. In 2024, twenty years after Lacy's death and fifty years after that of Ellington, that unpublished material re-emerges from the archive of the great Sicilian director and becomes a documentary.
When the lights dim and the stage is revealed, Meschke channels life through the strings of his puppets, triggering the spiritual connection between the creator and his alter-egos: the charismatic Don Quixote, the loving Penelope, the inquisitive Baptiste, or the mysterious Antigone. THE MAN WHO MADE ANGELS FLY is a poetic story about a master of his craft that has inspired audiences to reflect upon common issues of suffering and the mortal coil. Visionary and un-biographic, imaginary tribute to the puppeteer.
Utilizing the 1920s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, the epic Indian tale of exiled prince Ramayana and his bride Sita is mirrored by a spurned woman's contemporary personal life, and light-hearted but knowledgeable discussion of historical background by a trio of Indian shadow puppets.
We admire beauty; we recoil from bodies that are marred, disfigured, different. Didier Cros’ moving, intimate film forces us to question what underlies our notions of beauty as we join a talented photographer taking stunning portraits of several people with profound visible scars which have dictated certain elements of their lives but have not come to define their humanity. The subjects' perceptions of themselves are dynamic, unexpected, and even heartwarming. This is an unforgettable journey to be shared with the world.