Focuses on 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchu, as she discusses the lack of human rights for the indigenous people of Guatemala and her commitment to the struggle for a more egalitarian society.
Short documentary examining a Black community’s decades-long battle to hold onto their land as city officials wielded eminent domain to establish and expand Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia.
A documentary on the late American entertainer Dean Reed, who became a huge star in East Germany after settling there in 1973.
Two men. Two quests. Two centuries apart. Four ways to experience the search for a lost tribe. Film. Book. Album. App.
A documentary examining the life of civil rights organizer, Jack O'Dell, a close colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a force in his own right.
Filmmaker Sterlin Harjo's Grandfather disappeared mysteriously in 1962. The community searching for him sang songs of encouragement that were passed down for generations. Harjo explores the origins of these songs as well as the violent history of his people.
Fred Martinez was a Navajo youth slain at the age of 16 by a man who bragged to his friends that he 'bug-smashed a fag'. But Fred was part of an honored Navajo tradition - the 'nadleeh', or 'two-spirit', who possesses a balance of masculine and feminine traits.
In the fall of 1962, a dramatic series of events made Civil Rights history and changed a way of life. On the eve of James Meredith becoming the first African-American to attend class at the University of Mississippi, the campus erupted into a night of rioting between those opposed to the integration of the school and those trying to enforce it. Before the rioting ended, the National Guard and Federal troops were called in to put an end to the violence and enforce Meredith's rights as an American citizen.
In the sixties, Peter Handke was one of the first to show how the business works: the writer as angry young man and pop star of the literary scene. As soon as he was on the bestseller lists, he turned his back on the hype. For many years, he has lived and worked in his house in a Parisian suburb, more quietly and more hospitably. Peter Handke's precise, free gaze becomes perceptible in his texts, his conversations, the cosmos of his notebooks.
Oscar nominated documentary short from 2008
Mayan Renaissance is a feature length film which documents the glory of the ancient Maya civilization, the Spanish conquest in 1519, 500 years of oppression, and the courageous fight of the Maya to reclaim their voice and determine their own future, in Guatemala and throughout Central America. The film stars 1992 Nobel Peace Laureate and Maya Leader Rigoberta Mencu Tum. All of the images, voices, expert commentary and music in the film come directly from Central America, the heart of the Mayan World.
A film made by Victress Hitchcock and Ava Hamilton in 1989 on the Wind River Reservation for Wyoming Public Television.
The story of Estelle Ishigo, one of the few Caucasians interned with Japanese Americans during World War II. The wife of a Japanese American, Ishigo refused to be separated from her husband and was interned along with him. Based on the personal papers of Estelle Ishigo and her novel Lone Heart Mountain.
This film shines a light on a sorry and oft-forgotten chapter in US history— the forced sterilization of 7,600 people thought to have “undesirable” genetic make-ups. The film follows researchers & journalists who delved into dusty archives to bring North Carolina’s extensive eugenics program into the sunlight. When the journalists succeed in connecting those files to living survivors and the vast network of perpetrators are revealed, a grassroots movement begins, tirelessly insisting the state confront its nefarious past. The documentary— four years in the making, brings into focus the human tragedy that unfolded behind closed doors for decades and gives voice to survivors who believed their poverty would leave their stories untold and their pain unrecognized.
Linguist Indrek Park has been working with Native American languages for over ten years. The film sees him recording the language of the Mandan tribe, who live in the prairies of North Dakota, on the banks of the Missouri River. The job involves a lot of responsibility, and he is running out of time – his language guide, the 84-year-old Edwin Benson, is the last native speaker of Mandan.
A documentary on the war between the Guatemalan military and the Mayan population, with first hand accounts by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú.
INAATE/SE/ re-imagines an ancient Ojibway story, the Seven Fires Prophecy, which both predates and predicts first contact with Europeans. A kaleidoscopic experience blending documentary, narrative, and experimental forms, INAATE/SE/ transcends linear colonized history to explore how the prophecy resonates through the generations in their indigenous community within Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. With acute geographic specificity, and grand historical scope, the film fixes its lens between the sacred and the profane to pry open the construction of contemporary indigenous identity.
Spies of Mississippi tells the story of a secret spy agency formed by the state of Mississippi to preserve segregation and maintain white supremacy. The anti-civil rights organization was hidden in plain sight in an unassuming office in the Mississippi State Capitol. Funded with taxpayer dollars and granted extraordinary latitude to carry out its mission, the Commission evolved from a propaganda machine into a full blown spy operation. How do we know this is true? The Commission itself tells us in more than 146,000 pages of files preserved by the State. This wealth of first person primary historical material guides us through one of the most fascinating and yet little known stories of America's quest for Civil Rights.
A historic three-day race riot erupted in two African American neighborhoods in the northern, mid-sized city of Rochester, New York. On the night of July 24, 1964, frustration and resentment brought on by institutional racism, overcrowding, lack of job opportunity and police dog attacks exploded in racial violence that brought Rochester to its knees. Combines historic archival footage, news reports, and interviews with witnesses and participants to dig deeply into the causes and effects of the historic disturbance.
Documentary short documents the “Reminder Day Picket” at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, on July 4, 1968.