Social & External
This film from Bill Moyers is the first documentary to focus exclusively on people formerly detained in New York City’s notorious Rikers Island Jail. They tell their compelling stories direct to the camera, revealing the violent arc of the Rikers experience – from the trauma of entry to extortion and control by inmates, to oppressive corrections officers, violence and solitary confinement.
A portrait of the brilliant American writer Truman Capote (1924-84) and the New York high society of his time.
Martin Scorsese and the Rolling Stones unite in "Shine A Light," a look at The Rolling Stones." Scorsese filmed the Stones over a two-day period at the intimate Beacon Theater in New York City in fall 2006. Cinematographers capture the raw energy of the legendary band.
Stockholm Syndrome chronicles the meteoric rise of contemporary trendsetter A$AP Rocky, capturing the exuberance of youth and urgency of hip-hop in equal parts, before taking a detour into darkness. With amazing access, the film reveals Rocky’s experience with the inequities of the Swedish judicial system and the dangers of stardom and scapegoating through a series of twists and turns, ultimately paralleling the need for prison reform in our own backyard. Directed by The Architects, the film blends archival footage with contemporary interviews, animation, and electrifying live concert footage to tell the astonishing story of how one of rap’s biggest superstars became embroiled in an international incident, leading to an unexpected political awakening.
Follows the young people of Selma, Alabama's RATCo (Random Acts of Theatre Company) as they journey to New York City to share their story of hope, resilience, and overcoming.
Adolf Hitler's Nazi megalomania knew no limits. The most daring of his plans World War II involved German fighter planes crashing into Manhattan's skyscrapers as living bombs, like the Japanese kamikazes. Hitler understood the huge symbolic power of Manhattan's skyscrapers. He believed suicide bombing would have a devastating psychological impact on the American people and the U.S. war effort.
Kristina, a self-named Hungarian female lion tamer, arrives in New York to become a dance choreographer. Kristina, now a middle-class NYC artist concerned about the environment, has a sailor lover named Raoul. The film, a collage work, an essay film, a fictional narrative and a documentary all rolled into one, is one of the most important independent American feminists films made during the 1970's.
A cinematic portrait of the homeless population who live permanently in the underground tunnels of New York City.
Eleven-year-old New York City public school kids journey into the world of ballroom dancing and reveal pieces of themselves and their world along the way. Told from their candid, sometimes humorous perspectives, these kids are transformed, from reluctant participants to determined competitors, from typical urban kids to "ladies and gentlemen," on their way to try to compete in the final citywide competition.
Dubbed New York's "Queen of the Night," proto–club kid Susanne Bartsch has been throwing unforgettable parties for over 30 years and is still going strong.
A documentary about the confluence of Christianity and mixed martial arts, including ministries which train fighters. The film follows several pastors and popular fighters in their quest to reconcile their faith with a sport that many consider violent and barbaric. Faith is tried and questions are raised. Can you really love your neighbor as yourself and then punch him in the face?
A visual journey into the life and legacy of one of Australia's most celebrated artists, Brett Whiteley.
Xiara Trujillo is a precocious seven-year-old who moved from the Bronx to Maryland with her mom, Aracelli Guzman, four years ago. Though she seems happy hanging out and playing with her pal Melissa, Xiara becomes defensive and emotional when talking about her father, Harold Linares. As we see and learn, Harold is in jail serving a ten-year sentence for weapons possession; Xiara seems to blame his incarceration on her mother, whom she says "kept calling the police." Xiara, who has always been extremely close to her father, acts out with her mother.
Traces the life and mental illness of New York artist and photographer Ruth Litoff, and her sister's struggle to come to terms with her tragic suicide.
Trailblazing double bassist Orin O'Brien never wanted the spotlight, but when Leonard Bernstein hired her in 1966 as the first female musician in the New York Philarmonic, it was inevitable that she would become the focus of much interest and fascination. Now 87 years old and recently retired, Orin looks back on her remarkable life and career, insisting that a fuss should not be made, much preferring to play a supporting role to the family, students, friends, and colleagues that surround her.
Describing herself as a 'street queen,' Johnson was a legendary fixture in New York City’s gay ghetto and a tireless voice for LGBT pride since the days of Stonewall, who along with fellow trans icon Sylvia Rivera, founded Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), a trans activist group based in the heart of NYC’s Greenwich Village. Her death in 1992 was declared a suicide by the NYPD, but friends never accepted that version of events. Structured as a whodunit, with activist Victoria Cruz cast as detective and audience surrogate, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson celebrates the lasting political legacy of Johnson, while seeking to finally solve the mystery of her unexplained death.
The life and work of New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat have been marked by a long quest for identity, by his Haitian and Puerto Rican family origins and by a founding trip to Africa. To portray this major painter of the 20th century, who died in 1988 at only 27 years old, is also to evoke the place of black American artists in the conservative and racist America of the Reagan years.
Chronicles the rise and fall of 1970s New York City nightclub Plato's Retreat.
Tito del Amo, a passionate 72-year-old researcher, takes the final step to unravel the enigma about the alleged Spanish origin of the American cartoonist Walt Disney, making the same journey that his supposed mother made to give him up for adoption in Chicago. A journey that begins in Mojácar, Almería, Spain, and ends in New York. An exciting adventure, like Alicia's through the looking glass, to discover what is truth and what is not, with an unexpected result.
3 young women encounter car trouble on the way to a Dragonsclaw concert during a rainstorm. They are forced to go seek help, where one by bloody one they are attacked by a masked maniac and hung on meathooks. Who will survive and what will be left of them?
Parker, a successful advice columnist, and her best friend Aaron have been inseparable since childhood. She knows everything about him, including the fact that he doesn't love his fiancé. Desperate for help, Parker pens an anonymous letter to her own column asking for advice. Unexpectedly, she learns about her own feelings instead.
See the world through the eyes of five-year-old Tibetan novice monk Hopakuli and share in his joys and sorrows as he endures the rigors of monastic life. A Little Wisdom endeavors to tell a story of children who find happiness through religious life.
January 1964, the author of the novel Tiempo de silencio, Luis Martín-Santos, dies in a tragic car crash. On the 60th anniversary of the accident and the 100th year since his birth, we follow his children on a voyage to reconstruct the writer, the psychiatrist, the man behind the work that turned him into a literary promise. A journey through the figure of Martín-Santos, his peculiar view of post-war Spain and his work hidden for years based on partly unpublished texts.
A wolf with a Southern accent walks by just as a teacher is getting fed up with his class and walks out. Unfortunately, the class consists of three junior clones of Droopy, who manage to try his patience.
A wealthy man is struck by wanderlust that always takes him to new places where he mingles with the lives of different people.
Two mismatched friends, students, each in their own way troubled by life, travel one day to a nearby beach, invoking a sort of playful innocence long believed spent along with their childhoods, in the hopes that doing so will restore both of their happiness. Alas, life seldom works out that way.
A romantic comedy about a twenty three years old Kirill who suddenly decides to become a gigolo.
The story of a gluttonous whale and the other aquatic creatures
Catastrophic war, destroyed ecosystem, brink of extinction. War for the most valuable treasure of the time: water.
When her newspaper reporter brother is taken ill, a young woman takes over his job. Before she knows it, she's involved up to her neck in a plot involving stolen jewelry and a very agile monkey.
Judith decides to go on her own to the salsa-dancing night, even though her boyfriend, with whom she goes there every week, can’t accompany her. A stranger, with whom she briefly dances, offers to walk her home. Next morning, upon returning home, Judith refuses at first to accept that she’s a rape victim, but in the end decides to go to a doctor and press charges - which prove inadequate to have the rapist convicted. Under the influence of sweeping bodily and mainly psychological oscillations, Judith decides she has to follow an unorthodox path in order to prove the perpetrator’s guilt.
Rainbow was formed by Ritchie Blackmore in 1975 after he left Deep Purple at the height of their fame. They were instantly successful and released a string of hit albums, with an ever-changing line up, between 1975 and 1983 when Blackmore broke up the group to join the reformed Deep Purple. This concert from their European tour in 1977 features the line up responsible for the "Long Live Rock ’n’ Roll" album released later that year, including vocalist Ronnie James Dio and drummer Cozy Powell. Blackmore had to be smuggled out of Austria after trouble with the police at a gig two nights earlier, and was very late arriving in Munich, all of which seemed to inspire both the band and the audience to create a truly remarkable gig.
A drama shot in 5 hours and 17 minutes, exactly the time it takes to travel by rail from Malmö to Stockholm. It's mid-winter. On a train a man and a woman end up in the same compartment. They have a typical conversation between strangers until they discover they are going to the same wedding. It's unimportant whether they got an invitation or are going uninvited. The important thing is that both have plenty of reasons to stop the wedding… It soon turns out that they share not only the same goal but also painful memories and romantic disappointments. This brings them closer together.
