The Matrix: Generation

After the 1999 premiere of the first Matrix movie, it became a pop culture phenomenon. A special documentary about the Matrix saga and its prophetic aspects.

100 Years

As the Communist Party of China celebrates its 100th anniversary, this documentary looks back at the party’s history, from the 1920’s, to the Civil War, the Great Leap Forward, the Great Famine, the Cultural Revolution and the reforms by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Did the Great Famine cost more than 15 million lives? How does the Cultural Revolution continue to shape Chinese politics today? What was capitalism like after Mao’s death? Through rare and never-before-seen historical footage, expert interviews and eyewitness accounts of the Great Famine, Tiananmen incident, and the Cultural Revolution, get to know how one party has so profoundly shaped China.

How the Beatles Changed the World

The fascinating story of the cultural, social, spiritual, and musical revolution ignited by the coming of the Beatles. Tracing the impact that these four band members had, first in their native Britain and soon after worldwide, it reappraises the band and follows their path from young subversives to countercultural heroes. Featuring fresh, revealing interviews with key collaborators as well as a wealth of rarely-seen archival footage, this is a bold new take on the most significant band in the history of music and their enduring impact on popular culture.

Morning Sun

The film Morning Sun attempts in the space of a two-hour documentary film to create an inner history of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (c.1964-1976). It provides a multi-perspective view of a tumultuous period as seen through the eyes—and reflected in the hearts and minds—of members of the high-school generation that was born around the time of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and that came of age in the 1960s. Others join them in creating in the film’s conversation about the period and the psycho-emotional topography of high-Maoist China, as well as the enduring legacy of that period.

Welcome to Babel

Chinese-Australian artist Jiawei Shen's plans to create an epic work depicting his homeland's tumultuous recent history.

How Yukong Moved the Mountains

From 1972 until 1974, Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan, along with a Chinese film crew, documented the last days of the Cultural Revolution, marking the end of an era. The vast amount of footage they shot was edited into 14 films of varying lengths. Focusing on ordinary people spread over a wide geographic area—many of whom were living and working in collectives—the filmmakers recorded a unique moment in history, and also captured some of the more enduring aspects of Chinese culture.

Counting from Infinity: Yitang Zhang and the Twin Prime Conjecture

In April 2013, a lecturer at the University of New Hampshire submitted a paper to the Annals of Mathematics. Within weeks word spread: a little-known mathematician, with no permanent job, working in complete isolation, had made an important breakthrough toward solving the Twin Prime Conjecture. Yitang Zhang's techniques for bounding the gaps between primes soon led to rapid progress by the Polymath Group, and a further innovation by James Maynard.

In Memory of Rock

The rock-wild youth of the 1960s during the apparitions of their idols.

Star Trek: The True Story

Documentary covering the current state of both the theoretical and practical development of the various scientific basic principles that served, as per Gene Roddenberry's dictum, as a believable basis at the time for The Original Series. Several real-world scientists are interviewed, not a few of them unabashedly admitting they went into their chosen field of profession because of Star Trek: The Original Series.

Heidi in China

In 1946, Heidi is entrusted to a Swiss family by her father. He will never come back for her. Today, François Yang questions his mother about her past. What follows is a journey to China, a quest to reconstruct memory. Through contact with her brothers and sister, Heidi measures the extent of the drama experienced by her family that remained in China, persecuted by the Communist Party.

Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder

The poet and painter, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, is among the world's living monuments to arts and letters. For well over a half century, Ferlinghetti helped shape the currents of poetry and literature with his forceful engagement with society and an ideological position that often found him at odds with the political currents of his day. Ferlinghetti's quiet, behind the scenes demeanor and disarming mien may have assuaged, or even fooled, certain opponents, while in reality he was a literary mercenary, a rebel at the forefront of our own cultural revolution.

Rock Family Trees

More than two decades after it left our screens, BBC Two’s iconic and much-loved music documentary series, Rock Family Trees, is back for a one-off special. The iconic music documentary series returns to examine the real story behind the birth of Britpop and how a handful of like-minded musicians, struggling to find an authentic voice, would pave the way for a revolution in British music. It is an intricately connected story of three of the biggest bands of the 1990s – Suede, Elastica and Blur – and how, for a brief moment in the middle of that decade, they changed British music forever, kickstarting a movement that still reverberates to this day.

Smothered: The Censorship Struggles of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour

The history of the irreverent "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" and the content battles it fought with its television network.

Kekaiulu Hula Studio

Kekaiulu Hula Studio follows the Proclaimed Hula Halau of the same name, showcasing their twist on what the real reason for hula is and what life as a dancer in the halau is really like. Something previously unseen in the public eye.

The Barefoot Doctor

This documentary film recounts Dr. Sun Lizhe's remarkable experience as a barefoot doctor in rural China and offers a glimpse of China's healthcare condition during and shortly after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Described as "Chinese Dr. Zhivago" in the film, Sun's distinguished life began from his decision to become a "barefoot doctor" when he was an 18-year-old educated youth from Beijing sent down to the countryside. He had since saved numerous lives by performing difficult surgery when emergency situations arose. For example, he once manually removed a placenta from a peasant women's uterus during her placental dystocia. In villages where medical resources were extremely limited, Sun devoted himself to the healthcare of peasants, performing more than 3000 operations in the cave dwellings of Shaanxi province. In 1974 he was selected by Chairman Mao as one of China's five model "educated youths."

Fruit Farm

Nana Xu travels to the place built by her father as a prisoner during the Cultural Revolution: first a work camp, later a prison, fruit farm and treatment centre. Conversations with last remaining witnesses, where home is still shaped by a repressed past.

Summary of Crimes

Peasants that were targeted as counter-revolutionaries during the Cultural Revolution in China share their stories in this documentary by Xu Xing.

In the Footsteps of Bembeya Jazz

A portrait of the mythical band Bembeya Jazz, which contributed to the heyday of Sekou Touré’s cultural revolution in Guinea. Created in 1961 in the heart of the rainforest, Bembeya Jazz rapidly became modern Africa’s greatest orchestra. 50 years later, immerse yourself in the history of a legend that livers on!

Searching for Lin Zhao's Soul

This landmark documentary reveals the tragic life of a gifted young woman who was executed for speaking out during the height of Chairman Mao’s rule.

The House of Forgetfulness

The Journey of a young man who is making a documentary about forgotten narratives around an old piano, takes him through an unknown path towards restoring history, culture and identity of his homeland, Iran, in dusty and abandoned objects.

Return Home Part I: Silent Man

The Rules of the Game

Lolita hates to smile. Kévin doesn't know how to sell himself. Hamid doesn't like bosses. They are twenty. They have no qualifications. They are looking for work. Over six months, the coaches of an employment consultancy firm are going to teach them the attitudes and language required to get a job in today's market. Through this apprenticeship, the film reveals the absurdity of these new rules of the game.

The Fixer

Romanian-born Radu Patru is a trainee at a prestigious French news network. Serving as a translator and general problem solver, or "fixer," for the headlining journalists during his trial period, he's looking to make his big break. He sees his opportunity when two underage Romanian prostitutes are repatriated from France, creating an international scandal. Taking advantage of his language skills and local connections, Radu is prepared to do whatever it takes to interview one of the young girls. But as he ventures into tricky moral ground, he must stop to ask himself if, as an aspiring journalist, he can live with the consequences of his actions, and if, as a father, he's setting a good example for his son.

The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords

The history of black newspapers in America.

The Night Before

The Night. She doesn't sleep. She calls. She tells. She saw a movie. This film tells the story of two nights. One night which is not seen in images, existing only in the words of The Clock, by Minnelli, an old Hollywood film. One night which is seen in images but about which we hardly know anything, those of a woman who talks about the Clock. So, in fact there are two films, two stories that come together at the same time, getting closer, and moving away, merging with what they have in common: desire, night and the city.

El Faro

Selkvinnen

The Faroe Islands during the 18th century. Danish bailiff's control the island. In Torshamn lives Master Wenzel, known as hard but just. Wenzel tries to arrange a marriage for his daughter Inger.

Brother of the Wind

A man raises four wolf pups, hoping to release them back into the wild.

La gatita

Caught in a Trap

Gemma collects money out of parking meters. But really she's obsessed with Elvis.

The Frog Prince

"The Frog Prince" was one of several adaptations of Brothers Grimm fairytales that Lotte Reiniger made in London between 1953 and 1955: others include "The Gallant Little Tailor", "Hänsel and Gretel", "Sleeping Beauty", "Snow White and Rose Red" and "The Three Wishes".

T3EN TIGADA

Three friends device a plan that could help them ACE their accountings exam. The plan is - to steal the paper. What follows then is situational & slapstick comedy with a hilarious twist!

Doctor Who: The Leisure Hive

Romana fancies a proper holiday and convinces the Doctor to visit the leisure planet Argolis, where a takeover by the Argolins' historic enemy is underway.

He Joe

A lonely man is taunted by the voice of a woman he once knew.

The Thin Line

Tashiro coincidentally meets his best friend Sugimoto in a bar very close to the apartment in which Sugimoto’s wayward wife is found dead. Although Tashiro is not a suspect in the police investigation, he is racked with guilt and confesses to his wife, Masako. In an effort to further relieve his tortured sense of guilt, he then confesses to Sugimoto. Neither his wife nor his friend can believe that he could have been involved.

Thomasine & Bushrod

A pair of thieves operate in the American South between 1911 and 1915, stealing from rich, white capitalists, and giving to Mexicans, Native Americans and poor whites.

Rubdown

A rich man offers his masseur, a former baseball player with damaged knees, $50,000 to have an affair with his wife so she'll be in violation of their pre-nuptial agreement and he can divorce her without losing his fortune. The masseur agrees although he is already having an affair with the wife, and they together work out a way to set up her husband in order that she does get his fortune. But when the client is murdered and the real wife shows up the masseur has to clear his own name, and as he begins to piece together the evidence he realises that he's been played by yet another man who still holds a grudge from years before.