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This film takes a look at the work of Brazilian-born contemporary conceptual artist and rising star Vik Muniz -- sculptor, photographer and self-proclaimed magician. Muniz, best known for his book "Seeing Is Believing," which made both the New York Times and the Village Voice top 10 lists of photography books in 1999, uses his knowledge and interest of the history of photography to demonstrate how viewers can be easily deceived by the images around them.
A spiritual thriller set in an automotive graveyard and a story based on a real-life plane crash.
The famous fighting monks of the Shaolin Monastery have seen a resurgence throughout the world, aided in part by the popularity of kung-fu movies among the hip-hop set and films like "The Matrix" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." The film follows a handful of Shaolin monks who have brought the style to America, chronicling their adventures in New York City, Houston and Las Vegas.
This program puts a human face on the Middle East conflict by chronicling the story of Bassam, a Palestinian American telephone repairman from Cleveland who returns home for an arranged marriage with a "home-made bride." On the West Bank, everyday domestic duties and squabbles are carried out against a backdrop of shelling and violence. Once in America, however, his bride discovers that life in exile is not necessarily an easier alternative.
This personal documentary chronicles the filmmaker's struggle to know and grieve for the father she never knew, a soldier who died in Vietnam when she was a baby. Through her journey of discovery, and those of her family and her father's friends, the film sheds light on the more than 20,000 Americans whose fathers were killed in Vietnam -- and on those who continue to lose parents in war.
Part history, part mystery, part comedy, this program is an offbeat look at one eccentric California town. A memorable cast of local armchair historians describe some of Livermore's legends -- a supernatural light bulb, a cursed totem pole, a scandalous book of photographs and the ominous nuclear lab.
A unique classical music ensemble of three young women take the musical world by storm, collaborating with a struggling composer to debut one of the first triple concertos written since Beethoven's.
Recruiting a stand-up comic, a rock band, feuding academics and Hollywood actresses to his cause, an irreverent filmmaker searches for the secret something that gave Emily Dickinson her poetic power.
Three young Mormon men, age 19, embark on a two-year rite of passage in Germany as part of a long-standing worldwide effort by Mormon missionaries to spread their faith at home and abroad.
Short film block:
"Title": Directed by
"Compulsory Breathing": David Munro
"Don't Nobody Love the Game More Than Me": Martha Pinson
"Sergi": Paul Sullivan
"Dilly Dally": Mark Pellington
"Tom Hits His Head": Tom Putnam
"Bike Ride": Tom Schroeder
For nearly 70 years, the Hackberry Ramblers have played an infectious, toe-tapping blend of Cajun music and Western swing. MAKE 'EM DANCE tells the story of the remarkable multigenerational band that has been in continuous existence since 1933. Part biography, part road movie, the documentary captures the poignant and funny exploits of these "agin' ragin' Cajuns," from a bayou crab boil to MTV to their first appearance at the Grand Ole Opry.
A straight-arrow rural Texan Pentecostal/Baptist minister, Curtis Boyd relinquished the pulpit in the heat of the social changes of the 1960s and became a doctor who provided thousands of safe, illegal abortions prior to Roe v. Wade. Together with a group of east Texas clergy, Dr. Boyd was and remains dedicated to the ideal that all women have the right to a safe abortion.
Raised by their grandmother, young Raymond and Danny continue to hold out hope for their mother's recovery from drug addiction -- even after she's given up hope herself. WHY CAN'T WE BE A FAMILY AGAIN is an Academy Award-nominated cinema verite portrait exploring the strength and love that bring together two brothers who long to be reunited with their mother. Blending experimental images with an intimate interview with poet and therapist Robert Hall, DOWNPOUR RESURFACING chronicles how one man transformed a childhood of abuse into a life of confidence and strength. Reaching for the language of dreams, the program enlists dancers, musicians, archival footage and a woman performing a tea ritual to illustrate the healing of Hall's story.
A "troublesome property" for his master, Nat Turner has remained a " troublesome property" for the historians, novelists, dramatists and others who have struggled to understand the leader of the famous 1831 slave rebellion. Using an innovative approach that combines documentary techniques, dramatic filmmaking and historical methodology, this program explores how the many meanings of Nat Turner remain critical to understanding the racial history of our country.
Stanley Nelson is a third-generation, upper middle-class African American who spent the past 40 summers in Oak Bluffs, an affluent African-American resort community on Martha's Vineyard. Building on personal stories of summers past, this film explores the tightly-knit world of black professionals who created a refuge to call their own.
Jimmy Scott's voice conveys a young boy's innocence, a soft sensuality and the lessons of 76 hard-lived years of failure and redemption. Through concert footage and intimate interviews, rediscovered jazz legend Jimmy Scott recounts his stranger-than-fiction odyssey through poverty and obscurity to worldwide recognition as one of the most distinctive vocalists of our time.
After Joanna Katz, a South Carolina woman, was brutally tortured and gang-raped, she survived to face her assailants and transform herself into a victim's rights advocate. Called upon to testify at parole hearings year after year, Katz decided to collaborate with a seasoned filmmaker to tell her own story, challenging the parole system in order to heal herself -- and to give courage to other women who have suffered violent crimes.
As a worker with an international aid organization stationed in a remote village in Zambia, filmmaker Shantha Bloemen saw more and more unemployed Zambians selling used clothing from the U.S. in the marketplace. Tracing a winding t-shirt trail carved by global economics, T-SHIRT TRAVELS explores the World Bank's devastating role in directing Zambia's economic policies and the underlying reasons why so many Africans remain in poverty.
In his life and his work, acclaimed Afro-Cuban-Puerto Rican poet Piri Thomas has used creative expression as a means to confront and overcome poverty, racism, violence and isolation. Author of the acclaimed autobiographical novel Down These Mean Streets, Thomas, through poetry, stories and performances, chronicles his journey from Spanish Harlem to prison to life as an author, educator and activist.
Israeli filmmaker David Fisher inspires his four siblings to begin an emotionally challenging search for their long-lost sister. In a creative documentary style, with revealing moments of grief and humor, Fisher dissects a tangled web of relationships to uncover the dark secrets of the past, secrets that his parents were afraid to unearth and that are representative of Israel's own birth pains.
When Harvard expelled faculty members Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary in 1963 for LSD experimentation, Alpert traveled to India and returned transformed into the beloved guru Ram Dass. Now in his 70s, the author of the best-seller Be Here Now continues to inspire people all over the world as he deals with the effects of a massive stroke.
The remarkable story of The Weather Underground, radical activists of the 1970s, and of radical politics at its best and most disastrous.
In Los Angeles, there's only one place where you can celebrate the synchronicity of an old-school Chinatown establishment, classic jazz, DJ culture and the underground dance scene: the Grand Star. Find out how this restaurant became one of the city's liveliest and most intergenerational and culturally integrated neighborhood nightclubs. In DOUBLE EXPOSURE an artist and self-proclaimed "old Chinese lady" sets out to explore her own identity and prove that it's never too late to take a risk by making her first film in her 60s. The result? An experimental program that expresses her roots in two countries through self-effacing humor, double-exposed images and an immigrant's long look back at her native China.
Three young Cambodian American men, raised on the streets of San Francisco's tough Tenderloin district, travel to Cambodia wielding video cameras to capture their experiences of meeting fathers, sisters and brothers for the first time. These family reunions reveal the quagmire of Cambodian political upheaval and military invasion, as well as the heavy toll of years spent apart in different worlds.
Through a journey that takes her back to her roots in Thailand, a young Mien woman from Sacramento strives to come to terms with her father's death and drug addiction, and her sister's murder. Reunited with her Mien relatives, she begins to grasp the complexity of her father's past and experience the nuances of lost identity.
When his wife and daughter abandon him, East Indian immigrant Gopal (Roshan Seth) reinvents himself as an all-American bachelor. With women's magazines as his guide, he pursues Mrs. Shaw (Carol Kane), the divorcee next door. But he finds there's more to love than the pages of Cosmo would suggest.
In recent years, the ancient art of sumo has witnessed the rise of an increasing number of foreigners to the top of its professional ranks. From Hawaii to Atlantic City, the experiences of American wrestlers provide an entertaining glimpse at the past, present and future of sumo, revealing how this former bastion of Japanese tradition is grappling with globalizing Western forces.
When lesbian music student Kristina Boerger moved to a small Illinois college town, she didn't find a ready-made community. So she created one with what she loved best: choral singing. Assembling a ragtag group of volunteers, she created a lesbian choir in the middle of this conservative area. Showing the choir's evolution into a nationally accepted and recognized award-winning ensemble, THE AMASONG CHORUS documents how the spirit and dedication of one person can help transform a community.
