In late eighties, in Ceausescu's Romania, a black market VHS bootlegger and a courageous female translator brought the magic of Western films to the Romanian people and sowed the seeds of a revolution.
Mur Murs (1981)
Venturing from Venice Beach to Watts, Varda looks at the murals of LA as backdrop to and mirror of the city’s many cultures. She casts a curious eye on graffiti and photorealism, roller disco & gang violence, evangelical Christians, Hare Krishnas, artists, angels and ordinary Angelenos.
Germany in Autumn (1978)
The film does not have a plot per se; it mixes documentary footage, along with standard movie scenes, to give the audience the mood of Germany during the late 1970s. The movie covers the two-month time period during 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped and later murdered by the left-wing terrorists known as the RAF-Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction). The businessman had been kidnapped in an effort to secure the release of the original leaders of the RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. When the kidnapping effort and a plane hijacking effort failed, the three most prominent leaders of the RAF, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe, all committed suicide in prison. It has become an article of faith within the left-wing community that these three were actually murdered by the state.
Charlotte Gray (2001)
This is a drama set in Nazi-occupied France at the height of World War II. Charlotte Gray tells the compelling story of a young Scottish woman working with the French Resistance in the hope of rescuing her lover, a missing RAF pilot. Based on the best-selling novel by Sebastian Faulks.
The Ventures: Stars on Guitars (2020)
Documentary film on the #1 instrumental rock group in the world, The Ventures. The story of their rise to fame in the 1960s right up to now, as they celebrate their 60th anniversary of playing the best guitar-rock of all time.
Titus (1999)
Titus Andronicus returns from the wars and sees his sons and daughters taken from him, one by one. Shakespeare's goriest and earliest tragedy.
New Wave (2024)
An endearingly nostalgic exploration of the defiant Vietnamese new wave music scene, as well as a vulnerable and personal look at the filmmaker and her community’s revisiting of their unexamined past.
Porn to Be Free (2016)
Italy, 1970. An increasing legion of harmless warriors begins a peaceful struggle for sexual freedom through pornography, shaking and shocking religious authorities and conservative political institutions. They are ironic, happy, crazy. They are dreamers, defenders of definitive communion between body and soul. But they were censored and humiliated. They were mistreated and arrested for demanding loud a new cultural renaissance.
You've Got A Friend: The Carole King Story (2014)
Documentary telling, in her own words, the story of Carole King's upbringing in Brooklyn and the subsequent success that she had.
Song of the Open Road (1992)
A portrait of Paul Joe Vest and requiem for people living and dying with AIDS he composed setting poems of Walt Whitman to music.
Yuma Crossing (1990)
The story of the Yuma Crossing, the place where centuries of travelers crossed the Colorado River as told in a series of reenacted vignettes by colorful characters from the Quechan tribe, the conquistadores, Father Kino, Olive Oatman and others up until the first bridge was built in the 1920's.
Children of Wind River (1989)
A film made by Victress Hitchcock and Ava Hamilton in 1989 on the Wind River Reservation for Wyoming Public Television.
Nicholas and the Baby (1980)
The first childbirth for children film ever made which launched a sibling preparation movement across the US.
What Can I Tell You (1978)
A portrait of three generations of wonderfully eccentric Italian American women living in a small town near Boulder.
Extreme Consequences: The Reality of Prison Life (2007)
A compelling look at the choices that lead to incarceration and the reality of being locked up in Pelican Bay State Prison.
Portugal: Carnations Against Dictatorship (2024)
In Portugal, during the night of April 24-25, 1974, a peaceful uprising put an end to the last government of the Estado Novo, the authoritarian regime established in 1933 by dictator António de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970), paving the way for full democracy: a chronicle of the Carnation Revolution.
Cezanne and I (2016)
They loved each other with the ardor of thirteen-year-old boys. Rebellion and curiosity, hopes and doubts, girls and dreams of glory – they shared it all. Paul was rich, Emile poor. They went skinny-dipping, drank absinthe, starved, only to overeat. Sketched models by day, caressed them by night... Now, Paul is a painter and Emile a writer. Glory has passed Paul by. But Emile has it all: fame, money, the perfect wife, whom Paul once loved. They judge each other, admire each other, confront each other. They lose touch, meet up again, like a couple who cannot stop loving each other.
I Am Thalente (2015)
Homeless since the age of nine, South African skateboarder Thalente Biyela travels to the US to pursue his dream of becoming a professional skateboarder. Through his eyes, we experience what it takes to rise up out of circumstance and escape a lifetime on the streets.
Lou Andreas-Salomé, The Audacity to be Free (2016)
Lou Andreas-Salomé, the woman who enraptured 19th century Europe’s greatest minds, recounts her life to Ernst Pfeiffer in this German film directed by Cordula Kablitz-Post. A published novelist, poet and essayist, Salomé’s desire to live a life free from convention scandalized society but spurred genius and passion in others, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Rée and her lover, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Under the tutelage of Sigmund Freud, she became the first female psychoanalyst.