Examines the intergenerational impact of addiction by chronicling the love, labor, loss, and uncertainty of one woman’s struggle to live a life of sobriety. Weaving together moments of glee, fulfillment, acceptance, sorrow, and disappointment, this documentary takes an intimate look at the bonds that hold one family together and a disease that threatens to tear them apart.
Ashley EllisSelfDebi EllisSelfMark EllisSelfThrough one woman's experience as an adopted person and also as a mother who relinquished her child in 1971, this documentary highlights the many complex issues associated with adoption.
In Uganda, AIDS-infected mothers have begun writing what they call Memory Books for their children. Aware of the illness, it is a way for the family to come to terms with the inevitable death that it faces. Hopelessness and desperation are confronted through the collaborative effort of remembering and recording, a process that inspires unexpected strength and even solace in the face of death.
Filmmaker Evie Wray travels to rural Kansas in an attempt to reconnect with her mentally unstable mother, Evie, for the first time since Evie’s psychotic breakdown five years earlier. She finds a parent still chasing her demons, both real and imagined, struggling to make a career for herself as an abstract artist and searching for the Geodetic Center of the United States, the finding of which, Evie says, will bring about world peace.
Appalachian Journey is one of five films made from footage that Alan Lomax shot between 1978 and 1985 for the PBS American Patchwork series (1991). It offers songs, dances, stories, and religious rituals of the Southern Appalachians. Preachers, singers, fiddlers, banjo pickers, moonshiners, cloggers, and square dancers recount the good times and the hard times of rural life there. Performers include Tommy Jarrell, Janette Carter, Ray and Stanley Hicks, Frank Proffitt Jr., Sheila Kay Adams, Nimrod Workman and Phyllis Boyens, Raymond Fairchild, and others, with a bonus of a few African-Americans from the North Carolina Piedmont.
Thomas Haemmerli is about to celebrate his fortieth birthday when he learns of his mother's death. A further shock follows when he and his brother Erik discover her apartment, which is filthy and full to bursting with junk. It takes the brothers an entire month to clean out the place. Among the chaos, they find films going back to the 1930s, photos and other memorabilia.
49 Up is the seventh film in a series of landmark documentaries that began 42 years ago when UK-based Granada's World in Action team, inspired by the Jesuit maxim "Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man," interviewed a diverse group of seven-year-old children from all over England, asking them about their lives and their dreams for the future. Michael Apted, a researcher for the original film, has returned to interview the "children" every seven years since, at ages 14, 21, 28, 35, 42 and now again at age 49.In this latest chapter, more life-changing decisions are revealed, more shocking announcements made and more of the original group take part than ever before, speaking out on a variety of subjects including love, marriage, career, class and prejudice.
Lift shines a spotlight on the invisible story of homelessness in America through the eyes of a group of young homeless and home-insecure ballet dancers in New York City and the mentor that inspires them.
You Gave Me A Song offers an intimate portrait of old-time music pioneer Alice Gerrard and her remarkable, unpredictable journey creating and preserving traditional music. The film follows eighty-four year old Gerrard over several years, weaving together verité footage of living room rehearsals, recording sessions, songwriting, archival work, and performances with photos and rare field recordings. Much of the film is told in Alice’s voice and via interviews with musical collaborators and family members who share the story of Alice and others chasing that high lonesome sound.
This one-of-a-kind comedy special showcases the comedian's riotous stand-up performance, exploring everything from the Disability experience to her Italian-Catholic upbringing to body image issues and more.
“The Fight for the Soul of Seattle” examines the role of Seattle’s City Council in allowing the situation to reach what many experts consider epidemic levels under the guise of a compassionate approach to people who suffer from substance addiction and who commit crimes to feed their habit. It documents the heartbreaking condition of people on the streets, and the crushing decisions Seattle entrepreneurs are forced to contemplate as their life savings and dreams are destroyed by theft, vandalism and a dwindling customer base. This documentary also explores potential bold solutions to treat those living on the streets and pair them with agencies and assistance that can provide a clear path away from the endless circle of addiction and crime.
Like it or not, porn is here and it is harmful. In this controversial film, award-winning filmmaker Justin Hunt dissects the impact of pornography on societies around the globe, from how it affects the brain of the individual, to how modern technology leads to greater exposure to youth, to watching it literally tear a family apart. In what may well be one of the most devastating issues in modern culture, this film will break down the damage that porn is doing to us a human race and leave you thinking that it's clearly time that we start taking porn addiction a bit more seriously.
Between 1930 and 1945, Eastern Europe experienced mass violence on an unprecedented scale. Hitler and Stalin exploited the vast region for their respective expansionist plans. It is estimated that around 14 million civilians were murdered—primarily Jews, Poles, Balts, Belarusians, and Ukrainians.
100m Olympic champion Linford Christie is one of Britain’s most successful athletes. Now, he’s confronting his complicated legacy, in a story about race, respect and reputation.
Ljudmila Ignatenko tells the story of her and her husband Vasilij, a firefighter who was one of the victims of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
The third installment of the infamous "is it real or fake?" mondo series sets its sights primarily on serial killers, with lengthy reenactments of police investigations of bodies being found in dumpsters, and a staged courtroom sequence.
Sir Elton John looks back on his life and the astonishing early days of his 50-year career in this emotionally charged, full-circle journey. As he prepares for his final concert in North America at Dodger Stadium, Elton takes us back in time and recounts his struggles with adversity, abuse, and addiction, and how he overcame them to become the icon he is today.
This new intimate documentary looks at the extraordinary journey of the 75-year-old American rocker, who has come back from everything, and especially from the worst, but with his capacity for wonder intact.
Cocaine has always gotten a bad rap, and for a reason. It is a drug used by the rich and the poor legally and illegally, Mexican cartels fought over it with Colombia once associated with the brutal cocaine wars, and a source of tension between the American and Mexican borders on the people who are illicitly bringing in cocaine from one side of the border to another and will do anything to do it. So it can be surprising at times to the viewer throughout the course of the documentary special, that it was never always like this.
Few amateur films with sound were produced in the 1930s and fewer remain extant. A charming artifact that demonstrates the expressive possibilities and technical limitations of amateur talkies, "The Spider and the Fly" includes a backyard Labor Day gathering, a trip to the Riverview Amusement Park, and a homemade Halloween parade of witches and ghouls.
Filmmaker Kimi Takesue captures the cadence of daily life for Grandpa Tom, a retired postal worker born to Japanese immigrants to Hawai’i in the 1910s. Amidst the solitude of his home routines — coupon clipping, rigging an improvised barbecue, lighting firecrackers on the New Year — we glimpse an unexpectedly rich inner life.