Druid Heights (2015)
Druid Heights is a short documentary film by Marcy Mendelson about a wild & wooly place. California’s hidden bohemia. Where sex, drugs and philosophy thrived among the eucalyptus just a few miles north of the Golden Gate.
Similar to Druid Heights
The Bridge (2006)
The Bridge is a controversial documentary that shows people jumping to their death from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco - the world's most popular suicide destination. Interviews with the victims' loved ones describe their lives and mental health.
The Desert Wagon (2024)
A couple of artists travels through the Mexico desert to present their puppet show.
Wooks (2022)
An acid-soaked journey to the edge of madness with the wise and wild Wooks of America’s hippie underbelly.
The Pool (2024)
Bondi Icebergs is the most photographed pool in the world. This is where generations of children have learnt to swim, where the diehard have braved the frigid waters of one hundred winters, where the young and beautiful have come to bond and bake in the hot sun. THE POOL is a stunning cinematic experience with a soundtrack that harks back to the 1960s and a cast of characters who each have a story to tell. It speaks to the enduring power of community and our collective longing to find it. No matter your background or where you’re at – everyone is equal in their swimsuits.
Baraka (1992)
A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.
A Normal Daughter: The Life and Times of Kewpie of District Six (2000)
Before South Africa’s apartheid government in the 1970’s destroyed District Six, being gay, or “moffie,” was an accepted part of this racially and religiously diverse community in Cape Town. Kewpie's hairdressing salon was the epicenter of this culture, a meeting place where the “girls” organized drag balls and cabaret performances, all of which are captured through her amazing collection of snapshots.
Persecution Blues: the Battle for the Tote! (2011)
In 2010, the iconic Tote Hotel – last bastion of Melbourne’s vibrant music counterculture – was forced to close by unfair laws. Filmed over 7 years, “Persecution Blues” depicts the struggle of more than 20,000 fans – and the bands who inspire them – to preserve their history and protect their future, and puts the audience on the front line of an epic-scale culture war.
Sanctuary (2024)
Sanctuary explores queer spirituality and utopian sexualities through the figure of Purusha Androgyne Larkin (1934–1988), a monk, pioneering gay filmmaker, and self-proclaimed cosmic-erotic mystic. Larkin’s 1981 book, 'The Divine Androgyne According to Purusha', challenged repression with a spiritual vision rooted in eroticism and presented a radical path to cosmic-erotic consciousness through ‘extreme’ forms of sexual pleasure. Sanctuary explores Larkin's attempt to form a utopian, pleasure-based spiritual community, and considers the complex legacies of his ideas in queer culture. Shot on 16mm, the film weaves together the voices of Larkin’s friends and followers, creating a portrait in absentia of a figure ahead of his time.
Cree Way (1977)
This short documentary examines an innovative educational program developed by John and Gerti Murdoch to teach Cree children their language via Cree folklore, photographs, artifacts, and books that were written and printed in the community. Made as part of the NFB’s groundbreaking Challenge for Change series, Cree Way shows that local control of the education curriculum has a place in Indigenous communities.
Silicon Valley, Baby. (2020)
Finnish award-winning barista Kalle Freese travels to San Francisco with his girlfriend to start an instant coffee start-up with big goals. At stake are Kalle's health, relationship and the newly formed start-up.
Freak Out! (2014)
Long-haired, barefoot people. Free love! Veganism! Experiments with drugs... The sixties, right? Not quite. In 1900 a group of middle class kids revolted against their time and started the original alternative community - Monte Verità, the mountain of truth. A community based on veganism, feminism, pacifism and free love. This creative documentary mixes interviews, archive and animation in a beautiful combination bringing you straight back to the early 1900 as seen through the eyes of these young radicals. The documentary Freak Out tells the untold story of the birth of the alternative movement and unfold the uncanny similarities between our time and what they revolted against in the early 1900s.
Still (2014)
The documentary tells the story of Uschi, a farmer living free and recluded in the bavarian alps. Shot in epic black and white pictures, Still follows Uschi's life over a ten year period. From an untroubled summer of making cheese through pregnancy and the uncertain future of the parental farm, Matti Bauer portrays Uschi's struggle to keep alive the dream of a way of life that has become rather untypical in this day and age.
Oyler (2015)
A Cincinnati public school fights to break the cycle of poverty in its Urban Appalachian neighborhood, where senior Raven Gribbins aims to become the first in her troubled family to graduate and go to college. When Principal Craig Hockenberry's job is threatened, it becomes clear it's a make-or-break year for both of them.
Grandpa's Still in the Tuff Shed (2003)
Award winning documentary filmmakers, Robin, Kathy and Shelly Beeck, with the help of filmmaker Michael Moore, have spent the last five years filming a 60-minute feature-length documentary on Bredo Morstoel, a Norweigan who was frozen by his grandson in 1983. Since then, the world famous...well...stiff has been lying under 800 pounds of dry ice in a TUFF SHED behind his grandsons' castle-like house in the 9000-ft Colorado ski town of Nederland. The grandson, Trygve Bauge, has long since been deported back to Norway, but Grandpa Bredo has remained, unwittingly becoming a worldwide symbol of the legal rights of the temporarily dead....
The Creek (2018)
Filmmaker Warren Harrison captures the memories and experiences of people who grew up as part of a unique community at Greatham Creek, a salt-marsh near Hartlepool in the Tees Valley. One of those who’s memories are recorded is photographer Ian Macdonald whose haunting images of the creek are used in the film along with family photographs, archive film provided by the North East Film Archive and contemporary footage.
Sunnyside
Ninety-year-old sound artist and comedian Henry “Sandy” Jacobs lives a quirky existence at the end of Sunnyside Drive, a steep and winding dirt road washed by fog from the Pacific Ocean. Sixty feet down the hill lives his eccentric 84-year-old friend and neighbor, architect and former Frank Lloyd Wright collaborator Daniel Liebermann. These extraordinary old men, influential artists in the 1950s and ’60s, continue, each in their own way, to search the world for perfection. Sunnyside takes us to an extraordinary place, a microcosm with its own distinctive rhythm and remarkable inhabitants. It is a film about creativity, the capacity to dream and, ultimately, the transience of life.
Forever, Chinatown (2016)
Forever, Chinatown is a story of unknown, self-taught 81-year-old artist Frank Wong who has spent the past four decades recreating his fading memories by building romantic, extraordinarily detailed miniature models of the San Francisco Chinatown rooms of his youth.
Ballymanus (2023)
10 May 1943. Something is spotted drifting ashore off the coast of Northwest Donegal, Ireland. Something that would change the lives of the local people forever.
Young At Heart (2008)
Documents the true story of the final weeks of rehearsal for the Young at Heart Chorus in Northampton, MA, and many of whom must overcome health adversities to participate. Their music goes against the stereotype of their age group. Although they have toured Europe and sang for royalty, this account focuses on preparing new songs for a concert in their hometown.