The Force 2017
The Force presents a cinema vérité look deep inside the long-troubled Oakland Police Department as it struggles to confront federal demands for reform, a popular uprising following events in Ferguson, MO, and an explosive scandal.
The Force presents a cinema vérité look deep inside the long-troubled Oakland Police Department as it struggles to confront federal demands for reform, a popular uprising following events in Ferguson, MO, and an explosive scandal.
For one extraordinary week in February 1972, the Revolution WAS televised. DAYTIME REVOLUTION takes us back in time to the week that John Lennon and Yoko Ono descended upon a Philadelphia broadcasting studio to co-host the iconic Mike Douglas Show, at that time the most popular show on daytime television, with a national audience of 40 million viewers each week. What followed was five unforgettable episodes of television, with Lennon and Ono at the helm and Douglas gamely keeping the show on track.
Genesis – The Last Domino? follows Tony Banks, Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford and their crew as they build and rehearse their Last Domino tour. Despite the complications and uncertainties of the global COVID pandemic, and without confirmed dates, the band made the decision to spend the time and money so they would be prepared once the world returned to normal. The film follows the creative and emotional processes involved and features band interviews and live performances from the spectacular yet-to-be-seen show.
Filmmaker Malcolm Ingram takes you on a fascinating journey inside a fast growing segment of the gay community where what was once a perceived negative is now redefining the definition of what it looks like to be gay.
In the wilderness of the Bucharest Delta, nine children and their parents lived in perfect harmony with nature for 20 years – until they are chased out and forced to adapt to life in the big city.
An afternoon with Marianne Koch, who remembers the making of Sergio Leone's A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, starring Clint Eastwood.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Modern Masterpiece, Unity Temple is an homage to America’s most renowned architect. The film pulls back the curtain on Wright’s first public commission in the early 1900’s to the painstaking efforts to restore the 100 year old building back to its original beauty. The dedicated team of historians, craftspeople, members of the Unitarian congregation and Unity Temple Restoration Foundation reveal the history of one of Wright’s most innovative buildings that merged his love of architecture with his own spiritual values. The film intersperses the architect’s philosophies with quotes narrated by Brad Pitt.
In this visual essay John Bengtson, author of Silent Echoes: Discovering Early Hollywood Through the Films of Buster Keaton, pinpoints the locations used in the filming of The General and offers glimpses of how they look today.
Short featurette showcasing Clint Eastwood, film historian and critic Richard Schickel and producer Robert Daley, who speak about Eastwood’s work as an actor, as well as other characters he portrayed at that time.
The first career-spanning documentary retrospective of Lydia Lunch's confrontational, acerbic and always electric artistry. As New York City's preeminent No Wave icon from the late 70's, Lunch has forged a lifetime of music and spoken word performance devoted to the utter right of any woman to indulge, seek pleasure, and to say "fuck you!" as loud as any man. In this time of endless attacks on women this is a rallying cry to acknowledge the only thing that is going to bring us together - ART...as the universal salve to all of our traumas.
Gerhard Richter has spent over half a century experimenting with a tremendous range of techniques and ideas, addressing historical crises and mass media representation alongside explorations of chance procedures. This first glimpse inside his studio in decades is exactly that: a thrilling document of the 79-year-old's creative process, juxtaposed with rare archival footage and intimate conversations with his critics and collaborators.
Instructions for proper female behavior from classroom films of the 1940s - '80s. Gender may be genetic, but this series of vintage, classroom-ready shorts demonstrates that people thought a little help may be needed for some girls to become women. Modern-day viewers may gape at the emphasis on cooking in "You’re the Judge" or the oblique sex ed in "Growing Girls," but this collection is now more about entertainment than education.
The life and career of renowned magician and sleight of hand artist Ricky Jay.
Animation documentary
This visual essay by John Bengtson, author of Silent Echoes: Discovering Early Hollywood Through the Films of Buster Keaton, reveals the locations where Keaton's 1924 comedy feature Sherlock Jr. was filmed in Hollywood and Orange County.
Cuba is well known as a so-called time capsule. The place where the New World was discovered has become both a romantic vision and a warning. With ongoing global cultural and financial upheavals, large parts of the world could face a similar kind of existence.
Four visual essays by Silent Echoes author John Bengtson identifying Buster Keaton's shooting locations for his many short films produced between 1920-1923, many in the streets surrounding his former Hollywood studio, the same studio where, a few years earlier, Charlie Chaplin had made his brilliant series of Mutual shorts. Written by Anonymous
Retrospective documentary on the British horror anthology classic Dead of Night (1945).
Don Siegel’s classic crime thriller "Charley Varrick," made in 1972 in the wake of the immensely successful "Dirty Harry," stars Walter Matthau in what is probably the actor’s finest dramatic role, airshow pilot turned crop duster turned bank robber turned mob target Charley Varrick. This feature-length documentary takes the viewer back to the time of the shooting of this cult item and features original interviews with Siegel’s son, Kristoffer Tabori, actors Andy Robinson and Jacqueline Scott, stunt driver and actor Craig R. Baxley, composer Lalo Schifrin and Howard A. Rodman, whose father co-wrote the screenplay.
Jackson Pollock said, “he makes the rest of us look academic,” Mark Rothko acknowledged him as a “myth-maker” and Clement Greenberg called him “a highly influential maverick and an independent genius.” Clyfford Still, one of the strongest, most original contributors to abstract expressionism, walked away from the commercial art world at the height of his career. Extremely disciplined, principled, and prolific, Still left behind a treasure trove of works like no other major artist in history. With a wonderful mosaic of archival material, found footage and audio recorded by the artist himself, Lifeline paints a picture of a modern icon, his uncompromising creative journey and the price of independence.