Tom Waits is one of the most original musicians of the last five decades. Renowned for his gravelly voice and dazzling mix of musical styles, he’s also one of modern music’s most enigmatic and influential artists. Using rare archive, audio recordings and interviews, this film is a bewitching after-hours trip through the surreal, moonlit world of Waits’ music – a portrait of a pioneering musician and his unique, alternative American songbook.
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In 2007, 11 years after one of the most influential American punk bands, Jawbreaker, called it quits, the three members, Blake Schwarzenbach, Chris Bauermeister, and Adam Pfahler reconnect in a San Francisco recording studio to listen back to their albums, reminisce and even perform together one last time. Follow the band as they retell their “rags to riches to rags” story writhe with inner band turmoil, health issues, and the aftermath of signing to a major label. Featuring interviews with Billy Joe Armstrong, Steve Albini, Jessica Hopper, Graham Elliot, Chris Shifflet, Josh Caterer and more.
Filmed for over a decade, MAGICAL UNIVERSE is a portrait of Al Carbee, an 88 year old strange and reclusive outsider artist who spends his days alone in a massive house in Maine creating art — mostly featuring Barbie Dolls in elaborate dioramas. The documentary profiles Carbee’s amazing body of work and his relentlessly creative lifestyle. Carbee’s story is explored through the prism of his unlikely friendship with New York filmmaker Jeremy Workman, who unexpectedly becomes Carbee’s closest friend and only link to the outside world. Far beyond just a portrait of an eccentric, MAGICAL UNIVERSE is about wonder, friendship, and the transcendent power of creativity. Its story culminates with Al Carbee’s greatest triumph as an artist and a man.
A documentary that tells the tale that the victors still do not want you to know. Learn the terrible truth about the rape, torture, slavery, and mass murder inflicted upon the German people by the Allied victors of World Word II.
During the brutal invasion of China in 1937 by Imperial Japanese forces, tens of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war are murdered and women raped in what is known simply as “The Rape of Nanking.” This docudrama is a stirring account of a small band of courageous American missionaries who choose to stay in Nanking to try and protect a quarter million vulnerable Chinese civilians who are trapped in a city ruled by a savage, out of control army. Their stories are brought vividly to life through actual real-time letters and diaries as they bear witness to one of the worst wartime atrocities in history.
Twenty years ago, a young American hiker named Chris McCandless, the accomplished son of successful middle class parents, was found dead in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness and became the subject of the best-selling book and movie “Into the Wild.” Now, PBS retraces Chris McCandless’ steps to try to piece together why he severed all ties with his past, burnt or gave away all his money, changed his name and headed into the Denali Wilderness. McCandless’ own letters, released for the first time, as well as new and surprising interviews, probe the mystery that still lies at the heart of a story that has become part of the American literary canon and compels so many to this day.
For over a decade, this portrait of a North Philadelphia family and the creative sanctuary offered by their home music studio was filmed with vérité intimacy. The family’s 10-year journey is an illumination of race and class in America, and it’s a testament to love, healing and hope.
Some thirty years ago, a working-class subculture was taking grip of cities across the UK that has left a lasting legacy. This began on the back of the mod revival of the late 1970s when notorious football firms from the cities like Liverpool, Manchester and London stole expensive designer sportswear from the countries they visited. It didn’t start with the high-street giants telling these lads what to wear. Instead, they set the trends and the high-street stores caught up. As the 1980s began in Britain, under the radar the ‘casual’ had already arrived. From Barcelona to Berlin, Milan to Moscow, teenagers today are copying fashions and a culture that developed on the streets and terraces of British cities. But how did the football casual subculture come about? What did they stand for? What made them tick? Why it’s legacy is still having an impact on today’s fashion industry.
The final chapter of his exceptional 15-part documentary exploring the history of cinema, The Story of Film: An Odyssey. Mark Cousins builds a bridge between the “before” of the health crisis, and the “after”.
Retrospective documentary marking the 20th anniversary of the funeral of Princess Diana narrated by Kate Winslet.
Two physicists discover psychic abilities are real only to have their experiments at Stanford co-opted by the CIA and their research silenced by the demands of secrecy. Yet, as both these ‘remote viewers’ and our audience learn, the ‘more you hide something, the more it shines like a beacon in psychic space and this ancient truth can no longer be suppressed.’ The true story of Russell Targ and America’s cold war psychic spies, disclosed and declassified for the first time, with evidence presented by a Nobel Laureate, an Apollo Astronaut, and the military and scientific community that has been suppressed for nearly 30 years, now able to speak for the first time.
Over the course of one year, this film follows the life of an ordinary Pyongyang family whose daughter was chosen to take part in one of the famous Korean “Spartakiads”. The ritualized explosions of color and joy contrast sharply with pale everyday reality, which is not particularly terrible, but rather quite surreal, like a typical life as seen “through the looking glass”.
The story of Simon Fitzmaurice, a young filmmaker who becomes completely paralyzed from motor neuron disease but goes on to direct an award-winning feature film through the use of his eyes.