In June 2013, Laura Poitras and reporter Glenn Greenwald flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with Edward Snowden. She brought her camera with her. The film that resulted from this series of tense encounters is absolutely sui generis in the history of cinema: a 100% real-life thriller unfolding minute by minute before our eyes. Poitras is a great and brave filmmaker, but she is also a masterful storyteller: she compresses the many days of questioning, waiting, confirming, watching the world’s reaction and agonizing over the next move, into both a great character study of Snowden and a narrative that will leave you on the edge of your seat as it inexorably moves toward its conclusion.
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He’s one of the hardest working filmmakers in the genre business…….So what’s HATCHET man Adam Green been up to this past year apart from working on his sit-com ‘Holliston’, writing KILLER PIZZA and prepping EXORCISM ON CROOKED LAKE? The answer is this documentary starting out exploring genre-based monster art and then taking an odd turn into the blurring of fantasy and reality. Because halfway through producing this treatise with cinematographer Will Barratt at his L.A. ArieScope Pictures offices, they are contacted by former policeman William Dekker who claims he can prove that monsters are indeed real. That they live in world just below our own named The Marrow and he knows where one of the entrances to this dark hidden universe is. Green of course is intrigued and so the monster hunting expedition begins… to become something else far more frightening than he ever imagined.
Director Ron Howard tracks the fan phenomena that was Beatlemania from its zenith – 1963 to 1966 – to its end when the Fab Four withdrew from live performance. Landmarks from their US breakthrough in 1964 with I Want to Hold Your Hand to the controversy prompted by John Lennon’s flippant “more popular than Jesus” remark are chronicled in a documentary that includes among its interviewees Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello and Eddie Izzard.
After 16-year-old Cyntoia Brown is sentenced to life in prison, questions about her past, physiology and the law itself call her guilt into question.
Game Face shows the quest to self-realization of LGBT athletes and the acceptance in society. The film follows athletes during their coming out process, and sheds light on the obstacles LGBT sports players deal with throughout their career.
In an Oklahoma town with 2,000 churches, OpenArms is a small shelter for LGBT teenagers. This doc follows three teens who find love and friendship in a world that labels them outcasts.
Tina Turner overcame impossible odds to become one of the first female African American artists to reach a mainstream international audience. Her road to superstardom is an undeniable story of triumph over adversity. It’s the ultimate story of survival – and an inspirational story of our times.
Barbara Graham is a woman with dubious moral standards, often a guest in seedy bars. She has been sentenced for some petty crimes. Two men she knows murder an older woman. When they get caught they start to think that Barbara has helped the police arresting them. As a revenge they tell the police that Barbara is the murderer.
After Porn Ends 3 continues to explore whether a career as an adult performer is inherently damaging to the balance of a perfomer’s life once retired.
In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey is a documentary film about the legendary American guitarist, composer and provocateur John Fahey, 1939-2001. Fahey is often considered the godfather of ‘American primitive guitar’. This cinematic exploration features Pete Townshend, Chris Funk of The Decemberists and Joey Burns of Calexico. These stellar musicians, along with Fahey associates and friends such as the famous ‘Dr. Demento’, radio broadcaster Barry Hansen, explore the legacy of this profoundly influential artist. The film was recorded in the Washington D.C. area where John Fahey was born, along the Mississippi Delta from Memphis to New Orleans, in Los Angeles, Toronto, Austin, New York and in Oregon where Fahey spent his last two decades.
The First Monday in May follows the creation of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s most attended fashion exhibition in history, “China: Through The Looking Glass,” an exploration of Chinese-inspired Western fashions by Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton. With unprecedented access, filmmaker Andrew Rossi captures the collision of high fashion and celebrity at the Met Gala, one of the biggest global fashion events chaired every year by Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour. Featuring a cast of renowned artists in many fields (including filmmaker Wong Kar Wai and fashion designers Karl Lagerfeld, Jean Paul Gaultier and John Galliano) as well as a host of contemporary pop icons like Rihanna, the movie dives into the debate about whether fashion should be viewed as art.
A profoundly personal voyage into the complexity, fragility and wonder of the human brain, after Lotje Sodderland miraculously survives a hemorrhagic stroke and finds herself starting again in an alien world, bereft of language and logic. This feature documentary takes us on a genre-twisting tale that is by turns excruciating and exquisite – from the devastating consequences of a first-time neurological experiment, through to the extraordinary revelations of her altered sensory perception.