Where the Universe Sings: The Spiritual Journey of Lawren Harris

Admirers of Harris' paintings discuss his place in the pantheon of Canadian artists.

2017-01-27 | en

I Am Hope

Through fly-on-the-wall footage and insightful interviews, director ShakaJamal chronicles the effort to create a first-of-its-kind yoga and mindfulness program for Oakland Unified School District middle schools. Aimed at expanding students’ awareness and refining their goals, the initiative has been a unique success, and I Am Hope offers a poignant portrait of the day-to-day struggles of diverse young people united in their desire to pursue big dreams.

2023-10-07 | en

The Story Won't Die

THE STORY WON’T DIE, from Award-winning filmmaker David Henry Gerson, is an inspiring, timely look at a young generation of Syrian artists who use their work to protest and process what is currently the world’s largest and longest ongoing displacement of people since WWII. The film is produced by Sundance Award-winner Odessa Rae (Navalny). Rapper Abu Hajar, together with other creative personalities of the Syrian uprising, a post-Rock musician (Anas Maghrebi), members of the first all-female Syrian rock band (Bahila Hijazi + Lynn Mayya), break-dancer (Bboy Shadow), choreographer (Medhat Aldaabal), and visual artists (Tammam Azzam, Omar Imam + Diala Brisly), use their art to rise in revolution and endure in exile in this new documentary reflecting on a battle for peace, justice and freedom of expression. It is an uplifting and humanizing look at what it means to be a refugee in today’s world and offers inspiring and hopeful vantages on a creative response to the chaos of war.

2021-04-29 | en

The Genius of Leonardo Da Vinci

Janina Ramirez explores the BBC archives to create a TV history of Leonardo Da Vinci, discovering what lies beneath the Mona Lisa and even how he acquired his anatomical knowledge.

2018-04-30 | en

Chuck Close

Chuck Close, an astounding portrait of one of the world's leading contemporary painters, was one of two parting gifts (her second is a film on Louise Bourgeois) from Marion Cajori, a filmmaker who died recently, and before her time. With editing completed by filmmaker Ken Kobland, Chuck Close lives the life and work of a man who has reinvented portraiture. Close photographs his subjects, blows up the image to gigantic proportions, divides it into a detailed grid and then uses a complex set of colors and patterning to reconstruct each face.

2007-01-01 | en

The University of Sing Sing

An inside look at the notorious Sing Sing Correctional Facility, where one of the U.S.’s only in-prison college programs, Hudson Link, offers long-time inmates an education – and a new lease on life.

2011-04-01 | en

Leonora Carrington or The Ironic Spell

Cinema and painting establish a fluid dialogue and begins with introspection in the themes and forms of the plastic work of a woman tormented by the elongated specters, originating from her obsessions and nightmares.

1965-02-09 | es

Behind Our Walls

In America, the prison system has become a place of retribution, not restoration. Inmates are often treated as sub-human, and often find themselves feeling hopeless. But a small midwest college decides to give inmates an opportunity to earn a bachelor's degree. Experience the journey of the resilient inmates as they fight incredible odds to change their lives – and change the system.

2023-07-29 | en

Children Are Too Young to Die

The film graphically calls attention to the brutal dangers of playing on top of elevators in public housing high-rise 30-story buildings in New York City. The slang is called "elevator surfing", "elevator action" or "elevator chicken" and it is a deadly game in which groups of children ride up and down the elevator shafts on top of a moving elevator car and jump from one moving car to the top of another. At times, a child waits in the pit of the elevator shaft. When a car pauses on the lowest floor, he grabs the electrical cable and rides upward. "Children Are Too Young To Die" begins with a bloody reenactment of an elevator accident in which a 10-year-old boy gets his arm cut off by the counterweight in an elevator shaft. The story unfolds and reveals real issues and deaths resulting from such dangerous activities.

1990-01-01 | en

Fly by Light

For the first time, four DC youth play in mountain streams, sing under the stars, and confront the entrenched abuse of their past. As they return to the city, each faces an unforgiving series of roadblocks that challenge their efforts to build a better life. From street corners to mountaintops, Fly By Light is an intimate exploration of the emotional journey to rewrite a young person's future.

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The Making of a Japanese

Intimately following 1st and 6th graders at a public elementary school in Tokyo, we observe kids learning the traits necessary to become part of Japanese society.

2024-04-05 | ja

Dance for All

2007-09-22 | en

A Calling to Care

A Calling to Care is the inspiring story of 55 year-old Grace Stanley, a Canadian nurse who left her home and prestigious career behind to answer a calling halfway around the world in Karachi, Pakistan. Teaching nursing to local women in a strict Muslim culture that forbids them to even to touch men is a formidable task. However, Grace challenges her own values and belief systems to find common ground with her students, helping them to excel and feel respect for themselves in a culture that doesn't respect them. Whether it is getting her hands painted with henna, swimming fully-clothed in the ocean, or marching bravely with them on International Women's Day, Grace bonds with her students in a very special way, and ultimately discovers how the West can learn a lot more from the Third World than she ever thought.

2001-09-28 | en

Ich. Immendorff

Documentary film about the painter and sculptor Jörg Immendorff who ranks among the most important German artists. The filmmakers accompanied Immendorff over a period of two years – until his death in May 2007. The artist had been living for nine years knowing that he was terminally ill with ALS. The film shows how Immendorff continued to work with unabated energy and how he tried not to let himself be restrained by his deteriorating health.

2007-05-31 | de

Una vuelta a Mallorca en camello

The real story about the camel ride around Mallorca, that journalist Miguel Vidal and painter Gustavo Peñalver did in 1964. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. This is one of them.

2013-01-26 | en

Vera Klement: Blunt Edge

As her 80th birthday is approaching, Vera Klement, an oil painter in Chicago, adamantly starts yet another new figure painting: a portrait of an artist under oppression, an homage to Russian composer, Dmitri Shostakovitch.

2010-09-07 | en

James Ensor: Demons Teasing Me

This film explains what James Ensor (1860-1949) meant for the development of art and makes palpable where he got his inspiration from.

2010-10-14 | en

Son of the Streets

13-year-old Khodor is a child whose family tries to issue him an ID document that proves his existence and gives him the right to education, health-care and movement outside of the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila in Beirut, Lebanon. Through the process, many of the family's old secrets are revealed.

2020-10-10 | ar

Raphael: The Lord of the Arts

Raphael: The Lord of the Arts is a documentary about the 15th century Italian Renaissance painter Raphael Sanzio.

2017-04-03 | it

Le Messager

2016-06-04 | fr