7.1
Forty years after her uncle Djibril Diop Mambéty's landmark of Senegalese cinema TOUKI BOUKI, Mati Diop revisits its lead actor, Magaye Niang, to explore the legacy of a film that continues to loom large.
7.2
A sublime work of art in its own right, this beautifully shot, endlessly revealing documentary offers unprecedented insight into the life and work of one of the greatest artists of our time. In the spring and summer of 2009, legendary German painter Gerhard Richter granted filmmaker Corinna Belz access to his studio, where he was working on a series of large abstract paintings. In quiet, highly concentrated images, GERHARD RICHTER PAINTING provides a fly-on-the-wall perspective on the very personal, tension-filled process of artistic creation. Richter is his own worst critic, destroying multiple canvases before his creative spirit takes hold and the astonishing final compositions emerge.
6.3
For more then 20 years Charles Manson has refused to communicate to the outside world. Until now. These are actual never before heard phone conversations between Canadian best selling author Marlin Marynick and Charles Manson.
7.1
Founded in 1958 to produce aviation engines, the once prosperous, now abandoned Chengdu Engine Group, known as Factory 420, awaits its destiny. Sold for millions to real estate developers, it will be transformed into an emblem of China’s new market economy: a complex of luxury apartment blocks called 24 City. Constructed around eight dramatic interviews, punctuated by snippets of pop songs and poetry, along with beautifully shot footage of the demolition, 24 CITY attempts to understand the complexity of the social changes sweeping across China by exploring both the factory’s physical destruction and its powerful symbolic echo of a half century of Communist rule.
6.7
Reconstructing a series of unearthed home movies, Dustin Guy Defa dubs his own voice over the voices of his family members to create an unsettling personal portrait of family dysfunction, revealing the devastating legacy of addiction, abuse, and trauma embedded within the images.
5.6
Caroline Rowland's FIRST is influenced by Bud Greenspan's method of profiling selected competitors in depth and continuing with an account of how they performed at the Games, often in their own words. Rowland's twist is that she chooses all first-time Olympians.
4.8
Jean Painlevé made numerous research films, strictly with the scientific and university communities in mind. EXPERIMENTAL TREATMENT OF A HEMORRHAGE IN A DOG, an educational short about an experimental canine surgery, is presented here in its original silent version. (Presented without score.)
7
Two decades after his cult documentary CANE TOADS: AN UNNATURAL HISTORY first brought the story to the screen, director Mark Lewis invites you to join the cane toads on their unstoppable journey across the Australian continent as they leave behind them a broken trail of human folly, endless controversy, and a series of extraordinary close encounters. Meet the scientists, community groups, politicians, and ordinary people who have crossed their path, and discover the incredible and ongoing story behind one of Australia’s most notorious environmental blunders. Poignant and hilarious, CANE TOADS: THE CONQUEST is the irreverent, comic, and provocative true story about the great Australian menace.
8
“If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes. If we opened me up, we’d find beaches.” Originally intended to be Agnès Varda’s farewell to filmmaking, this enchanting auto-portrait, made in her eightieth year, is a freewheeling journey through her life, career, and artistic philosophy. Revisiting the places that shaped her—from the North Sea beaches of Belgium where she spent her childhood to the Mediterranean village where she shot her first film to the boardwalks of Los Angeles where she lived with her husband, Jacques Demy—Varda reflects on a lifetime of creation and inspiration, successes and setbacks, heartbreak and joy. Replete with images of wonder and whimsy—the ocean reflected in a kaleidoscope of mirrors, the streets of Paris transformed into a sandy beach, the filmmaker herself ensconced in the belly of a whale—The Beaches of Agnès is a playful and poignant record of a life lived fully and passionately in the name of cinema.
6.9
Director Stig Björkman creates a portrait of Ingmar Bergman through behind-the-scenes footage collected over a forty year period, as well as a testament to Bergman's lasting influence through interviews with directors Woody Allen, Olivier Assayas, Martin Scorsese, and others.
7.4
In 1956, Floyd Norman made history when he became the first Black animator to be hired by Disney, where he worked on such classics as SLEEPING BEAUTY and 101 DALMATIANS before being selected by Walt Disney himself to serve on the story team for THE JUNGLE BOOK. Featuring testimonials from many of Norman’s colleagues and friends, including Whoopi Goldberg and Leonard Maltin, this warmly affectionate documentary catches up with Norman at age eighty. As vital and youthful as ever, he reflects on his trailblazing career with humility and humor while continuing to be a force in the animation world.
7.5
Meet Seymour Bernstein: a virtuoso pianist, veteran New Yorker, and true original who gave up a successful concert career to teach music. In this wonderfully warm, witty, and intimate tribute from his friend Ethan Hawke, Seymour shares unforgettable stories from his remarkable life, eye-opening words of wisdom, and his hard-won insights into art, creativity, and the search for fulfillment. A poignant reflection on the dedication, perseverance, and fortitude essential to creating both art and a rewarding life, SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION will leave audiences uplifted and inspired.
8.2
An extraordinary, transformative experience, Allan King's DYING AT GRACE is quite simply unprecedented: five terminally ill cancer patients allowed the director access to their final months and days inside the Toronto Grace Health Centre. The result is an unflinching, enormously empathetic contemplation of death, featuring some of the most memorable people ever captured on film.
6.5
Gu Jun's film for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad Beijing 2008 strikes an adroit balance between the intimate and the spectacular. Gu starts by flitting between various places around the world where individual athletes are training and captures director Zhang Yimou (RAISE THE RED LANTERN, HERO) discussing logistics with his team and imparting his vision for the Opening Ceremony. Gu has what appears to be total access to the competitors, inside and outside the stadia.
7.4
Whether headlining films in Sweden, Italy, or Hollywood, Ingrid Bergman always pierced the screen with a singular soulfulness. With this new documentary, made on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of Bergman's birth, director Stig Björkman allows us unprecedented access to her world, culling from the most personal of archival materials, letters, diary entries, photographs, and 8 mm and 16 mm footage Bergman herself shot, and following her from youth to tumultuous married life and motherhood. Intimate and artful, this lovingly assembled portrait, narrated by actor Alicia Vikander, provides luminous insight into the life and career of an undiminished legend.
7.2
GRAMERCY STORIES is an inspiring look inside a unique residence in Manhattan that provides a safe home for twenty-five gay and transgender teenagers who have experienced violence at home and on the streets. Told from their candid, often witty perspective, the film follows these courageous kids as they strive to remake their lives.
SEVEN SECOND LOVE AFFAIR marked legendary filmmaker Les Blank’s first documentary photography job shooting drag racers in Long Beach, California. Driving everything from hopped up Mercs to supercharged Rail Dragsters, these daredevil drivers could accelerate to over 220 miles per hour in a mile. Featuring an original score by blues-rock greats Canned Heat, this vivid look at a singular subculture zooms in on one driver in particular, Rick “The Iceman” Stewart, as he attempts to grab the world’s speed record.
7.1
Filmed over sixteen years, this obsessively made documentary explores the creative life and adventures of the eccentric artist and entrepreneur Harrod Blank. Chronicling everything from his youth growing up in the woods with chickens and working as a camera assistant for his father, the venerable filmmaker Les Blank, to the creation of his first attention-getting art car, to his current multifaceted career as creator and head of a nationwide art-car movement, this engaging portrait is an appropriately offbeat ode to a true original defiantly pursuing his own form of nonconformity.
5.5
Hal Hartley’s conscientious assistant in Berlin receives weekly letters from her boss and sends him the books he needs as he struggles in Amsterdam to stage Dutch composer Louis Andriessen’s opera “La commedia.”
7.6
What if you could morph your car into a mobile work of art and drive it down the road for all to see? What would it look like? What would the world think of you? How would you be changed? AUTOMORPHOSIS looks into the minds and hearts of a delightful collection of eccentrics, visionaries, and just plain folks who have transformed their autos into artworks. On a humorous and touching journey, we discover what drives the creative process for these unconventional characters. And in the end, we find that an art car has the power to change us and to alter our view of our increasingly homogeneous world.
7
HEART OF A DOG marks the first feature film in thirty years by multimedia artist Laurie Anderson. A cinematic tone poem that flows from a sustained meditation on death and other forms of absence, the film seamlessly weaves together thoughts on Tibetan Buddhism, reincarnation, the modern surveillance state, and the artistic lives of dogs, with an elegy for the filmmaker's beloved rat terrier, Lolabelle, at its heart. Narrated by Anderson with her characteristic wry wit, and featuring a plaintive, free-form score by the filmmaker, the tender and provocative HEART OF A DOG continues Anderson's four-and-a-half-decade career of imbuing the everyday with a sense of dreamlike wonder.
Barbara Kopple’s Academy Award-winning HARLAN COUNTY USA unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners’ strike in a small Kentucky town. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners’ sometimes violent struggles with strikebreakers, local police, and company thugs. Featuring a haunting soundtrack, with legendary country and bluegrass artists Hazel Dickens, Merle Travis, Sarah Gunning, and Florence Reece, the film is a heartbreaking record of the thirteen-month struggle between a community fighting to survive and a corporation dedicated to the bottom line.
6.1
Faith Hubley’s abstract animation documents the persecution of women as witches throughout history.
7.1
Join noted tea guru and importer David Lee Hoffman as he scours China for the finest teas in the world. Following Hoffman as he travels to local tea farms deep in the Chinese countryside, extols the virtues of organic farming and the fertilizing benefits of the humble earthworm, and talks tea with none other than Werner Herzog, director Les Blank (shooting digitally for the first time) crafts a portrait of a man driven by an all-consuming passion and an ode to the myriad pleasures of an ancient beverage.
