Long Strange Trip
In Amir Bar-Lev’s comprehensive and freewheeling history of the Grateful Dead, the legendary band and their unprecedented influence are center stage, illuminated under an appropriately audacious and lively spotlight. Expertly interweaving archival footage, rarely seen performances, and accounts from band members, family, and fans, Long Strange Trip traces the highs (as it were) and lows […]
Let There Be Light
In the south of France, scientists from 37 countries are building the most complex machine ever attempted: an artificial sun. If they get it right, it will illuminate the way to produce clean, cheap, abundant energy for millions of years. If they fail, it will be one of the biggest scientific failures of all time. […]
Citizen Jane: Battle for the City
Can you imagine a motorway ploughing through Manhattan? And that SoHo doesn’t exist? This is easily how things might have ended up, had the author and activist Jane Jacobs not fought for her beloved hometown of New York. In the 1950s and 60s, when the property magnate Robert Moses was exerting his powerful influence, Jacobs […]
Chasing Coral
Coral reefs are the nursery for all life in the oceans, a remarkable ecosystem that sustains us. Yet with carbon emissions warming the seas, a phenomenon called “coral bleaching”—a sign of mass coral death—has been accelerating around the world, and the public has no idea of the scale or implication of the catastrophe silently raging […]
78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene
In 78 setups and 52 cuts, the deliriously choreographed two-minute shower sequence in Psycho ripped apart cinema’s definition of horror. With a shocking combination of exploitation and high art, Alfred Hitchcock upended his own acclaimed narrative structure by violently killing off a heroine a third of the way through his film, without explanation, justification, or […]
Zero Days
When independent Internet technicians discovered a chillingly powerful computer virus unlike anything they’d seen before, signs pointed not merely to recreational or criminal hackers, but to a high-stakes game of cyber warfare between nations. Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney return with Zero Days, a fascinating exposé of American and Israeli covert operations aimed at Iran’s […]
Tower
On August 1st, 1966, a sniper rode the elevator to the top floor of the University of Texas Tower and opened fire, holding the campus hostage for 96 minutes. When the gunshots were finally silenced, the toll included 16 dead, three dozen wounded, and a shaken nation left trying to understand. Combining archival footage with […]
Nuts!
In 1917, a doctor from Kansas, dr. John Romulus Brinkley, announced he has discovered the cure for impotence, defending the testicular transplant from goats to men. Through animation, archive material, interviews and a very suspicious narra – tor, the documentary follows a path impregnated with fiction and expose a dual purpose: not only recover the […]
Life, Animated
After years of struggle, Ron Suskind discovers that Disney animated films provide the key to connecting with his severely autistic son Owen. As Owen takes steps towards independence, he continues to find a sense of understanding and joy from his beloved Disney tales. Combining clips from Disney classics with brand-new animation that imagines Owen as […]
Author: The JT Leroy Story
JT LeRoy, gender-fluid child of a West Virginia prostitute, burned brightly like the transgressive love child of Flannery O’Connor and Truman Capote. Feuerzeig (The Devil & Daniel Johnston) strikes gold again in the film’s central character, a literary wunderkind in the late ‘90s with an obsessive penchant for self-documentation and the ability to brilliantly exploit […]