This touching portrayal of transition follows a talented adolescent as he is forced to abandon his longstanding role in the Copenhagen Royal Chapel Choir when his youthful voice begins to drop.

As an ode to China's transforming economy, a factory morphs into an apartment complex while communism gives way to capitalism in this hybrid film.

Deftly captured and assembled vignettes of life in Sidney, Ohio provide an enduring depiction of American existence.

An unflinching look at the landscapes, both human and topographical, along the route of the infamous 7,915-kilometer Dakar Rally.

An earnest glimpse at race relations during the civil rights era, this film chronicles a midwestern pastor’s attempts to engage his all-white congregation in conversation with members of an African American sister church.

Ralph Petey Greene was Washington, DC’s incendiary voice of the people from the sixties to the eighties. What a voice and what style!

This triptych of films portrays a tattooed retiree, a painter’s muse, and a trio of acrobats as they reflect on their bodies, their identities, their mortality, and their legacies.

Where’s the Beef? Got Milk? Just Do It. Here are the creative people behind our most iconic ads.

This cinematic autobiography by celebrated French filmmaker Agnès Varda unfolds in a luminous series of recollections from her extraordinarily rich life.

A look at how steadfastly the Japanese revere insects, from celebrating their place in history and literature to collecting them as pets.

Traveling by train across the Trans-Siberian landscape, passengers in a third-class sleeping car share their dreams, both hopeful and haunting. Which ones will come true?

In St. Petersburg, bitch really is the new black as attractive and accomplished young women enroll in the Vixen Academy to learn how to “turn off their heads” around men and dance like strippers for imaginary sugar daddies.

Excerpts from St. Clair Bourne's first filmmaking work as a producer at Black Journal, the first monthly public affairs program on public television by, for, and about African Americans.

Excerpts from St. Clair Bourne's first filmmaking work as a producer at Black Journal, the first monthly public affairs program on public television by, for, and about African Americans.

Four stories of characters searching for love, and finding it, without the gift of sight.

Filmmaker Dana Perry reveals an extraordinarily personal document of her son’s mental illness and the grief and questions surrounding his suicide at the age of 15.

This riveting film shows how activists in Myanmar use camcorders to document the brutality of the military regime, smuggling the footage out of the country in the hopes of an international outcry.

Combining contemporary and archival footage, this haunting film unfolds as a series of portraits of abandoned company towns, where the mishmash of kitsch, cultural detritus, and natural majesty reveals the lost promise of the United States’ frontier.

A chilling reminder of what fear can do to democracy, this film juxtaposes World War II-era US propaganda films with Dorothea Lange’s subtly subversive photographs of the puzzled and demoralized inmates of the Japanese internment camps.

Carmen, just 17, dreams of leaving Glod, Romania, for the allure of Spain, but when Sasha Baron Cohen rolls through town to film Borat, life at home perks up—and then turns sour when the townspeople discover how they have been portrayed.

This mesmerizing short captures the relentless and often unfulfilling quest for jade – a gem 40 times more valuable than gold – in the dried beds of China’s Yurungkash River.

A small inlet in Japan holds an immense secret, and its horrifying consequence—for the future of dolphins as well as of our oceans—is exposed by this film’s courageous team of advocates and adventurists.

This film takes us back to the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 as it recounts the nearly forty year history of the efforts of the environmental movement that continue to shape our world.

This hypnotic compilation film pairs a lush Chopin score with archival footage from mid-century travel films to stage a cinematic fall from grace: here, fossil-fuel-powered machines and the desire to encounter the exotic, rather than apples and demon reptiles, conspire to destroy the Garden.

This upbeat film offers an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at the audition and casting process of a major Broadway musical, the 2006 revival of Michael Bennett’s beloved show about casting, A Chorus Line.

Academy Award-winner Barbara Kopple portrays the swift rise and precipitous fall of one of boxing’s most complicated figures.

Romanian shepherds and their sheep find a way to get along with “the German,” owner of a hang-gliding business, and his airstrip in this meditative study of lifestyles in collision.

From factory farms to patented seeds, this film skillfully untangles the twisted knot of farm policy, lobbying, engineering, and corporate greed that has drastically altered the landscape of American farming since the 1950s.

In this personal detective story, co-director Rick Minnich retraces the events in the weeks before and after his father’s suspiciously convenient memory loss.

One of the winningest coaches in college football, Bobby Bowden leads the Florida State team through the 2006 season—one of the toughest they ever faced—on a regimen of hard-core training and Baptist devotion.

A story about beauty in our globalized world, this film follows the journey of a young Indian girl’s hair as it transforms from a religious offering to a movie star’s accessory.

Steve James's deeply moving film follows Arthur Agee, Jr., and William Gates as they strive to achieve professional basketball stardom and escape poverty in Chicago.

An enthralling representation of the Senegalese singer Youssou Ndour and the many facets of faith and culture that continue to influence his cherished voice.

This 1983 film follows Amiri Baraka in the weeks leading up to his sentencing trial for “resisting arrest.”  From the subject matter to the storytelling method, this documentary is vintage St. Clair Bourne.

This film brings to life the visionary scholarship of Africanist John Henrik Clarke.

A whimsical mix of interview and animation shows the childhood confusion about where babies come from.

A lyrical meditation on what really constitutes imprisonment, this film follows the rueful recollections of an ex-con who finds life on the outside more lonely than in la chirola (jail).

A Druze Arab girl from Jerusalem is caught in a bitter struggle between tradition and ambition as she moves on from the local “Lady of the Arabs” beauty pageant to the Miss Israel competition, which demands a swimsuit round that violates the standards of her religion and community.

Germans observe Americans who dress as Germans in an American town made to look like a Bavarian village.

A beautifully photographed document of the awkwardly sweet courtship between Kae, a Thai woman visiting her aunt in Denmark, and Kjeld, the young Dane who answered her personal ad.

A visual meditation on lives suddenly interrupted by a flood, revealing the destruction of a community.

A cinematic portrait of the works of Swiss performance artist Heinrich Lüber, who defies gravity, proportion and comfort with his human installations.

Bench-pressing over 350 pounds at the age of 74, competitive powerlifter Bill McFadyen defies our ideas of what it is to be a senior citizen.

Three up-and-coming bullfighters introduce us to the existential mysteries of the revered, violent, and intoxicatingly graceful relationship between man and bull.

A young boy and his well-intentioned soldier father, who dreams of training his son to be a champion wrestler, grapple with the chasm growing between them.

Exploring the possibility of love between humans and robots, Mechanical Love challenges conceptions of companionship and loneliness in the modern age.

A sweeping portrait of Montreal comprised of excerpts from 120 different films made in the 1950s and ’60s.

The haunting, infernal beauty of this depiction of rescue workers digging through rubble and of empty coffins being loaded onto a truck makes the horror of the 2006 bombing of Beirut all the more palpable.

Africa’s Maasai and Himba -- two of the oldest cattle-herding tribes on earth -- are vying to get a piece of the wildlife-tourism pie. But when your culture is ancient, change is hard, and some within their communities see wildlife conservation as a remnant of Western colonialism.

Arcade Fire makes beautiful and moody music and Vincent Morrisett has made a beautiful and moody film about the making of their critically acclaimed 2007 album Neon Bible.

An experimental filmmaker weaves emblematic images of patriotism and of the American experience into an evocative essay on freedom as defined by The American Way.

From potato peelers to iPhones, Gary Hustwit’s latest project brings us behind the scenes of our manufactured environment and introduces us to those who have created the (material) world we live in.

A portrait of modern Peru, as told by the bartenders, vendors, craftsmen, and street performers who struggle, with great resilience, to survive in the midst of the political corruption.

An oil tanker travels the Baltic Sea as humans, technology, and nature converge in unexpected ways in this quiet, lyrical film.

Renowned choreographer Ohad Naharin of the Batsheva Dance Company demonstrates the ways his unique philosophy of movement, “Gaga,” transforms the bodies and minds of dancers across all forms.

Juxtaposing interviews with weather scientists and lay obsessives with evocative images that subtly comment on the way humans interact with their environments, this compelling study of weather modification becomes a stark meditation on, and cautionary tale about, our all too human need to control.

Alan Alda stars as George Plimpton, the famous reporter who went undercover as a Detroit Lion quarterback to get an inside look at the 1963 NFL season.

A political coming-of-age story about African American actor, singer, and activist Paul Robeson and the nation that both adored and persecuted him.

This film has it all—an endearing hero with a charming gap-toothed grin, unrequited love, the grand paradox of life and death, lively music, and cemeteries.

An exiled Iranian filmmaker and one-time revolutionary interviews the wife of the former Shah of Iran, Queen Farah Diba Pahlavi, over the course of two years and forges an unexpectedly warm—if wary—connection.

Welcome to the saddle-busting, bone-breaking world of bull riding, where only the toughest cowboys can make it through a season to the final competition and its purse of one million dollars.

Young children hoping to achieve Olympic glory for China are pushed to the breaking point in this revelatory film.

As New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof takes a harrowing trip through eastern Congo to shed a penetrating light on the wretched conflict there, he reminds us of how crucial authentic reporting is to the survival of democracy.

A close-knit, multi-racial group of women activists help find justice and healing for victims of child rape in South Africa.

The true story of cultural phenomenon Wavy Gravy - a man whose commitment to making the world a better place has never wavered.

Through a collection of personal stories, this graceful film reveals the unique and unfamiliar significance of Thessaloniki, a city at the crossroads of religion, geography and history.

Every year Murray Fredericks pitches camp in the middle of a desolate salt flat in South Australia to photograph a kaleidoscopic array of brilliant color and subtle movement.

A candid portrayal of female lyricists whose passion and art perservere in a hip hop and R’n’B world run predominantly by men.

Photographers, models, and haute couture collide in this inside look at the creation of Vogue's notorious fall edition, product of the collective genius of Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour and Creative Director Grace Coddington.

A photographer works to enable a group of people living with severe disabilities to take their own pictures, revealing the powerful effects of self-expression.

A compelling story about the First Amendment's past and future shown with several gripping case studies about the limits of free speech in today's America.

Paul Newman has the time of his life playing an aging hockey player-coach concocting outrageous schemes to save his team from the economic collapse afflicting their hometown.

Up With People, the preternaturally perky, wholesome singing group: sinister cult, or “the yeast that built and preserved freedom”?

This film offers a turbulent and provocative picture of Afghanistan as it follows a foreign journalist and his young guide, who was ultimately kidnapped and murdered by the Taliban, through the streets of Kabul.

A rare behind-the-scenes look at the legendary Havana Boxing Academy, where young boys train to be champions and bring honor to their country.

In an unnamed self-storage warehouse in an undisclosed location, award-winning filmmaker Eva Weber unlocks stories of triumph and regret behind row upon row of identical steel doors.

Documenting a localized remake of Superman in economically depressed Malegaon, India, this film captures a very particular example of the primal fun of movies around the world.

A riveting look at the rising oil conflict in the Niger Delta, where the poverty-stricken communities fight for better living conditions as billions of dollars of crude oil are pumped out of the region.

Melvin Van Peebles’s infamous film in which he stars as a black man on the run from the (white) law after murdering two white cops who brutally beat an innocent black man.

Through Sweden, to Israel and Hungary, this film follows in the footsteps of an international conman who we first meet in Malmö, Sweden disguised as a Catholic archbishop.

Down-and-out coal miner Frank Machin, masterfully played by Richard Harris, rises to rugby league glory but fails at love in Lindsay Anderson’s first narrative film.

In Unit 25, a skeptical inmate must embrace evangelical Christianity to escape the usual horrors of Argentine prison life.

Guided by the drift of smoke and dreams, the Buddhist monk Tenzin Zopa sets off across the austere Tibetan countryside to find the reincarnation of his recently deceased spiritual master.

A monument to consumerism, the South China Mall is missing two important pieces: stores and shoppers.

This poignant portrayal of prison life, as told through the bus journey of those who travel each week from New York City to upstate prisons to visit their loved ones, offers an intimate look at love across barriers of space and time.

The Israeli village of El-Sayed is home to the largest population of deaf people in the world, but how will a community in which deafness is only natural respond when one young boy receives a cochlear implant?

A cinematic adaptation of Edwin Black's book of the same name, this film unveils chilling examples of American eugenics, presenting a disquieting analysis of an obscured history.

For the past five years, three senior citizens have shown up night and day at the Bangor, Maine, airport to thank American soldiers and wish them well as they leave for, and return from, war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A provocative look at the life of Josh Harris, internet pioneer, social engineer and artist who made it big in the 1990s but went bust when the dotcom bubble burst.

With an atmospheric score and stunning visual imagery, this haunting short film explores the relationship of a custodial crew to the powerful German parliamentary building in their care.

The story of an infamous civil rights leader and advocate told from the perspective of his daughters.

Through its exquisitely photographed phrases, this brief film leaves a permanent record of the live energy of choreographer Emanuel Gat’s dance piece, “Winter Voyage.”

A gripping account of the dramatic 71-day standoff between federal agents and members of the Oglala Lakota Tribe who seized the village of Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

Join The Yes Men—Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno—as they battle the free market mentality with their politically charged hijinks in this fast-paced, entertaining look at their unique brand of activism.

Part experimental film, part subversive biography, part installation piece, and part sporting event, this film transports the viewer into the mythical zone that elite athletes at the top of their game inhabit.