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D A Pennebaker’s first movie; a New York subway ride set to a Duke Ellington song.
MORE ›Shot in 1953, though not completed until 1957, Daybreak Express was the first film D. A. Pennebaker made, a mad rush of images of New York City captured from a train and edited to the rhythm of Duke Ellington’s song of the same name. A jazz aficionado, Pennebaker thought his career would continue along this path, making short films cut to songs.
MORE ›In 1974, a filmmaker set out to make a portrait of Jay Frank Butler, an elderly resident of Ellicutt City, Maryland. Butler was a town…
MORE ›With 60 days left in office, Illinois governor George Ryan decides to commute the sentences of 167 death row inmates. What changed this conservative Republican’s views on capital punishment?
MORE ›“Deaf President Now!” recounts the eight days of historic protests held at Gallaudet University in 1988 after the school’s board of trustees appointed a hearing president over several very qualified Deaf candidates. The protests marked a pivotal moment in civil rights history, with an impact that extended well beyond the Gallaudet campus, and paved the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
MORE ›What could Jesse Helms possibly have in common with Tim Kirkman: one, the conservative outspoken enemy of homosexuals and abortion rights advocates, the other a…
MORE ›Since the mid-1990’s, the United States has treated its southern border as a militarized zone. Framing its analysis of border patrol policies with the story…
MORE ›At the end of WWII, Josef Stalin ordered a grandiose, improbable project: the construction of a railroad across the Arctic Circle. For eight tortuous years,…
MORE ›Set against the backdrop of contemporary gentrification protests in the South Bronx, this arresting and invigorating film goes deep into the history of this neighborhood depleted by racist political decisions and left to burn.
MORE ›A jaw-dropping tale of filmic history, fetishization, and self-destruction, this feature mines decaying film reels for their intrinsic aesthetic appeal and narrative symbolism—a cobbling together…
MORE ›Alex Winter investigates Silk Road, the online black market and trade hub for illegal drugs, concentrating on the arrest and trial of Dread Pirate Roberts, the site’s unlikely founder.
MORE ›A Pakistani father tries to sell his daughter in marriage to a man twice her age. Women are circumcised in Somalia. An elderly Bosnian woman…
MORE ›After the fall of Saddam Hussein, Colonel Fakhir of the Iraqi army devotes his life to disarming landmines, with only a pocket knife and wire cutters, in this deeply suspenseful film that makes use of Fakhir’s own extensive video footage. North American Premiere
MORE ›Hypnotic and evocative, this film uses black and white Super 8mm footage to narrate the sights and sounds of an average day at your local…
MORE ›This film follows Central Americans on their long and perilous journey north to the U.S. in search of a better life. Once inside Mexican borders,…
MORE ›Before 9/11, nearly everyone could agree on one thing about the Twin Towers: they were flat out ugly, a blight on the New York skyline.…
MORE ›This suspenseful illumination of long-buried war crimes, which began in 1999 with NATO bombings in Serbia, is told in a harrowing combination of narrated testimonies and present-day images of the sites in suburban Belgrade where the crimes took place.
MORE ›This portrait of iconoclastic French philosopher Jacques Derrida applies his theories of deconstruction to the film itself, questioning the very notion of biography.
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