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- DirectorSusana Blaustein MuñozLourdes PortilloStarsCarmen ZapataThe movie follows the struggle of the Mothers of the Plaza of Mayo, a group of mothers who challenged authorities during the repressive regime in Argentina (1976-1983), trying to discover the whereabouts of their missing sons, taken by the regime.
- DirectorRea TajiriGroundbreaking and haunting, this film is a poetic composition of recorded history and non-recorded memory. Filmmaker Rea Tajiri's family was among the 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans who were imprisoned in internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor. And like so many who were in the camps, Tajiri's family wrapped their memories of that experience in a shroud of silence and forgetting. Ruminating on the difficult nature of representing the past - especially a past that exists outside traditional historic accounts - Tajiri blends interviews, memorabilia, a pilgrimage to the camp where her mother was interned, and the story of her father, who had been drafted pre-Pearl Harbor and returned to find his family's house removed from its site. Throughout, she surveys the impact of images (real images, desired images made real, and unrealized dream images). The film draws from a variety of sources: Hollywood spectacle, government propaganda, newsreels, memories of the living, and spirits of the dead, as well as Tajiri's own intuitions of a place she has never visited, but of which she has a memory. More than simply calling attention to the gaps in the story of the Japanese American internment, this important film raises questions about collective history - questions that prompt Tajiri to daringly re-imagine and re-create what has been stolen and what has been lost.
- DirectorKen BurnsStarsDavid McCulloughJeremy IronsDerek JacobiDocumentary showing the history of the world-famous Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, the impact it still has on people and the state of liberty as a personal and political concept in America in 1985.
- DirectorDennis TupicoffStarsMatthew AlbertWhat can a mother say when her son is violently taken away from her? Dennis Tupicoff's endeavor answers the question - twice. Matthew Easdale was shot dead in a house in Brisbane in April, 1995. His mother, Kathy Easdale, was interviewed for ABC Radio a few weeks later. Using the original radio interview, the film uses rotoscoped animation to present the account in two very different ways, showcasing the endless possibilities of art to trigger memory and the power of storytelling to deal with trauma: an intimate exploration of the deepest abyss of human soul.
- DirectorMarlon FuentesBridget YearianStarsMarlon FuentesJordan PorterNicole AntonioA unique fusion of rare archival images, and carefully orchestrated visual sequences shot in the present, Bontoc Eulogy is an original and innovative investigation of memory and the spectacle of the "Other" in turn-of-the-century America.
- DirectorLydia NibleyFilmmaker Lydia Nibley explores the cultural context behind a tragic and senseless murder. Fred Martinez was a Navajo youth slain at the age of 16 by a man who bragged to his friends that he 'bug-smashed a fag'. But Fred was part of an honored Navajo tradition - the 'nadleeh', or 'two-spirit', who possesses a balance of masculine and feminine traits. Through telling Fred's story, Nibley reminds us of the values that America's indigenous peoples have long embraced.
- DirectorCraig BaldwinStarsMaurice BishopJimmy CarterFidel CastroIn the year 1000, aliens from the planet Quetzalcoatl flee their dying planet and take refuge under the Earth's surface. Disturbed by 1950s American atomic testing, the aliens strike back at the USA in such varied schemes as the replicant Castro, the psychic vampire regime in Grenada and the Allende plot to alter the Earth's axis. Only covert action by the CIA can stop the dreaded Quetzals.
- DirectorJoel KatzStarsDorothy ThigpenMilton GablerFarah Jasmine GriffinIn 1937, after seeing a photo depicting the lynching of a black man in the south, Bronx-born high school teacher Abel Meeropol wrote a poem entitled "Strange Fruit" that begins with the words: "Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root." He set the poem to music and a few years later convinced Billie Holiday to record it in a legendary heartbreaking performance. Intertwining jazz genealogy, biography, performance footage, and the history of lynching, director Joel Katz fashions a fascinating discovery of the lost story behind a true American classic.
- DirectorSteven AscherJeanne JordanStarsBob BlankenshipDean EiltsMarge HaroldTroublesome Creek is the acclaimed story of the Jordan family's gamble to save their Iowa farm. From fighting the Crooked Creek Gang in 1867 to fighting off the bank today. An Oscar-nominated cliffhanger about history, humor and the unsettling of America.
- DirectorJean EpsteinStarsNathalie LissenkoGenica MissirioCamille BardouA mother sells a photo of her daughter to the press for publicity, and a daughter suddenly dies leaving the mother desperate surrounding by portraits of her daughter all around town.
- DirectorEsfir ShubDocumentary about Russian classic author Leo Tolstoy assembled from archive newsreel footage by Esfir Shub.
- DirectorJohn TaylorStarsPeter Hine
- DirectorLeo HurwitzStarsAlfred DrakeMuriel SmithGary Merrill"Strange Victory" is about racial bias in post World War II America. Folowing "Native Land" in Leo Hurwitz' filmography, it uses some of the same techniques: dramatized scenes interspersed with scenes of compilation news reel footage, and scenes of evocative imagery. An epilogue about the civil rights movement, added in 1964 makes the arc of the film more complete.
- DirectorJoris IvensStarsTieli XieAbout the way of life in the East, in China, during the months before spring. An early spring.
- DirectorFali BilimoriaJohn BussRichard GilbertStarsMargaret MeadA comparison of four different families in India, France, Japan, and Canada.
- DirectorD.A. PennebakerStarsJane FondaDyan CannonBradford DillmanDocumentary focusing on 25 year-old actress Jane Fonda as she and her director Andreas Voutsinas prepare a stage play called The Fun Couple for Broadway.
- DirectorRobert DrewTHE CHAIR follows in the footsteps of lawyers Donald Moore and Louis Nizer as they fight to save Paul Crump from the electric chair. In the tense days leading up to a parole board hearing, the men work tirelessly to rescue Crump through an appeal of rehabilitation - unprecedented in the state of Illinois - and, after the hearing, anxiously await the governor's verdict. Allowing viewers to experience the high-pressure chain of events along with Crump, his prosecutors and his defenders, the film opens a window into the politics of punishment.
- DirectorLouise AlaimoJudy SmithEllen SorrenA documentary of the early 1970s that interviews woman about the inequality in their lives.
- DirectorJim KleinJulia ReichertStarsJessica JonesFocuses on the socialization of American females. It tells the story of six women and girls. The first film to emerge from the modern women's movement in the early 1970s.
- DirectorJoyce ChopraStarsJoyce ChopraTom ColeTillie KalinaThe film stars Chopra and examines the effect her pregnancy had on her film making career. The documentary received the American Film Festival Blue Ribbon award. The film is considered an important film for feminist film scholars as the film explores the issues surrounding women when pursuing the creation of a family while also creating a professional career.
- DirectorJudy CollinsJill GodmilowStarsAntonia BricoJudy CollinsA special deluxe edition of the 1974 Oscar nominated documentary film about the first female conductor to conduct major orchestras in the US and Europe, Antonia Brico!
- DirectorJan OxenbergSatirizing a variety of film genres and the ways in which they perpetuate lesbian stereotypes.
- DirectorFrederick Wisemanmid 70's documentary that shows how livestock are raised, sold, and processed in the United States.
- DirectorNancy AdairAndrew BrownRob EpsteinStarsPat BondJohn BurnsideSally M. Gearhart26 diverse lesbian and gay people are interviewed about their lives and the challenges they experience in a homophobic culture. A groundbreaking documentary is now an artefact of a different time.
- DirectorMichelle CitronStarsVictor PenelopeAnne WilfordA documentary of a daughter's problematic relationship with her mother.
- DirectorDavid MacDougallJudith MacDougallAn account of a marriage among the Turkana, an isolated pastoral tribe of the dry thorn-country of northwestern Kenya.
- DirectorFrederick WisemanStarsApollonia van RavensteinAndy Warhol
- DirectorNick BroomfieldJoan ChurchillStarsGregory AbingClara AlvesJackie HallA documentary about women's basic training in Fort Georgia.
- DirectorTom CohenStarsSnider ChildrenHoward SniderJudy SniderThe family of Howard Snider and their pizza-parlor franchise, which is in danger of foreclosure by the parent company, the Shakey's Pizza Parlor chain.
- DirectorAlessandro CavadiniCarolyn StrachanDocu-drama outlining the culture clash in law between indigenous Australians and white European settled Australia.
- DirectorAna CarriganBernard StoneStarsJohn HousemanDouglas CableMaura ClarkeDetailing the rape, torture and murder of four American missionaries in El Salvador by members of the El Salvador National Guard, as well as the subsequent attempts by the government to cover up the story.
- DirectorGreta SchillerRobert RosenbergStarsRita Mae BrownBruce NugentHenry OtisThe history of the Gay and Lesbian community before the Stonewall riots began the major gay rights movement.
- DirectorGail SingerStarsDixie SeatleThis program visits Ireland, England, Japan, Canada, Columbia, and Peru to identify and probe legal and religious factors, in addition to the feelings, attitudes, and solutions regarding unwanted pregnancy, abortion, and contraception.
- DirectorLee GrantStarsMonica Lynn B.Lee GrantChristine JorgensenFollows a group of Transgender individuals struggling to make their way in every strata of 1980s America. From finding employment to finding acceptance, the first question the world forces them to ask is always, "What Sex Am I?"
- DirectorSu FriedrichStarsLore BucherThe Ties That Bind is an experimental documentary about the filmmaker's mother, who was born and lived in southern Germany from 1920-1950. Through a mixture of personal anecdote and social history, she describes the rise of Nazism, the war years, and the Allied occupation, during which she met her future husband, an American soldier. The Ties That Bind breaks with the usual format of war documentaries, thus allowing a different portrait of the individual to emerge, while it reflects on the current political situation in America and the filmmaker's activities in relation to those issues.
- DirectorLiane BrandonStarsBettyA woman tells the story of how she bought an expensive dress that she never got to wear, and then tells the story again focusing on her feelings about the events she described.
- DirectorCamille BillopsJames HatchStarsCamille BillopsChrista VictoriaA filmmaker reunites with the daughter she gave up for adoption twenty years later.
- DirectorJohan van der Keuken
- DirectorAlan BerlinerStarsJoseph CassutoA documentary about the director's maternal grandfather.
- DirectorMarlon RiggsStarsDjola Bernard BrannerJesse HarrisWilli NinjaDance, music, words and poetry in defiant celebration of the sensual and sexual pleasure of being black and queer.
- DirectorMarlon RiggsStarsRuby DeeSteven BochcoDiahann CarrollAnalyzes the evolution of television's earlier, unflattering portrayal of blacks from 1948 until 1988, when they are depicted as prosperous and as having achieved the American dream, a portrayal that is inconsistent with reality.
- DirectorJean-Marie TénoStarsJean-Marie TénoNarcisse KouokamMarie Claire DatiA documentary examining political repression in Cameroon, Central Africa.
- DirectorDavid MacDougallJudith MacDougallTakeover is as much about the political betrayal of the community's interests, as it is a record of the community's aspirations to protect and nurture its traditional culture and relationship to country.