The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin celebrates one of the world’s most beloved storytellers, following his evolution from a conservative son of the Old South into a gay rights pioneer whose novels inspired millions to reclaim their lives.
Social & External
The people behind it
Armistead Maupin
Self
Laura Linney
Olympia Dukakis
Ian McKellen
Jonathan Groff
Kate Bornstein
Margaret Cho
Amanda Palmer
Neil Gaiman
Charles Busch
A documentary on kids who attend a summer camp hoping to become the next Billy Graham.
Filmmaker Jonathan Caouette's documentary on growing up with his schizophrenic mother -- a mixture of snapshots, Super-8, answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, and more -- culled from 19 years of his life.
The film describes the microcosmos of the small village Wacken and shows the clash of the cultures, before and during the biggest heavy metal festival in Europe.
Documentary depicting the lives of child prostitutes in the red light district of Songachi, Calcutta. Director Zana Briski went to photograph the prostitutes when she met and became friends with their children. Briski began giving photography lessons to the children and became aware that their photography might be a way for them to lead better lives.
A dual portrait of young drifters on the streets of Odessa, where every day seems the same and the future keeps getting further away.
April 1994 in the Lacandona Jungle, Chiapas, México. The Zapatista women talk about the living conditions of Mexican indigenous populations and the life of peasant women. They explain the reasons for their struggle and their uprising.
A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.
In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.
This black-and-white film is a loving portrait of Santiago de Cuba and its people. It provides a view of Cuba as a picturesque country, the product of an earthy mix of black and criollo cultures. The film uses historical images which portray the end of the eighteenth century when Haitian slave owners fled with their slaves to Cuba after the Haitian Revolution.
The Devil Never Sleeps is a “whodunit” documentary about family secrets. Filmmaker Lourdes Portillo received a phone call informing her of the mysterious death of her wealthy Mexican uncle Oscar. Officially ruled a suicide, Portillo’s relatives claimed murder, offering several possible suspects including a business partner, a ranch hand, and Oscar’s young widow who stood to inherit everything. Traveling to Mexico, Portillo attempts to learn the truth about her powerful uncle. Using interviews, old snapshots and home movies, she finds a complicated web of family secrets, intrigue, rumor and betrayal that makes her enigmatic uncle’s murder seem ever more likely, yet ever more obscure. As the Mexican saying goes, “When evil is lurking, the devil never sleeps.”
This investigation into the layers of mass incarceration and its shaping of the modern black American family is seen through the eyes of a single mother in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Right alongside Jerusalem, in a Russian Orthodox Convent in the Mount of Olives, in the middle of the Arab quarter, lives the 82-year-old Estonian nun Mother Ksenya.
Found footage anti-war film comprising film documents of the Austro-Hungarian and Italian army on the Alpine front, and from first generation picture material by war-film pioneer Luca Comerio.
Working from archives of private film footage from a trip to India by the upper class of the late 1920s, a period of strong anti-colonial outbreak, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi deconstruct the images and analyze the attitude and behavior of Westerners in the East.
Using images shot in Russia and Armenia from World War I to the 1930s and retrieved from a Soviet film archive, Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi constructed a meditative film about the status of Armenians as a people without a state. Inspired by the diary of Gianikian’s father, People, Years, Life uses rare footage depicting the region’s major historic events: the end of Tsarist Russia, violence in the Caucasus during World War I, the 1918 Armenian exodus from Azerbaijan. Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi’s treatment of the material manipulates the speed of the images, adds color and music, and magnifies various parts of the image, so that the movement of bodies across the frame begins to carry the weight of exile, mourning, dispossession.
Comprised of images shot by amateur photographers and German soldiers in the Balkans from the twenties through the forties, BALKAN INVENTORY was begun by Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi in response to the tragedy unfolding in the former Yugoslavia.
Inspired by their beloved Dolomite area in Northeast Italy, a battle theater in World Wars I and II, Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi continue to explore issues of war and peace in their most recent production. The film uses shots of ordinary toys found in the area, many missing limbs and other pieces, to represent, in both direct and oblique ways, the historical period between Fascism, Nazism, and the postwar era.
In this filmic comment on Fascist ideology - which uses footage from the recently discovered archives of Luca Comerio - invisible hands push captive animals to fight among themselves.
Featuring new, previously unseen footage documenting the bizarre and unsettling things that happened to filmmakers David Farrier and Dylan Reeve as Tickled premiered at film festivals and theaters in 2016. Lawsuits, private investigators, disrupted screenings and surprise appearances are just part of what they encounter along the way. Amidst new threats, the duo begins to answer questions that remained once the credits rolled on Tickled, including whether the disturbing behavior they uncovered will ever come to an end.
Legendary rumba musician Alberto Zayas serves as a guide for this vibrant journey through Cuban musical history and culture. The short features interviews, footage of impromptu street performances, and studio recordings.
This searing investigative work shadows a group of activists risking unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ program raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic. Unfettered access and a remarkable approach to protecting anonymity exposes this under-reported atrocity–and an extraordinary group of people confronting evil.
14-year-old Laura Dekker sets out on a two-year voyage in pursuit of her dream to become the youngest person ever to sail around the world alone.
As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.
Though legendary lyricist Howard Ashman died far too young, his impact on Broadway, movies, and the culture at large were incalculable. Told entirely through rare archival footage and interviews with Ashman’s family, friends, associates, and longtime partner Bill Lauch, Howard is an intimate tribute to a once-in-a-generation talent and a rousing celebration of musical storytelling itself.
Alexander McQueen's rags-to-riches story is a modern-day fairy tale, laced with the gothic. Mirroring the savage beauty, boldness and vivacity of his design, this documentary is an intimate revelation of McQueen's own world, both tortured and inspired, which celebrates a radical and mesmerizing genius of profound influence.
When a feminist filmmaker sets out to document the mysterious and polarizing world of the Men’s Rights Movement, she begins to question her own beliefs. Chronicling Cassie Jaye’s journey exploring an alternate perspective on gender equality, power and privilege.
In a warehouse in the heart of Los Angeles, a dwindling handful of devoted craftspeople maintain more than 80,000 student musical instruments, the largest remaining workshop in America of its kind. Meet four unforgettable characters whose broken-and-repaired lives have been dedicated to bringing so much more than music to the schoolchildren of this city.
An investigative look and analysis of gender disparity in Hollywood, featuring accounts from well-known actors, executives and artists in the Industry.
A deliciously scandalous portrait of unsung Hollywood legend Scotty Bowers, whose bestselling memoir chronicled his decades spent as sexual procurer to the stars.
Lyrical and powerfully personal essay film that reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother, her beloved dog, and such diverse subjects as family memories, surveillance, and Buddhist teachings.
An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.
Using the book 'Fragments', which collects Marilyn Monroe's poems, notes and letters, and with participation from the Arthur Miller and Truman Capote estates who have contributed more material, each of the actresses will embody the legend at various stages in her life.
Exuberant, eye-opening movie that serves up a dazzling hundred-year history of the role of gay men and lesbians have had on the silver screen. Film contains fabulous footage from 120 films showing the changing face of cinema sexuality, from cruel stereotypes to covert love to the activist triumphs of the 1990s.
Home movies, photographs, and recited poetry illustrate the life of Tupac Shakur, one of the most beloved, revolutionary, and volatile hip-hop MCs of all time.
Unprecedented access to Muhammad Ali's personal archive of "audio journals" as well as interviews and testimonials from his inner circle of family and friends are used to tell the legend's life story.
This special explores the return of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker to the screen, as well as Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen to their classic roles. Director Deborah Chow leads the cast and crew as they create new heroes and villains that live alongside new incarnations of beloved Star Wars characters, and an epic story that dramatically bridges the saga films.
Just two years away from turning 30, participants in Michael Apted's documentary series are facing serious questions of identity and purpose, wondering whether they've found their place in the world.
A story of two coalitions – ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group) – whose activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition. Despite having no scientific training, these self-made activists infiltrated the pharmaceutical industry and helped identify promising new drugs, moving them from experimental trials to patients in record time.
Giving fans unprecedented access to the real life of the music sensation, Katy Perry: Part of Me exposes the hard work, dedication and phenomenal talent of a girl who remained true to herself and her vision in order to achieve her dreams. Featuring rare behind-the-scenes interviews, personal moments between Katy and her friends, and all-access footage of rehearsals, choreography, Katy’s signature style and more, Katy Perry: Part of Me reveals the singer’s unwavering belief that if you can be yourself, then you can be anything.