This chilling reflection examines the horrific history of lynchings as cultural events and celebrations that included souvenirs and postcards.
Social & External
The people behind it
Yohuru Williams
Self
Terry Anne Scott
Leigh Raiford
Before George Floyd, before Breonna Taylor, before America knew about Black Lives Matter, there was Michael Brown, Jr. On August 9th, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, a white police officer fatally shot an unarmed Brown. The community reacted in protest, anger, frustration, and fear. Six years later, a new story emerges - one filled with hope, love, and beauty.
“Shellmound” is the story of how one location was transformed from a sacred center of pre-historic cultures to a commercial mecca for modern people. What began as a Native American burial ground three thousand years ago, was transformed first into an amusement park, and later an industrial age paint factory. Now, the tainted ancient soil sits beneath the glittering lights of Banana Republic, Victoria’s Secret, and the AMC movie theaters. “Shellmound” examines the decisions made during the recent toxic cleanup, excavation, and construction of the Bay Street mall through the eyes of the city of Emeryville, the developer, the archaeologists, and the native Californians who worked on the site.
From May 10, 1940, France is living one of the worst tragedies of it history. In a few weeks, the country folds, and then collapsed in facing the attack of the Nazi Germany. On June 1940, each day is a tragedy. For the first time, thanks to historic revelations, and to numerous never seen before images and documents and reenacted situations of the time, this film recounts the incredible stories of those men and women trapped in the torment of this great chaos.
Decolonising the Curatorial Process is a forty-minute documentary which explores decolonial strategies in an academic and curatorial context. The film features academics, activists and practitioners, and contains case studies of institutions that are deploying critical, self-reflective forms of curatorial practice. The Museum of London Docklands exhibition on slavery and the sugar industry is examined as an example of how an institution can decolonise the curatorial process, utilise the work of artists in a museum context, and critically examine East London's imperial history. The Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford, who are working with Maasai activists from Kenya and Tanzania on a project centred on repatriating the museum's collection of sacred Maasai artefacts, also features in the film.
One of sport’s first and most influential megastars, beloved baseball icon and 5-time World Series champion Reggie Jackson contemplates his legacy as a trailblazing Black athlete fighting for dignity, respect, and a seat at the table in this intimate and revealing documentary exploring his life and barrier-busting career.
Did you know that the first cowboys were black? Using magnificent archives and testimonies from historians, Cécile Denjean restores justice to African-Americans in the story of the conquest of the West.
French documentary campaigning for the liberalization of abortion and contraception, directed by Charles Belmont and Marielle Issartel in 1973.
Found footage: California in the 1950's and 60's. A young Indian couple enjoys their personal American dream come true in their home somewhere in the suburbs of San Francisco. In great detail they pose with their newly achieved wealth in front of their Super-8 camera. Just like postcards, they would send these film rolls to their joint families back in India. Around the same time, an American missionary couple visits the city of Calcutta to shoot a Christian propaganda film. The drastic reality with poverty and famine in the streets of the Indian metropolis fits perfectly into their wicked plan: To promote the faith in Jesus by showing the misery that pagan believers are doomed to suffer from.
Witchcraft is older than recorded history and holds great truths and powers, from the natural world to the realms beyond. Witches were masters of a long forgotten world, a time when all things "paranormal and supernatural" were commonplace and its practitioners were revered in awe. It's time to put away the ideas borne of organized religious intolerance and learn the true reality of Witches, then and those that live among us today.
OBAIDA, a short film by Matthew Cassel, explores a Palestinian child’s experience of Israeli military arrest. Each year, some 700 Palestinian children undergo military detention in a system where ill-treatment is widespread and institutionalized. For these young detainees, few rights are guaranteed, even on paper. After release, the experience of detention continues to shape and mark former child prisoners’ path forward.
The free, almost naive view from the perspective of a child puts the "68ers" in a new, illuminating light in the anniversary year 2008. The film is a provocative reckoning with the ideological upbringing that seemed so progressive and yet was suffocated by the children's desire to finally grow up. With an ironic eye and a feuilletonistic style, author Richard David Precht and Cologne documentary film director André Schäfer trace a childhood in the West German provinces - and place the major events of those years in completely different, smaller and very private contexts.
In contrast to the lens that focuses exclusively on the racist traditions that are rooted in America’s social history, the moral counterweight of close, loving, friendship and collaboration, which have always been present in our history, represents “the other tradition.” This “other tradition” is a source of inspiration and presents models of behavior that are instructional and include unknown and uncelebrated legacies to be absorbed and emulated across generations of present day Americans. The documentary discusses the “better in us” a needed collective perspective in the current climate of national disunity across racial, religious, and political lines. This has significant implications for addressing public issues from immigration to health care and the myriad of governmental, educational, business, and religious challenges that we must successfully meet to weave the fabric of unity which is indispensable to survival as a nation.
The film is a controversy on democracy. Is our society really democratic? Can everyone be part of it? Or is the act of being part in democracy dependent to the access on technology, progression or any resources of information, as philosophers like Paul Virilio or Jean Baudrillard already claimed?
In 1944 Rudolf Breslauer documented the everyday life in the Westerbork transit camp on film, commissioned by the German camp commander Albert Gemmeker. The Westerbork Film was never completed, but much of the raw footage is preserved.
To the east of the Arabian desert, an ancient culture developed; and it attainted the sophistication of its civilized neighbours in Mesopotamia & Iran. The extreme aridity of the spot, combined with the strictness of religious prohibitions, discouraged archaeologists for a long period of time. Only recently, a group of French scientists initiated a large-span excavation. Their aim is to comprehend how this society succeeded to prosper, despite a natural environment so hostile to any conditions of life. The answer seems to be the refinement of a revolutionary, water management technique. Yet beyond such technical prowess, this documentary provides a unique look to discover a unique way of life; but also the pre-Islamic religious beliefs of this milieu.
Special care has been taken by International Historic Films to assemble this monumental documentary, which tells the story of what is left for a people after its land has been ravaged by war. Situated between the powerful antagonists Germany and the Soviet Union, the Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia bore witness to some of the most ferocious land battles of the Second World War.
Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world.
A 1993 documentary film about Bruce Lee. The film includes interviews from some of his fellow students and opponents who worked alongside him in his movies.
In an intimate and joyful story of love in the face of loss, celebrated poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley find strength—and unexpected hilarity—in what might be their final year together.
In 1936, Victor H. Green (1892-1960) published The Negro Motorist Green Book, a book that was both a travel guide and a survival manual, to help African-Americans navigate safe those regions of the United States where segregation and Jim Crow laws were disgracefully applied.
A documentary about the making of season five of the acclaimed AMC series Breaking Bad.
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
The life and career of an actor, artist, and icon. His own journey through his own camera.
This compelling Documentary moves beyond the spotlight and past the attention-grabbing headlines to give pop superstar Chris Brown a chance to tell his own story. New interviews with the international phenomenon reveal long-awaited answers about his passion for making music, his tumultuous and much publicized relationships, and the pitfalls of coming of age in the public eye. Also included is new concert footage, behind-the-scenes access, and special interviews from Usher, Jennifer Lopez, DJ Khaled, Mike Tyson, Jamie Foxx and others.
An inside look at one of the most anticipated movie sequels ever with James Cameron and cast.
A documentary on legendary movie-poster artist Drew Struzan.
Examines the life and career of singer Whitney Houston. Features never-before-seen archival footage, exclusive recordings, rare performances and interviews with the people who knew her best.
The life of Mr. Spock, as well as that of Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played him for almost fifty years, written and directed by his son: Adam.
Alex Gibney explores the charged issue of pedophilia in the Catholic Church, following a trail from the first known protest against clerical sexual abuse in the United States and all way to the Vatican.
Artists in LA discover the work of forgotten Polish sculptor Stanislav Szukalski, a mad genius whose true story unfolds chapter by astounding chapter.
Brilliant, long in-the-works story of the life and art of the world's greatest comedian and the cinema's first genius, Charlie Chaplin. Produced, written and directed by renowned film critic Richard Schickel.
A string of threatening emails escalates into a revenge plot involving a newly married US marshal and his ex-girlfriend.
Al Pacino's deeply-felt rumination on Shakespeare's significance and relevance to the modern world through interviews and an in-depth analysis of "Richard III."
The Making-of James Cameron's Avatar. It shows interesting parts of the work on the set.
The life and career of one of comedy's most inimitable modern voices, Mr. Gilbert Gottfried.
Vulgar, taunting texts blow up the phones of a teen and her boyfriend. Who's sending them — and why? This twisty documentary reveals the shocking answer.
A documentary detailing the epic Rogues' Gallery of DC Comics from The Joker and Lex Luthor, Sinestro, Darkseid and more, this documentary will explore the Super Villains of DC Comics.
