First Run Features (Firm)
Pub. Date
2017.
Description
This is the story of The Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague, the site of layer upon layer of buried members of the once-vibrant Jewish community. Almost a million people from all over the world now visit the cemetery each year, and HOUSE OF LIFE chronicles its history, which is rich in lore, mysticism, tradition and philosophy. Tales of great rabbis and philanthropists and the story of the giant golem, created from clay to protect the Jewish people, are...
Pub. Date
2016.
Description
The Professor: Tai Chi's Journey West is a feature documentary about Tai Chi and one of its greatest masters, Cheng Man-Ching, a man who brought Tai Chi and Chinese culture to the West during the swinging, turbulent 60's. Though Cheng is an important transformational figure, his teachings have been overlooked. This documentary film tells the story of his remarkable life and features Tai Chi as a martial art and a spiritual practice..
Pub. Date
2017.
Description
Carmo would do anything to escape the hellhole of a Brazilian border town where she lives. So when a lonesome, wheelchair-bound low-life named Marco arrives on the scene, she jumps at the chance to help him transport a shipment of smuggled goods. An unlikely romance unfolds as the two are chased through a lush and jagged South American landscape by bandidos, the police and their own passions alike. A lawless, reckless journey of self-discovery, this...
4) Proteus
Pub. Date
2004.
Description
For the 19th century, the world beneath the sea played much the same role that outer space played for the 20th. The ocean depths were both the ultimate scientific frontier and the home of imagination and the fantastic...Twenty years in the making and based on images of 19th century painters, photographers and scientific illustrators, Proteus brings these undersea worlds to life in a wonderfully unique film...The central figure of PROTEUS is biologist...
Pub. Date
2016.
Description
You beat the weight or the weight beats you – it’s the test every powerlifter faces when approaching the bar. But the weight that’s been pressing down on coach and gym owner Paul Steinman is something far more challenging than sport. Bombing out on his squats at the 2012 American Open was just one more failure for Paul. It had been a bad stretch both in and out of the gym but it was nobody’s business and so Paul didn’t talk about it. But...
Pub. Date
2005.
Description
First-class pool shark and all-around hustler Jaeckie Zucker is up to his ears in debt, again. He faces jail, divorce and general ruin. When word comes that his mother has died, leaving an inheritance, it's a stroke of luck. But according to his mother's will, before he can cash in Zucker must first reconcile with his long-estranged, Orthodox brother Samuel, who is arriving the next day, family in tow, expecting to sit shiva for seven days. Can Zucker,...
Pub. Date
2015.
Description
The Nation, America’s oldest weekly magazine, founded in 1865 and now in its 150th year, has long been considered one of America’s definitive journalistic voices. Hot Type, the new film by Barbara Kopple, a two-time Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature, tells the riveting and surprising story of The Nation.. The film captures daily life at the magazine, introduces staff writers and editors past and present, and follows members of...
Pub. Date
2017.
Description
From a Butoh-inspired portrait of a demented aristocrat, to a sensual bedroom metamorphosis, to an intimate moment interrupted by a burst water pipe, this latest collection of award-winning dance films from around the world will "bewitch, bedazzle and bewilder." (Deirdre Towers, Dance on Camera Festival Director) For over five decades now international dancers and filmmakers have been creating these short experimental films, which generally have only...
9) L'Iceberg
Pub. Date
2017.
Description
Fiona is the manager of a fast-food restaurant. She lives comfortably with her family in the suburbs. In other words, Fiona is happy. Until the day she accidentally gets locked into a walk-in freezer. She escapes the next morning, half frozen and barely alive, only to realize that her husband and two children didn't even notice she was missing. But when Fiona develops an obsession for everything cold and icy - snow, polar bears, refrigerators, icebergs...
Pub. Date
2017.
Description
Simply and eloquently, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explains how the world's economy works. Drawing not only from his academic expertise but also from time spent on the ground in countries around the world, Stiglitz offers fresh thinking about the questions and challenges facing all of us - from well-off Americans to those mired in Third World poverty. This five part series will appeal to experts and non-experts alike, as Stiglitz's...
Pub. Date
2017.
Description
Simply and eloquently, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explains how the world's economy works. Drawing not only from his academic expertise but also from time spent on the ground in countries around the world, Stiglitz offers fresh thinking about the questions and challenges facing all of us - from well-off Americans to those mired in Third World poverty. This five part series will appeal to experts and non-experts alike, as Stiglitz's...
Pub. Date
2017.
Description
Leon is not like most 10-year olds. This innocent looking boy with an overly fertile imagination is a young hellion, a consummate liar and thief well-versed in breaking and entering his neighbors’ homes and running away from his own. His explosively dysfunctional family reaches new levels of lunacy when Mom decides to pack her bags to start a new life in Greece. Leon is prepared to do anything to kill the pain of it all, from destroying the neighbors’...
Pub. Date
2000.
Description
James Thurber: The Life and Hard Times is the first major documentary on the life and work of one of America's greatest humorists. Known for his classic short story, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Thurber was a legendary contributor of prose and cartoons to The New Yorker magazine where he worked for many years. Narrated by George Plimpton, this documentary includes interviews with Edward Albee, John Updike, Alistair Cooke, Roy Blount Jr., Fran...
14) High Fidelity
Pub. Date
1985.
Description
From the filmmaking team that brought us the Academy Award-winning From Mao To Mozart: Isaac Stern in China comes this spirited and humorous documentary about the world-famous Guarneri String Quartet. Filled with the music of Haydn, Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven, this provocative yet enjoyable film joins the Quartet during intimate rehearsals and recording sessions, as well as on tour to Prague, Venice, Baden-Baden and across the United States. An...
Pub. Date
1984.
Description
In his lifetime, Thomas Merton was hailed as a prophet and censured for his outspoken social criticism. For nearly 27 years he was a monk of the austere Trappist order, where he became an eloquent spiritual writer and mystic as well as an anti-war advocate and witness to peace...Merton: A Film Biography provides the first comprehensive look at this remarkable 20th century religious philosopher who wrote, in addition to his immensely popular autobiography...
Pub. Date
2014.
Description
In 2012, Atsushi Funahashi presentedNuclear Nation, his film about the consequences of the March 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima Daiichi. 1400 people from nearby Futaba were evacuated to a school building in a Tokyo suburb. Funahashi documented people’s desperation with true empathy and showed the full extent of the destruction. This year, he presents the sequel.. We learn that the former mayor – previously a fervent advocate of nuclear energy...
17) Six O'Clock News
Pub. Date
1997.
Description
McElwee pursues murder, mayhem and catastrophe the same way he pursued southern women in Sherman's March. Made after McElwee becomes a father and finds himself at home watching a lot more TV, he becomes obsessed with the nightly tales of calamity reported on by the local news. This fascination soon turns into another cross country journey to unearth the full stories of those affected. As McElwee pursues this project he also finds himself in Hollywood...
18) Shallow Waters
Pub. Date
2015.
Description
How does a mentally ill person drown himself in a few feet of water on a crowded Memorial Day beach? ..A tall, middle-aged, fully dressed man walks up to his shoulders into the cold shallow waters of San Francisco Bay; and he waits. Police and Fire units respond in droves; and they wait. A good-sized crowd watches and waits as the sand in the man’s hourglass runs out. Succumbing to the cold and rising tide, the man loses consciousness within the...
Pub. Date
2006.
Description
A look into the complex and contradictory personality of Yossef Nachmani, the man largely responsible for the first Zionist settlements in the Galilee. As director of the Jewish National Fund office in the Galilee, Nachmani acquired as much land from Arabs as possible to establish Jewish settlements upon it. The film focuses on events in Tiberius, Nachmani's hometown, a mixed community where Arabs and Jews coexisted harmoniously. Nachmani left behind...
20) Roman de Gare
Pub. Date
2017.
Description
Judith Ralitzer, novelist and femme fatale, is seeking characters for her next best-seller. Meanwhile a serial killer has just escaped from a high security prison. Their paths are about to cross in Claude Lelouch's tricky thriller, which features a number of characters and a timeline that skips back and forth, keeping the audience guessing