First Run Features (Firm)
Pub. Date
2010.
Description
Burlesque was one of America’s most popular forms of entertainment in the first half of the 20th century. Gaudy, bawdy and spectacular, the shows entertained thousands of customers every night of the week. And yet the legacy of burlesque is often vilified, misunderstood, and left out of history. By telling intimate, surprising stories from its golden age through the women (and men!) who lived it, BEHIND THE BURLY Q reveals the true story of burlesque,...
2) Scrap
Pub. Date
2022.
Description
Discover the vast and strangely beautiful places where things go to die and meet the people who collect, restore, and recycke the world's scrap. SCRAP scratches beneath flaking paint and rusting metal to reveal the beauty and pathos in the ugliness we leave behind.
Pub. Date
2022.
Description
Across America, small family farms are racing against climate change. Unpredictable weather and new diseases are destroying the very crops they depend upon. In New Jersey, when a devastating disease wipes out farmers' fields, growers turn to scientists for help. FIELDS OF DEVOTION follows the unique relationship between farmers and scientists as they work together over a decade to develop disease and climate resistant food crops.
Pub. Date
1994.
Description
Visionary, radical, spiritual seeker, renowned poet, founding member of a major literary movement, champion of human rights, Buddhist, political activist and teacher – Allen Ginsberg’s remarkable life shaped the very soul of American counterculture. For 25 years, Academy Award®-nominated director Jerry Aronson accumulated more than 60 hours of film on Allen Ginsberg, resulting in this comprehensive portrait of one of America’s greatest poets,...
Pub. Date
2022.
Description
In today's uncertain world, what is the meaning of home? Over four years, filmmaker Alan Govenar talked to over 60 people around the globe about the evolving ways we think about one of our most basic needs — from a student in Buenos Aires to a homeless couple living in a makeshift tent in the wods, a hot dog vendor in New York City to an artist in Nairobi. As global crises have left millions both bound to and displaced from their habitats, LOOKING...
Pub. Date
2022.
Description
Animals teach us about life, loss, and resilience. Welcome to Liberty Wildlife, a rehabilitation and conservation center in the American Southwest. By caring for animals, we discover the relationships that connect all living things. We also explore the deep significance of feathers to Native American cultures. Narrated by Peter Coyote, this film celebrates the circle that makes our lives whole.
Pub. Date
2023.
Description
Exploring the revolution in journalism sparked by the turbulence of the 1960s, this documentary tells the story of maverick editor Harold T.P. Hayes, who made Esquire magazine a galvanizing force in American culture. A leading architect of the 'New Journalism', Hayes granted unprecedented journalistic freedom to the most talented artists and writers of the time including Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Nora Ephron, Peter Bogdanovich, Gore Vidal, Diane Arbus,...
8) Charleen
Pub. Date
1978.
Description
One month in the life of Charleen Swansea, North Carolina poet, mother, beloved teacher, eccentric, romantic, and complex star of McElwee's *Sherman's March*.
Pub. Date
2023.
Description
An in-depth, intimate exploration of the true story behind Ben Affleck’s Oscar-winning film *Argo*. In this gripping new documentary, the story of the “Canadian Caper” is told by the man who knows it best: Ken Taylor, Canada’s former ambassador to Iran, who hid the six Americans in his official residence and obtained the counterfeit documents that allowed them to make their dramatic escape from Tehran. Based on Robert Wright’s book, the...
Pub. Date
2023.
Description
As the world grappled with pandemic isolation, Edith Espinal entered her third year of sanctuary in a Midwestern church. A SHELTER FOR EDITH sheds light on the solitary life of one undocumented woman and the threat that sent her indoors--not the pandemic, but the fear that ICE could tear her family apart.
Pub. Date
2023.
Description
One of the world's most elusive and admired choreographers, Paul Taylor was on the cutting edge of modern dance for over 60 years and helped shape the artform unti his death in 2018. Beginning in 2010 he allowed the camera to delve into his creative process. Centered on Taylor's guiding voice, audiences can see how a new dance gets hammered out to perfection, through sweat and inspiration. PAUL TAYLOR: CREATIVE DOMAIN is an inside look at a genius...
12) Glow
Pub. Date
2024.
Description
"Someone who glows so brightly is not going to grow old," Fellini prophesied about Irene Staub, aka Lady Shiva, one of the all-time greatest Swiss divas. Though Irene had a vibrant career as a model and singer in an underground Zürich band between 1968 and the late 80s, she died far too young. Through archival footage and interviews with prominent figures, director Gabriel Baur tells her story.
Pub. Date
2023.
Description
The goal was clear: defeat the Nazis who were entrenched high in the snowy mountains of Italy. Drawing together an elite group of champion skiers, mountain climbers and European mountaineers, the U.S. Army created the 10th Mountain Division, America's only mountain and winter warfare fighting unit. From the intensive training atop the Colorado Rockies to the spectacular night climb of Italy's Riva Ridge - where the 10th scored their biggest victory...
Pub. Date
2023.
Description
Carmen de Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder, two living legends in the world of American dance, are the subjects of this intimate and revealing documentary. Carmen achieved notoriety in the early 1950s, as a lead dancer of incomparable beauty and grace with Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theater. Geoffrey, large in life and an elemental force on stage, found fame not only as a dancer but also as an actor, soda spokesman and theater director. He and Carmen...
Pub. Date
2022.
Description
An award-winning film about the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown – the worst commercial nuclear accident in U.S. history – and its aftermath. Featuring Jane Fonda, the film uncovers the never-before-told stories of four intrepid homemakers who take their local community's case against the plant operator all the way to the Supreme Court – and a young female journalist who's caught in the radioactive crossfire.
Pub. Date
2022.
Description
After years of living with mysterious symoptoms, a young girl from Brooklyn and a Duke University scientist are diagnosed with a disease said not to exist: Chronic Lyme disease. The Quiet Epidemic follows their search for answers, which lands them in the middle of a vicious medical debate. What begins as a patient story becomes an investigation into the history of Lyme disease. A paper trail of suppressed scientific research reveals why this tick-borne...
Pub. Date
1995.
Description
A fascinating documentary about an eccentric French millionaire's outlandish expedition through Canada's Rocky Mountain wilderness in 1934. Using never-before-seen archival footage and eyewitness testimony, the film unraveled the puzzle behind the mysterious Charles Bedaux. Was he just an eccentric crackpot, or was he really a member of a dark international elite, whose fortunes were tied to the Nazi plot for world domination?
18) Absurdistan
Pub. Date
2023.
Description
Welcome to Absurdistan, a small village in the high desert mountains, just on the outskirts of reality, where magical visions and bizarre events fuse together. The village is facing a water shortage, but the men are too lazy to fix a rickety pipeline and the women are getting fed up with their good-for-nothing husbands. Led by young Aya, the women make a simple vow: “No water, no sex.” The men's only hope is Temelko, whose long-promised wedding...
Pub. Date
2023.
Description
Rex is a cab driver who has never left the mining town of Broken Hill in his life. When he discovers he doesn't have long to live, he decides to drive through the heart of the country to Darwin, where he's heard he will be able to die on his own terms; but along the way he discovers that before you can end your life you've got to live it, and to live it you've got to learn to share it... Winner of Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay at the **Australian...