If you thought TV shows in which audiences and juries judge musical acts were a relatively new phenomenon, you’d better think again. In the 1970s, such “festivals” were incredibly popular in Brazil. They were recorded before a live studio audience, and usually featured a number of elimination rounds. They also formed the springboard for the career of many a big-name star, such as Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Roberto Carlos and Gilberto Gil. Appearing on such a program was no cakewalk, however: audiences could be as wild in their condemnation as in their appreciation of an artist. Extensive archive footage (including performances and behind-the-scenes interviews) from a turbulent final of the Festival of Brazilian Popular Music one evening in 1967 paints a fascinating picture, not only of the transformation of Brazilian music into real “festival” music, but also of a society starting to buck against the yoke of military rule.

Wiz’s Weekender (1992) was a film ahead of its time, both in form and content. It engaged with contemporary issues that mainstream media were eager to sensationalise. Consequently, it was branded with an 18 certificate and banned by both the BBC and ITV, never reaching a wider audience. For the past three decades, Weekender has bubbled just below the surface, gaining genuine cult status and influencing a vast network of creators. In the run-up to its thirtieth anniversary filmmakers Tabitha Denholm and Adam Dunlop interviewed people involved in the project. I Am Weekender is built around those conversations.

Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Martin Scorsese and his longtime documentary collaborator David Tedeschi, A 50 Year Argument rides the waves of literary, political, and cultural history as charted by the The New York Review of Books, America’s leading journal of ideas for over 50 years. Provocative, idiosyncratic and incendiary, the film weaves rarely seen archival material, contributor interviews, excerpts from writings by such icons as James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, and Joan Didion along with original verité footage filmed in the Review’s West Village offices. Confrontation and original argument are in the Review’s DNA – the magazine seems as vital now as when it was run by its indefatigable founding editors, Robert Silvers and the late Barbara Epstein. Co-produced with the BBC’s award-winning Arena and shaped by Scorcese’s vivid filmmaking style, The Fifty Year Argument captures the power of ideas in influencing history.

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Through interviews filmed over four years, Noam Chomsky unpacks the principles that have brought us to the crossroads of historically unprecedented inequality – tracing a half-century of policies designed to favor the most wealthy at the expense of the majority – while also looking back on his own life of activism and political participation. He provides penetrating insight into what may well be the lasting legacy of our time – the death of the middle class, and swan song of functioning democracy.

On June 29, 1792, Neelkanth begins his journey of awakening. Having resolved to embrace the challenges of nature, he leaves his home in the city of Ayodhya. Neelkanth walks alone into the cold stormy night, wearing nothing over his shoulders or under his feet, carrying nothing – no maps, no money, no food – except inner courage, confidence and a silent spiritual strength. At the Saryu River, he enters the cold, raging current. Neelkanth is swept away, leaving behind all that was familiar.

Dr. Anne Innis Dagg re-traces the steps of her groundbreaking 1956 journey to South Africa to study giraffes in the wild. Now, at 85 years old, Anne sees a startling contrast between the world of giraffes she once knew and the one it has become. Weaving through the past and present, her harrowing journey gives us an intimate look into the factors that destroyed her career and the forces that brought her back.

Plugged In explores how social media and smart phone usage has an effect on our younger generations, those who are now born into a world technologically ready and know nothing else – and how hard it is to remove this element from their lives in these modern times. It looks into the design of social media being a purposeful tool used to keep people hooked in, taken away from face to face reactions and how the attitudes towards people through these mediums have become darker.

George Lopez returns for his fourth live solo stand-up special on HBO. George Lopez: The Wall, Live From Washington D.C. features Lopez with all new material, performed before a live audience at the Kennedy Center.

What would it sound like if the national anthem was written today? Anthem follows composer Kris Bowers and producer Dahi on a musical road trip across the country to reflect on “The Star-Spangled Banner” to find out.

A documentary that follows the harsh daily life of the nuns of a Buddhist monastery in this ancient kingdom of northern India, made of destitution and joyful complicity.

A Colorado family is thrust into the international media spotlight when they fight for the rights of their 6-year-old transgender daughter in a landmark civil rights case.