An offbeat, irreverent musical documentary that tells the story of a group of Jewish songwriters, including Irving Berlin, Mel Tormé, Jay Livingston, Ray Evans, Gloria Shayne Baker and Johnny Marks, who wrote the soundtrack to Christianity’s most musical holiday. It’s an amazing tale of immigrant outsiders who became irreplaceable players in pop culture’s mainstream – a generation of songwriters who found in Christmas the perfect holiday in which to imagine a better world, and for at least one day a year, make us believe.
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Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, two rebellious teenagers from Southern California, become the frontwomen for the Runaways — the now-legendary group that paved the way for future generations of female rockers. Under the Svengalilike influence of impresario Kim Fowley, the band becomes a huge success.
Veteran suicide is a national tragedy on an epic scale.A remarkable treatment is proving more powerful than ever imagined: Pairing veterans with wild mustangs taken straight off the range; miraculously turning despair into enduring hope.
In 1984—before cell phones, the web, and reality TV, a young director set out to document a year in the life of a typical California high school. The result was “All American High”, an unusually honest and humorous look at 80’s teen life. Told through the eyes of a visiting foreign exchange student, the film presents an uncensored view of senior year in the era of big hair, punks and parachute pants. Thirty years after they lived it, some of the film’s original subjects return in new interviews, revisiting one of the most memorable chapters in their lives.
The powerful story of the most iconic heavy metal/art collective/monster band in the universe, as told by the humans who have fought to keep it alive for over thirty years. The feature documentary includes interviews with the band members, both past and present, as well as other artists including Weird Al Yankovic, Thomas Lennnon, Alex Winter, Bam Margera, and Ethan Embry, including never before seen footage of legendary GWAR frontman Dave Brockie.
A documentary & cross-media project about the creativity of non-violent resistance and modern forms of civil disobedience.
During the time of the Stolen Generations, thousands upon thousands of Aboriginal girls were taken from their families and pressed into domestic servitude by the Australian Government. They were supposedly employed as servants, but with total control over their movements, wages and living conditions, their lives all too frequently became an inescapable cycle of abuse, rape and enslavement, with consequences that echo powerfully to this day. Recounting the stories of five of these women – Rita, Violet and the three Wenberg sisters – Servant or Slave is a commanding piece of first-person testimony to a dark and unacknowledged corner of Australian history. Shot with admirable craft and humanity by documentarian Steven McGregor (Croker Island Exodus, MIFF 2012), Servant or Slave is a work of great sadness and urgency, bringing to forceful life the human tragedy of Australia’s Indigenous history in the unadorned words of those who lived it.
Four women find purpose carrying babies for strangers in Boise, Idaho — the unofficial surrogacy capital of the United States — and encounter complexities along the way.
Selling the Girl Next Door takes viewers into the world of underage American girls caught up in the violent sex trade. Thousands of girls under the age of 18 are ensnared into lives of prostitution annually, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Many are runaways or “throwaways” trapped in “the oldest profession” by pimps who sell them using modern sales and marketing techniques, including the online classified website Backpage.com.
From director Clint Eastwood comes the big-screen version of the Tony Award-winning musical Jersey Boys. The film tells the story of four young men from the wrong side of the tracks in New Jersey who came together to form the iconic 1960s rock group The Four Seasons. The story of their trials and triumphs are accompanied by the songs that influenced a generation, including “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” “Rag Doll,” and many more.
A young girl who has been abandoned by her former-groupie mother informs a fading rock star that she is his daughter.
