Harris Glenn Milstead, aka Divine (1945-1988) was the ultimate outsider turned underground hero. Spitting in the face of the status quos of body image, gender identity, sexuality, and preconceived notions of beauty, Divine succeeded in becoming an internationally recognized icon, recording artist, and character actor of stage and screen. Glenn went from the often-mocked, schoolyard fat kid to underdog royalty, standing up for millions of gay men and women, drag queens and punk rockers, and countless other socially ostracized misfits and freaks. With a completely committed in-your-face style, he blurred the line between performer and personality, and revolutionized pop culture.
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Albert and David Maysles’ classic GREY GARDENS immortalized the estate of Edith and Little Edie Beale, relatives of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, who lived in alarmingly poor conditions. But there is more to the story: it was Lee Radziwill and Peter Beard who first brought the Maysles to the Beales, when the two set out to make a film about Radziwill’s childhood. The reels of that first contact were shelved for 45 years. This documentary recovers the lost footage. Anchored in Beard’s recollections and artistic vision, we are returned to “that summer” in 1972, a seductive dream world and collage of radically unconventional creative personalities—Warhol, Bacon, Jagger, Capote—practicing the art of living amidst oppressive forces of class expectation and prejudice.
Thousands of participants in a San Francisco-based alternate reality game end up getting more than they bargained for. Told from the players’ perspectives, the film looks over the precipice at an emergent new art form where the real world and fictional narratives merge to create unforeseen and often unsettling consequences. Examining counter-culture, new religious movements and street art, this film takes the viewer on a journey into a secret underground world teeming just beneath the surface of everyday life.
Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci may have been the shortest tenured White House Communications Director, but he sure left a big impression. Compiled over a four-year span, ‘Mooch’ tells the only-in-Trump’s-America story of an irrepressible hedge fund manager who rose from humble beginnings to stratospheric heights – only to watch the world laugh as he tumbled back down.
A documentary about the legendary series of nationally televised debates in 1968 between two great public intellectuals, the liberal Gore Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr. Intended as commentary on the issues of their day, these vitriolic and explosive encounters came to define the modern era of public discourse in the media, marking the big bang moment of our contemporary media landscape when spectacle trumped content and argument replaced substance. Best of Enemies delves into the entangled biographies of these two great thinkers and luxuriates in the language and the theater of their debates, begging the question, ‘What has television done to the way we discuss politics in our democracy today?’
h)ac(k)tivist-noun: a person who uses technology to bring about social change. The Hacker Wars – a film about the targeting of (h)ac(k)tivists, activists and journalists by the US government.There is a war going on- the war for our minds, The Hacker Wars.
Griffin Dunne’s years-in-the-making documentary portrait of his aunt Joan Didion moves with the spirit of her uncannily lucid writing: the film simultaneously expands and zeroes in, covering a vast stretch of turbulent cultural history with elegance and candor.
This film speaks of archaic peoples, their customs and mores, in an attempt to make the last snapshots of their traditional lifestyles before they are gone for good.
Delve into the digestive system with this lighthearted and informative documentary that demystifies the role gut health plays in our overall well-being.
A semi-fictional correspondence between two women: one goes to Iran in 1979 to topple the Shah; the other experiences the onerous years of Ceaușescu’s Romania. Their biographies run in parallel via images of everyday life and videograms of revolution.
Largely composed of immigrants and first-generation Canadians from Vancouver’s suburbs, The Notic underground basketball collective overcame all odds to achieve global fame 20 years ago. In defiance of their high school coaches’ casual racism and desire for oppressive conformity, this gregarious group discovered self-expression through streetball’s loose structure and aversion to rules. Bursting onto the scene at the NBA-sponsored Hoop It Up tournament near Science World, the group unleashed a devastating arsenal of bravura tricks and moves. DIY VHS highlights of their showstopping exploits would soon be collected on their first “mixtape”. With copies finding their way to every corner of the globe, it was anointed “the bible of streetball”.
1986 FIFA World Cup Official Film. Mexico had just recovered from a devastating earthquake, but the nation put on a great tournament and Argentina, inspired by Maradona, justified “favourite” status. Eighty-six minutes of football magic from numerous world stars, including Diego Maradona, Gary Lineker, Michel Platini, Socrates, Rummenigge, Sanchez, Laudrup and many others. Michael Caine narrates this, the official FIFA coverage.