The deep northern forests of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula are home to small villages of Finnish Americans—communities carved out from the forest where Finnish language, cultural worldview, and traditional arts remain crucial to social life more than a century after immigration. In this beautiful and rugged north country, the extraordinary, ordinary descendants of Finnish immigrants still eke out modest lives to this day on old farmsteads, working with the resources they have available to them, showing their creativity and ingenuity in simply getting by and making do, and living in ways not dissimilar from their ancestors who migrated three or four generations ago.

The Call of the Wild is a 2007 documentary by independent filmmaker Ron Lamothe detailing the odyssey of Christopher McCandless, who is best known as the subject of the novel (and later film) Into the Wild. McCandless, a self-described “aesthetic voyager whose home is the road”, died on Alaska’s Stampede Trail in August of 1992. His death followed a two-year cross-country odyssey that took him from Atlanta to Arizona, down into Mexico, and from California’s Salton Sea to the streets of Las Vegas and the small town of Carthage, South Dakota, and countless places in between. In the spring of that year, the 24-year-old McCandless had made his way north to Alaska, where he lived in the woods north of Mt. McKinley for 113 days before his death by starvation.

Scene-stealing starlet Brittany Murphy was destined for Hollywood’s A-list until her untimely and mysterious death turned out the lights on her lifelong dreams.

Renowned documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker captures Otis Redding in his ascendancy, singing at the historic Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967. Comedian Tom Smothers introduces Redding to a crowd that is leaving — until Redding grabs them with his charged rendition of “Shake.” Redding’s performance also includes “Respect” (which he wrote), “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” “Satisfaction,” and “Try a Little Tenderness.” Tragically, Redding died in a plane crash six months later. An innovative filmmaker who started in the 1950s making experimental films, Pennebaker garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature in 1993 for The War Room, his behind-the-scenes look at Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. His other subjects have included Norman Mailer, Bob Dylan, and David Bowie.

Rugby Leagueandapos;s northern heartlands, as well as issues of masculinity, race, class, friendship, ambition and sacrifice, and looks ahead to the future of the sport, with the 2021 Rugby League World Cup due to be hosted in England.

It follows Jack, Jason, and Jamie as they venture out on a journey for answers behind the strange activity surrounding Utah’s Uinta Basin.

Steve Backshall travels across the world to encounter the most charismatic supergiant animals and discovers the remarkable things that their size enables them to do. Highlights include Steve swimming with Nile crocodiles in Botswana, dodging two-ton elephant seals in California and diving with sperm whales in the Caribbean.
– Written by Enzedder

This documentary delves into Joran van der Sloot’s lifelong pattern of violence and pathological lying through rare interviews and new insights years after he brutally murdered American Natalee Holloway and Peruvian Stephany Flores.

From Africaandapos;s Serengeti to Californiaandapos;s grasslands, some of natureandapos;s most dramatic moments are caught, examined and andquot;fracturedandquot; into their unique parts.

The last stand of the American exploitation film. In a post video store era, media consolidation has led to the censorship and near death of the independent and exploitation film industry. Joe Bob Briggs (Last Drive-in), Debbie Rochon (Toxic Avenger IV), Lloyd Kaufman and James Rolfe (Angry Video Game Nerd) take us on an adventure that leads from the last Blockbuster video store in Bend Oregon to Troma Entertainment in New York, all in an effort to examine how history keeps repeating itself from the video store era to the modern streaming.

In the 1980s, Corey Pegues found himself embroiled in a life of crime as a member of New York’s City’s infamous Supreme Team gang. After an incident forces Pegues away from the streets, he unexpectedly emerges as a rising star in the NYPD, his past unknown to his fellow officers. A decorated 21-year police career is threatened when his political stances and revelations about his former life cause strife within the police community.

At 82 years old, Lula is every inch the rebel. An openly gay man in communist Poland, he organized underground parties and after-curfew salons of men inside private apartments. He enthusiastically took up drag, despite a fiercely homophobic culture, to free himself from the stifling correctness of the 80s. But now, he’s an old, single man in a youth-obsessed world. His friend was crushed by depression and killed himself, but somehow Lula, now Poland’s oldest drag queen, remains buoyant. Is he escaping loneliness with his constant clubbing, looking for love yet again to insulate himself against what he knows is coming? Lula isn’t waiting for approval. Filmmaker Bogna Kowalczyk’s energetic portrait pairs with her subject’s kinetic drive, right down to the stellar soundtrack and nimble camerawork. Whether it’s meeting fans at Pride or selecting an artist to sculpt his specialty crematorium urn, try to keep up with a man who knows life is to be lived out loud.