2017 will mark a century from the recording of what is historically considered the first Jazz record, but very few know that it was recorded by a Sicilian emigrant to New Orleans: Nick La Rocca. The record sold a million and half copies! Featuring exclusive interviews to American music critics, historians and archivists, as well as amazing archive picturing New Orleans at the beginning of the century, Sicily Jass takes us on a journey through music and history, telling the story of the world’s first man in Jazz.
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Records the battle for the survival of the big cats and reveals intimate details of their lives. The animals they prey on are also in the film: tigers couldn’t survive without sika deer, Altai wapiti, wild boars and Asian black bears. Guiding the viewer through the film, an elder tiger tells the story of his cub, born in a conservation area, the year after he leaves his mother.
Documentary film about former Estonian tennis player Anett Kontaveit.
Two friends, both Indigenous fishermen, are driven to desperation by a dying sea. Their friendship begins to fracture as they take very different paths to provide for their struggling families.
The revolutionary top-selling American female group of all time, who broke boundaries, influenced an entire generation and survived against all odds, T-Boz and Chilli tell their story for the first time in this feature documentary.
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.
A passionate conservationist makes a cruel pact to save endangered seabirds from extinction on an inhospitable island, alone. In the end, it’s a victory for the birds, but at what price?
The story of a young woman who will never fit in but whom the cinema, because it is able to appreciate her extraordinary existence, helps her to find her own special place in the world.
Hov1 is one of Sweden’s most popular bands and in the summer of 2023 they played 27 sold-out gigs. In the unique film “HOV1 4-EVER”, the audience gets to follow the band on stage where they sing their biggest songs and meet their fans, but also take part in their personal conversations behind the scenes and when they produce music. It will be an intimate concert film where the fans can get close to their idols – while they get a strong musical experience.
In Killing Gaza, independent journalists Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen documented Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza. Yet this film is much more than a documentary about Palestinian resilience and suffering. It is a chilling visual document of war crimes committed by the Israeli military, featuring direct testimony and evidence from the survivors.
The tape-recorded words “erase it” take on new weight in the context of history and war. When the state of Israel was established in 1948, war broke out and hundreds of Palestinian villages were depopulated in its aftermath. Israelis know this as the War of Independence. Palestinians call it “Nakba” (the Catastrophe). In the late 1990s, graduate student Teddy Katz conducted research into a large-scale massacre that had allegedly occurred in the village of Tantura in 1948. His work later came under attack and his reputation was ruined, but 140 hours of audio testimonies remain.
Rocky IV is dually symbolic – it embodies both the victory of the American boxer over the Soviet one and the victory of neo-liberalism over a dwindling socialism. Today, Rocky is held up as a model by some and is a subject of derision for others. An emblem of the 1980s, its culture and its heroes, the film will be the subject of an entertaining analysis of popular culture.
Who are the Men in Black? Many have reported their own Men in Black experiences and eye witness accounts since the beginning of the UFO cover-up history. Walk through the true history of Men in Black events from the 1940s until now.
