In a country famous for its success in international beauty pageants, three young women are fighting to participate in their nation’s most celebrated cultural institution. But obtaining a place in the Miss Venezuela contest is no easy task. Women must endure grueling diets, consent to intensive plastic surgery, and find the resources necessary to transform themselves from ordinary citizens into famous and illustrious Misses. To Be a Miss is a character-driven documentary that takes the viewer through the inner workings of Venezuela’s renowned beauty factory, revealing the risks and rewards associated with this multi-billion dollar industry while exposing what nationalism, personal ambition, and the influence of mass media has meant for women in the country.
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One man’s journey to discover the bitter truth about sugar. Damon Gameau embarks on a unique experiment to document the effects of a high sugar diet on a healthy body, consuming only foods that are commonly perceived as ‘healthy’. Through this entertaining and informative journey, Damon highlights some of the issues that plague the sugar industry, and where sugar lurks on supermarket shelves.
In 2018, a young bartender in the Bronx, a coal miner’s daughter in West Virginia, a grieving mother in Nevada and a registered nurse in Missouri join a movement of insurgent candidates challenging powerful incumbents in Congress. Without political experience or corporate money, these four women are attempting to do what many consider impossible – until one of them pulls off the most shocking political upset in recent American history.
A documentary about the life of Pope John Paul II
An exploration of potential extraterrestrial encounters, centered on a series of events in 1996 when citizens of Varginha, Brazil, reported seeing one or more strange creatures and a UFO crash.
The filmed account of a large Canadian rock festival train tour.
The Original Kings of Comedy achieves the seemingly impossible task of capturing the rollicking and sly comedy routines of stand-up and sitcom vets Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley, Cedric the Entertainer, and Bernie Mac and the magic of experiencing a live concert show. Director Spike Lee and his crew plant a multitude of cameras in a packed stadium and onstage (as well as backstage, as they follow the comedians) to catch the vivid immediacy of the show, which is as much about the audience as it is about the jokes.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta explores how advances in neuroscience are shedding light on the origins and impact of stress.
Elif and her sisters Funda and Aysun have spent much of their adult life coming to terms with a traumatic childhood in which their parents were killed during a bus accident that left the siblings terrified but physically unhurt. In time Funda and Aysun became mentally ill, and it fell to Elif to care for them, but eventually the burden became more than Elif and her husband could bear, and they deserted the siblings, leaving them to an unknown fate. Living in a country with no social safety net, Funda and Aysun fall prey to violence and exploitation, and their reunion with Elif and Yasemin is both poignant and troubling. Yasam Arsizi (aka Sidewalk Sisters) was an official selection at the 2008 Istanbul Film Festival.
An all-girls’ robotics team in Afghanistan risks it all to prove that it can compete against anyone in the world, and demonstrates that girls can become scientists and engineers instead of teenage brides.
Amos Gitai returns to the occupied territories for the first time since his 1982 documentary FIELD DIARY. WEST OF THE JORDAN RIVER describes the efforts of citizens, Israelis and Palestinians, who are trying to overcome the consequences of occupation. Gitai’s film shows the human ties woven by the military, human rights activists, journalists, mourning mothers and even Jewish settlers. Faced with the failure of politics to solve the occupation issue, these men and women rise and act in the name of their civic consciousness. This human energy is a proposal for long overdue change.
“The Legend of Cool ‘Disco’ Dan” is the story of black Washington DC told from the perspective of Cool “Disco” Dan starting with his birth during the civil rights era and follows his life parallel with the rise of Go-Go music through the 1980s (which is the unheard but yet dominant urban music of DC) and also local DC politics with Marion Barry’s rise and fall. Despite ending up homeless Cool “Disco” Dan used graffiti to escape the social problems D.C. had in the 1980s when things turned violent and became known as the Murder Capital of the United States. Cool “Disco” Dan ends up as a cult character of DC and his name becomes a symbol of survival during DC’s most trying years.