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- Young lesbian parents Shareen and Claire are raising their 5-year-old daughter Honey in a converted garage on Staten Island. Shareen salvages refuse with her pickup truck while Claire waits tables at the hip Naga Saki restaurant in Manhattan, caught up in a global exchange of industrial waste via contaminated sushi. As a ghost barge bearing nuclear refuse circles the planet in search of a willing port, household pets begin to glow ominously, then disappear; and people start speaking in tongues. The crisis escalates when a multinational corporation is implicated, the couple's daughter Honey mysteriously vanishes, and a group of young New Yorkers strike back in an unlikely alliance with activists in the developing world.
- After breaking ties with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X became a man marked for death...and it was just a matter of time before his enemies closed in. Despite death threats and intimidation, Malcolm marched on - continuing to spread the word of equality and brotherhood right up until the moment of his brutal and untimely assassination. Highlighted by newsreel footage and interviews, this is the story of the last twenty-four hours of Malcolm X. Featuring the music of jazz percussionist Max Roach.
- Combining newsreel footage, still photographs, interviews, and analytical narration, this documentary focuses on the antifascist, anti-imperialist efforts of labor groups, peasants, and working-class soldiers to liberate Portugal from the control of the government of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar.
- The film looks back at the life of a man named Oda and other Japanese Americans through the decades as they face great challenges and joys living in the United States.
- Audre Lorde, the highly influential, award-winning African-American lesbian poet came to live in West-Berlin in the 80s and early '90s. She was the mentor and catalyst who helped ignite the Afro-German movement while she challenged white women to acknowledge and constructively use their privileges. With her active support a whole generation of writers and poets for the first time gave voice to their unique experience as people of color in Germany. This documentary contains previously unreleased audiovisual material from director Dagmar Schultz's archives including stunning images of Audre Lorde off stage. With testimony from Lorde's colleagues and friends the film documents Lorde's lasting legacy in Germany and the impact of her work and personality.
- Boy has a secret. Girl finds out the secret. Girl helps boy share his secret with the world.
- On May 2003 the US NAVY retreated from the island of Vieques after decades of struggle and opposition from its inhabitants. More than 10 years after their questionable departure, the islanders are demanding the US Government to fully cleanup and give back the terrains that were used for testing weapons and training soldiers. Unsatisfied with the little commitment of the Armed Forces to assume responsibilities, the 'Viequenses' face a new struggle for justice within their lands.
- JUGGLING GENDER, one of the first documentaries that looks at the construction of sexual and gender identity. It is a loving portrait of Jennifer Miller, a lesbian performer who lives her life with a full beard. Jennifer Miller works as a performance artist, circus director, and clown and as the "bearded lady" in one of the only remaining sideshows in America. In public she is often mistaken for a man, an experience she handles with the wit and intelligence that characterize her stage performances. JUGGLING GENDER explores the fluidity of gender and raises important questions about the construction of sexual and gender identity. The film is a journey through the daily life of Jennifer as she navigates her experiences from performing to people's reaction to her on the streets of New York City in the early 1990's. Some scenes include her performance at a sideshow, with friends and in her loft practicing for an upcoming performance. Through a traditional documentary genre there are moments alone with Jennifer in the bathtub, a moment in the film where the genre plays with a more experiential genre. JUGGLING GENDER is considered a remarkable short video about a performance artist who just happens to have a beard. Rotating masculinity and femininity the way some folk change shoes, Miller confronts gender every time she hits the streets. Premiered at the New York Film Festival/Video Showcase in 1992 and played at 100's of festivals worldwide. The film includes STILL JUGGLING a new video with Jennifer Miller 15 years later, discussing family and religion, gender and the beard, the sideshow then and now, life as an artist, and Circus Amok. Also SIDESHOW BY THE SEASHORE: Coney Island, New York.
- New colonial policies implemented by the US Congress over Puerto Rico's territory triggers a new wave of protests against US colonialism.
- MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE tells the story of the student-led struggle to win Puerto Rican Studies at Brooklyn College, CUNY, in the late 1960s.
- Chicago's Black transgender icon Gloria Allen blazed a trail for trans people like few others before her. Born in 1945, she grew up amid the celebrated Black "sissy" balls on Chicago's South Side and transitioned after high school with the love and support of the women in her family - her mother Alma, a former showgirl and Jet centerfold who taught her about makeup, and her grandmother Mildred, a seamstress who designed clothes for her. Gloria overcame traumatic violence to become a proud leader in her community. Most famously, she pioneered a charm school for young transgender people that served as inspiration for the hit play Charm. Now in her 70s, Gloria is aging with joy and grace at a time when Black transgender women in America face escalating violence and make up the majority of transgender people killed each year. Luchina Fisher's directorial debut is not only a portrait of a groundbreaking legend, but also a celebration of unconditional love, the love Gloria received from her own mother and that she now gives to her chosen children.
- In this personal documentary, Jane Giese, a working class woman in Newark, comes to realize that she has to take control of her own life after years of physical and mental abuse.
- When, in 1961, West Side Story hit the screens after conquering Broadway, it was the entire Puerto Rican community of New York, ostracized and deprived of the American dream, that feverishly gained visibility. From Spanish Harlem to the Bronx, where poverty, drugs and gangs are rampant, Latino music and dance will then carry the identity revolution, the barrio setting itself on fire and undulating to Afro-Caribbean rhythms, led by "the king of timbales" Tito Puente. Soon mixed with soul, jazz and blues of the black neighbors, who share suffering and stigma of racism, the genres multiply: mambo, rumba, cha-cha-cha, merengue, boogaloo. All the Hispanics of Central and South America joined the movement.
- This is fastpaced drama about sexual harassment in the workplace from a child's perspective. The "Beautiful Dreamer Salon" is owned by Eva, a single parent who manages to juggle her clients, her employees, and her daughter, all in a day's work. Her multicultural clientele interact in hilarious sequences with the equally diverse hairdressers. The film allows a deeper look at sexual harassment on the job and other issues that lie just below the surface of everyday life in the workplace
- Documentary on young South Korean women who work in sex related enterprises adjacent to American military bases in South Korea. Also explores the lives of Korean American women who came to the United States as wives of American servicemen.
- Story about a group of women better known as 'The Bosses' in its process of transformation and empowerment, through their work in the field of human rights with Central American migrants crossing Mexico on the freight train bound for the US
- Explores the role of Black families in American society.
- This documentary examines the re-settlement of South-East Asian refugees in the United States in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. The film begins with a montage of riveting footage depicting the devastating effects of the war. It then unveils the mixed reception given Vietnamese refugees in the United States, from battles with local fishermen in Monterey, California, to conflicts in Philadelphia where their arrival in the city's poorest neighborhoods kindled resentment in the Black community. The film also explores their struggle to cope with life in the U.S. and maintain their identity.
- Gyasi Ferdinand was a successful crack dealer in Toronto, known as J9 for his 9mm pistol. Then he got shot. For Gyasi to live, J9 has to die. An intimate look at the world of drugs, gangs and guns.
- A brief examination of the challenges facing the Sikh community in a post-9/11 New York City that erroneously associates the Sikh turban (or dastaar) with terrorism and Islamic extremists.
- This is an experimental documentary chronicling the March 1995 groundbreaking conference on lesbian and gay sexualities in the African diaspora. The conference brought together an array of dynamic scholars, activists and cultural workers including Essex Hemphill, Kobena Mercer, Barbara Smith, Urvashi Vaid and Jacqui Alexander to interrogate the economic, political and social situations of diasporic lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgender peoples. The video brings together the highlights of the conference and draws connections between popular culture and contemporary black gay media production. The participants discuss various topics: Black and queer identity, the shortcomings of Black nationalism, and homophobia in Black communities. Drawing upon works such as Isaac Julien's "The Attendant" and Jocelyn Taylor's "Bodily Functions", this documentary illuminates the importance of this historic conference for Black lesbians and gays.
- Focused on the country of Puerto Rico, La generación del estanbai follows the lives of young people caught in the 'precariat' world of part-time and temporary under-employment devoid of security. A new generation of university graduates chooses to stay in Puerto Rico despite its ongoing financial crisis, but they are kept very busy struggling to survive by any means necessary as their aspirations are placed on standby.
- AWOL fictional short follows Keisha Johnson, an American deserter on her "walkabout" journey as she encounters children who decide to help her despite the risks. In the soldier's dazed and disillusioned state, she accepts the children's assistance and follows them back to their grandmother's house. The encounter humanizes the two parties and an emotional connection is formed despite the overwhelming political and cultural obstacles.
- NANA DIJO is an urgent historical registry filmed in Mexico, Honduras, Uruguay, Argentina and the United States, which opens a crucial platform of analysis about race relations/politics by transgressing beyond the parameters of "safe discourses" imposed by culturalist agendas.
- In March 2006, Iraq Veterans Against the War organized a march from Mobile, Alabama to New Orleans in support of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. I happened to be in New Orleans at the time volunteering with a local filmmaker and we dropped what we were doing and went to meet up with the march. It was the first time I came into contact with IVAW and Veterans for Peace and it led to years of future collaboration. This video documents the march and makes clear the connection between the U.S. presence in Iraq and the government negligence in responding to the needs of victims of Hurricane Katrina.
- When most think of American Football, images spring to mind of raw, unbridled demonstrations of athletic might pushed to the max, but rarely do those images involve women. The Quake is a professional Women's Tackle Football team out to not just break, but blow away the glass ceiling of this traditionally all-male sport. These girls embody all the same grit, sweat and dogged determination as their male counterparts, but without the money or fame. And beyond that, they must deal with a societal prejudice that keeps them very much on the periphery of professional sports, having to pay their own way even as other female athletes--such as those in the Lingerie League--draw a salary. Through the eye of filmmaker Briana Young we watch the bittersweet tale of he Quake's rocky eighth season seeing exactly what it looks like when raw, passionate, highly focused aggressive energy flows through the bodies of the so-called gentle sex. Ladies of the Gridiron reveals an unfiltered, unadulterated vision of football in what could possibly be its truest form, played by people who are in the top of their class, doing what they love simply because they love it so much.
- In this moving docudrama, the personal testimonies of Guatemalan Indians, peasants, and guerrillas are dramatized to provide the narration for a powerful overview of the history of U.S. destabilization of democracy in Central America. Winner of The International Leipzig Documentary Screened at the Whitney Museum - Ten Years of Political Documentaries Toured US colleges and Universities 1976. MY COUNTRY OCCUPIED was inspired by the work of Santiago Álvarez. Third World Newsreel's historical Newsreel collection provides contemporary audiences with a vast archive of political documentary films chronicling the social movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
- Contemporary Asian American female actors re-enact scenes from popular Hollywood films. Featuring three generations of Asian American femme fatales in Hollywood, the film re-examines the fantastic figure of the "lotus blossom" and "dragon lady" exemplified in the roles played by Anna May Wong in the 1920s-1940s, the "prostitute with a heart of gold" embodied by Nancy Kwan in the 1960s" and the contemporary "dominatrix" Lucy Liu. Performing these characters, young contemporary actors collide with the "ghosts" of Asian women in Hollywood through the revised endings of their major films performed on the streets of San Francisco. The actors then discuss sexuality in their roles and in terms of their own self-formation as actresses of color.
- Forbidden to Wander chronicles the experiences of a 25-year-old Arab American woman traveling on her own in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the summer of 2002. The film is a reflection on the complexity of Palestinian existence and the torturously disturbing "ordinariness" of living under constant curfew. The film's title reflects this, as the Arabic words used to describe the imposed curfew "mane' tajawwul" literally translate as "forbidden to wander". The video is also the journey of personal discovery for the filmmaker, the wanderer who falls in love with a Palestinian man in Gaza.
- Two sisters, both artists, embark on a quest to discover whether writer, Lorraine Hansberry was a political activist.
- The history of violence against Rastafari through the eyes of a Rasta community of in western Jamaica who annually commemorate the 1963 Coral Gardens "incident".
- As the first pupil from his Harlem high school to attend Harvard University, a teenager faces both external and internal challenges during his freshman year.
- As Hurricane Katrina approached, New Orleans' Sheriff abandoned the city's prison leaving prisoners to drown in their cells, a story of what happened there as a city's history of racism turned a natural disaster into a political crisis.
- The resilience of Traditional African Religions Practiced in The United States.
- A queer Gender Non Conforming Nigerian returns home to connect with the Orisa (African Goddess) tradition, and follows a trail back to the powerful legacy of their great grandmother, Chief Moloran Iya Oloya.
- Gershwin & Bess: A Dialogue with Anne Brown In 2004 at her home in Oslo, Norway, soprano Anne Wiggins Brown sat down with tenor Dr. William A. Brown (no relation) of the Center Black Music Research for an on-the-record conversation about originating the iconic role of "Bess" in the opera Porgy and Bess with famed composer George Gershwin. Revealed are little known facts about what is arguably the most popular American opera touring to date. Details of the opera's inception and the cast as well as Ms. Brown's controversial run-ins with discrimination offer an illuminating historical account. This was one of Ms. Brown's final interviews. Filmed through the talented lensing of Director of Photography Henry Adebonojo, this lively and engaging conversation covers musicianship, self-reliance, race and beauty. In a rare conversation between Anne Brown and Dr. Brown, Ms. Brown provides the following: * A detailed account of her work with George Gershwin * Timeless anecdotes on the role singers play in creative collaborations * An accurate account of the events surrounding a proposed boycott from the Porgy and Bess cast during its run at The National Theatre * A revealing narrative that addresses her decision to direct European productions of Porgy and Bess in "blackface" * A reflection on the painful decision to end her singing career
- In February 2005, the NY City Council considered a bill that would require companies doing business with NY to investigate and reveal any past relationship to the slave trade. Though resisted by the NYC mayor, Chicago already passed such a law, resulting in JP Morgan Chase addressing its slave-based past. This short is a quick introduction to the history of New York's slave-based development, and why redress is due.