Trick or Treaty? (2014)

The Story of the Weeping Camel

When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.

Mi'kmaq Family (Migmaoei Otjiosog)

This documentary takes you on a reflective journey into the extended family of Nova Scotia’s Mi'kmaq community. Revisiting her own roots, Mi'kmaq filmmaker and mother Catherine Anne Martin explores how the community is recovering its First Nations values, particularly through the teachings of elders and a collective approach to children-rearing. Mi'kmaq Family is an inspiring resource for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences who are looking for ways to strengthen and explore their own families and traditions. We hear the Mi'kmaq language spoken and a lullaby is sung by a Mi'kmaq grandmother featured in the film.

Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids

Documentary depicting the lives of child prostitutes in the red light district of Songachi, Calcutta. Director Zana Briski went to photograph the prostitutes when she met and became friends with their children. Briski began giving photography lessons to the children and became aware that their photography might be a way for them to lead better lives.

Bowling for Columbine

This is not a film about gun control. It is a film about the fearful heart and soul of the United States, and the 280 million Americans lucky enough to have the right to a constitutionally protected Uzi. From a look at the Columbine High School security camera tapes to the home of Oscar-winning NRA President Charlton Heston, from a young man who makes homemade napalm with The Anarchist's Cookbook to the murder of a six-year-old girl by another six-year-old. Bowling for Columbine is a journey through the US, through our past, hoping to discover why our pursuit of happiness is so riddled with violence.

Jesus Camp

Jesus Camp is a Christian summer camp where children hone their "prophetic gifts" and are schooled in how to "take back America for Christ". The film is a first-ever look into an intense training ground that recruits born-again Christian children to become an active part of America's political future.

Cycling the Frame

In 1988, Tilda Swinton toured round the Berlin Wall on a bicycle - starting and ending at the Brandenburg Gate - accompanied by filmmaker Cynthia Beatt. As Swinton travels through fields and historic neighborhoods, past lakes and massive concrete apartment buildings, the Wall is a constant presence.

Jakub

Jakub presents an extensive ethnographical-sociological study of the life of the Ruthenians, filmed in the Maramuresh mountains in the north of Romania and in the former Sudetenland in Western Bohemia. The film was made over a period of five years during the time of both totalitarian regimes and was completed in 1992 after the revolution.

Buba

This documentary film is about one of Georgia's regions - Racha. The title of the film is taken from the name of one of Racha's high mountain villages. It tells about the poorest in society living in the mountains and the rise of the SSSR. The product of a remarkable collaboration between the first Georgian female filmmaker and the leading Georgian avant-garde artist David Kakabadze.

Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger

The story of a young boy forced to spend all five years of his short life in hospital while the federal and provincial governments argued over which was responsible for his care, as well as the long struggle of Indigenous activists to force the Canadian government to enforce “Jordan’s Principle” — the promise that no First Nations children would experience inequitable access to government-funded services again.

There's Something in the Water

Elliot Page brings attention to the injustices and injuries caused by environmental racism in his home province, in this urgent documentary on Indigenous and African Nova Scotian women fighting to protect their communities, their land, and their futures.

Classified People

Filmed clandestinely, Zauberman’s extraordinary documentary exposes South Africa’s insidious apartheid policy of “race classification” by focusing on the love affair of Robert and Doris, and unresolvable, moral fissure with Robert’s children and the country. Winner of the Paris Film Festival Grand Prize.

Prisoner

While working at Uruguay's largest prison construction site, Miguel is leading a double life. When he realizes that he has become a prisoner of his own lies, Miguel struggles to find the courage to disclose the truth to his loved ones.

Now Is the Time

When internationally renowned Haida carver Robert Davidson was only 22 years old, he carved the first new totem pole on British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii in almost a century. On the 50th anniversary of the pole’s raising, Haida filmmaker Christopher Auchter steps easily through history to revisit that day in August 1969, when the entire village of Old Massett gathered to celebrate the event that would signal the rebirth of the Haida spirit.

The Dionne Quintuplets

In 1934, Elzire Dionne delivered five identical girls. The Dionne Quintuplets follows Cecile, Emilie, Marie, Yvonne and Annette through twenty-one years of strange upbringing. When the girls were just infants, the premier of Ontario issued a court order removing them from parental care. Cut off from the world and their family, over-publicized, viewed twice daily in a special viewing compound, they grew up as prize exhibits. Director Donald Brittain uses old newsreel footage, home-movie sequences and interviews to depict a historic event that became a tragic exploitation of a family.

Nanook of the North

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

Olympia: Part One – Festival of the Nations

Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. This first half of her two-part film opens with a renowned introduction that compares modern Olympians to classical Greek heroes, then goes on to provide thrilling in-the-moment coverage of some of the games' most celebrated moments, including African-American athlete Jesse Owens winning a then-unprecedented four gold medals.

Olympia: Part Two – Festival of Beauty

Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. Where the two-part epic's first half, Festival of the Nations, focused on the international aspects of the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin, part two, The Festival of Beauty, concentrates on individual athletes such as equestrians, gymnasts, and swimmers, climaxing with American Glenn Morris' performance in the decathalon and the games' majestic closing ceremonies.

How Good to See You Alive

Four years after a military coup overthrew the Brazilian government in 1964, all civil rights were suspended and torture became a systematic practice. Using a mix of fiction and documentary this extraordinary film is a searing record of personal memory, political repression and the will to survive. Interviews with eight women who were political prisoners during the military dictatorship are framed by the fantasies and imaginings of an anonymous character, portrayed by actress Irene Ravache.

The Ringleader: The Case of the Bling Ring

In a candid, first-time interview with Rachel Lee, the so-called teenage mastermind behind a string of high-profile celebrity robberies in 2008 and 2009, the film examines the motivations of Lee and a group of her friends who broke into celebrity homes in Hollywood to ransack and steal, exploring the possible reasons behind her actions including mental health issues and addictions, as well as the climate of celebrity excess that fueled the teens, recontextualizing the events behind the sensational headlines.

Warriors on the Field

Through the lens of sport, AFL legend Michael O'Loughlin shines a light on the history and experience of the Indigenous Australian people. Current AFL players, Michael Walters and Tarryn Thomas, join O'Loughlin to unpack racism, discrimination and the unbreakable bond they each share with their indigenous communities.

Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing

Shut Up and Sing is a documentary about the country band from Texas called the Dixie Chicks and how one tiny comment against President Bush dropped their number one hit off the charts and caused fans to hate them, destroy their CD’s, and protest at their concerts. A film about freedom of speech gone out of control and the three girls lives that were forever changed by a small anti-Bush comment

Citizen Schein

Harry Schein was an anomaly in Swedish cultural society. Equal parts playboy, intellectual, and political visionary, his life story could very well be the foundation of a Hollywood film. Citizen Schein is a film about a refugee who refused to look back, a film about powerful men, and the myths that fuel them.

Baronesa

The everyday life of a Belo Horizonte lower class neighborhood.

Dig!

A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.

In the Realms of the Unreal

In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.

A Feeling Greater Than Love

A car with a loudspeaker on its roof is driving through southern Lebanon. The old man at the wheel is calling for people to join a demonstration to support their brothers and sisters who’ve occupied a tobacco company and are now being besieged by the army. His words come from the past, as he’s referring to events from 1973 – events that few remember today. Neither the protests made by the tobacco farmers from the south against the large landholders’ monopoly nor the strike for better working conditions by workers at a Beirut chocolate factory are anchored in the country’s collective memory. All recollection of this social movement was erased by the civil war and society has since been marked by deep sectarian divisions.

The Trials of Darryl Hunt

"The Trials of Darryl Hunt" is a feature documentary about a brutal rape/murder case and a wrongly convicted man, Darryl Hunt, who spent nearly twenty years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Both a social justice story and a personally driven narrative, the film chronicles this capital case from 1984 through 2004. With exclusive footage from two decades, the film frames the judicial and emotional response to a chilling crime - and the implications that reverberate from Hunt's conviction - against a backdrop of class and racial bias in the South and in the American criminal justice system.

Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train

You Can't Be Neutral documents the life and times of the historian, activist and author of the best selling classic "A People's History of the United States". Featuring rare archival materials, interviews with Howard Zinn as well as colleagues and friends including Noam Chomsky, Marian Wright Edelman, Daniel Ellsberg, Tom Hayden and Alice Walker.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Hugo Chavez was a colourful, unpredictable folk hero who was beloved by his nation’s working class. He was elected president of Venezuela in 1998, and proved to be a tough, quixotic opponent to the power structure that wanted to depose him. When he was forcibly removed from office on 11 April 2002, two independent filmmakers were inside the presidential palace.

Jane by Charlotte

Charlotte Gainsbourg looks at her mother Jane Birkin in a way she never did, overcoming a sense of reserve. Using a camera lens, they expose themselves to each other, begin to step back, leaving space for a mother-daughter relationship.

Last Call at Maud's

A history of Maud's, a San Francisco lesbian bar that stayed open from 1966 to 1989.

We Live in Public

In 1999, Internet entrepreneur Josh Harris recruits dozens of young men and women who agree to live in underground apartments for weeks at a time while their every movement is broadcast online. Soon, Harris and his girlfriend embark on their own subterranean adventure, with cameras streaming live footage of their meals, arguments, bedroom activities, and bathroom habits. This documentary explores the role of technology in our lives, as it charts the fragile nature of dot-com economy.

King of the Cruise

A rich and extravagant Scottish Baron spends his time on outrageous cruise ships amongst romantic couples, wealthy families, hardworking staff and retired elderly. A floating micro-society appealing to some, revolting to others.

Cinétracts

A series of 43 documentary shorts, directed (without credit) by several famous French filmmakers and each running between two and four minutes. Each "tract" espouses a leftist political viewpoint through the filmed depiction of real-life events, including workers' strikes and the events of Paris in May '68.

Celebration at Big Sur

Star-studded show recorded at the Big Sur Folk Festival, Big Sur, California, September 13th and 14th, 1969. Joan Baez, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Joni Mitchell, John Sebastian, and others. This film captures a remarkable moment in folk, rock, and pop history - the famous folk festival that brought traditional acts like Dorothy Morrison & The Combs Sisters and Carol Ann Cisneros together with the psychedelic rockers of the day who were most deeply rooted in the folk revival. Older songs like ‘Oh Happy Day,’ ‘Rise And Shine,’ ‘All God’s Children,’ and ‘Swing Down, Sweet Chariot’ meet Joni Mitchell’s ‘Woodstock,’ Joan Baez’s ‘Sweet Sir Galahad,’ ‘Bob Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released,’ CSNY’s ‘Down By The River,’ and many more of the now-classic songs of what was then called the ‘new rock.’ The scene is notably intimate and - aside from one fan’s dustup with Stephen Stills - mellow, with many rare, close-up moments with the stars.

Devil's Playground

The Devil's Playground is a fascinating and moving documentary about a little-known aspect of Amish life. Amish are not permitted to join the church until their late teens, and have to do so of their own volition. The film explores Rumspringa, wherein young Amish are given the opportunity to explore the "English" way of life.

The Annanacks

This short documentary depicts the formation in 1959 of the first successful co-operative in an Inuit community in Northern Québec. The film describes how, with other Inuit of the George River community, the Annanacks formed a joint venture that included a sawmill, a fish-freezing plant and a small boat-building industry.

Milk

Through an intimate and artistic lens, yet investigative and political, Milk brings a universal focus on the politics, commercialization and controversies surrounding birth and infant feeding over the canvas of stunningly beautiful visuals and poignant voices from around the globe.

Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator

A documentary exploring the rise and fall of 80s skateboard legend Mark "Gator" Rogowski.

Harlan County U.S.A.

This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with New York Women in Film & Television in 2004.

Man for a Day

Gender activist Diane Torr’s worldwide appearances and workshops are now legendary. For the past thirty years, the main focus of this performance artist’s work has been an exploration of the theoretical, artistic as well as the practical aspects of gender identity. Katarina Peters’ documentary observes a Diane Torr workshop in Berlin in which a group of open-minded women come together to discover the secrets of masculinity. What makes a man a man and a woman a woman? Precisely when and where is gender identity formatted? How much is nature and how much nurture? Each of Torr’s workshops represents an open-ended laboratory experiment in social behaviour in which the question is posed: is it possible to deliberately play out different roles and create a space in which to transgress both masculine and feminine characteristics?

Before Stonewall

New York City's Stonewall Inn is regarded by many as the site of gay and lesbian liberation since it was at this bar that drag queens fought back against police June 27-28, 1969. This documentary uses extensive archival film, movie clips and personal recollections to construct an audiovisual history of the gay community before the Stonewall riots.