Solid Ground (2015)

Maineland

Chinese teenagers from the wealthy elite, with big American dreams, settle into a boarding school in small-town Maine. As their fuzzy visions of the American dream slowly gain more clarity, their relationship to home takes on a poignant new aspect.

Synonymous With

A student's increasingly intimate line of questioning causes his interview with a local horror host to take a vulnerable turn.

#BKKY

Jojo, a 17-year-old girl from Bangkok, is about to graduate from high school. After her friend Q reveals a secret to her, the two girls grow close and spend all their time together. Jojo's father wholeheartedly approves of the friendship and is just glad that Jojo is not going on any dates with boys.

Wilding

A young couple battle entrenched tradition and hostile forces to bet on nature for the future of their failing, four-hundred-year-old estate. Ripping down the fences, they set the land back to the wild and entrust its recovery to a motley mix of animals both tame and wild, beginning a grand experiment.

American Teen

A documentary on seniors at a high school in a small Indiana town and their various cliques.

My Life Inside

Rosa is a Mexican woman who, at the age of 17, migrated illegally to Austin, Texas. Some years later, she was jailed under suspicion of murder and then taken to trial. This film demonstrates how the judicial process, the verdict, the separation from her family, and the helplessness of being imprisoned in a foreign country make Rosa’s story an example of the hard life of Mexican migrants in the United States.

Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower

When the Chinese Communist Party backtracks on its promise of autonomy to Hong Kong, teenager Joshua Wong decides to save his city. Rallying thousands of kids to skip school and occupy the streets, Joshua becomes an unlikely leader in Hong Kong and one of China’s most notorious dissidents.

To get lost on purpose

Three friends use their last summer as teenagers to rediscover Bulgaria like they have never seen it before by going on a big road trip and getting lost on purpose.

Streetwise

This documentary about teenagers living on the streets in Seattle began as a magazine article. The film follows nine teenagers who discuss how they live by panhandling, prostitution, and petty theft.

Gunda

A glimpse into the raw and simple power of nature through encounters with farm animals: the eponymous Gunda, a mother pig; two cows, and a one-legged chicken.

A Life on the Farm

A strange story from Somerset, England about a filmmaking farmer and the inspiring legacy of his long-lost home movies.

Cow

A close-up portrait of the daily lives of a pair of cows: told by way of some narrative-free, intimate POV photography, with plenty of close shot images, we follow the daily routine of these animals as they live what can only be described as mundane, boring lives - all with an ultimate purpose within the human food chain.

Women 50 Minutes

A representation of queer and feminist imagery that was mainly shot in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, remote and developing areas in southwest China, and metropolitan cities like Beijing from 2000 to 2004 to document the social changes in contemporary China. The director sympathetically and erotically represents a variety of women, including women as laborers, women as prayers, women in the ground, women in marriage, and women who lie on the funeral pyre with their dead husbands. Her camera juxtaposes the mountains and rivers in old times, the commercialized handicrafts as exposition, the capital exploitation of the elders’ living space, and the erotic freedom of the young people in a changing city.

We're Here to Stay

Farm families in Lestock, Saskatchewan, have pooled their resources so that rising operating costs will not drive them off their land. By pooling their land, their equipment, their livestock, and farming as a cooperative, they are able to live as they choose, to maintain their standard of living, and even to have some spare time left over to enjoy. An engaging look at a novel approach to big-scale farming.

Where is heaven

Maverick soul mates Ged and Dave are on a mission through the winding lanes and hidden tracks of North Devon, to record the lives and experiences of people living without mains electricity.

The Biggest Little Farm

The successes and failures of a couple determined to live in harmony with nature on a farm outside of Los Angeles are lovingly chronicled by filmmaking farmer John Chester, in this inspiring documentary.

The Myths of Shoplifting

A short film that tries to deter young people from shoplifting.

Werner We Love You

When Werner Herzog was still a child, his father was beaten to death before his eyes. His mother was overwhelmed with his upbringing and thereupon shipped him off to one of the toughest youth welfare institutions in Freistatt. This was followed by a career as a bouncer in the city's most notorious music club and an attempt to start a family. Today, the 77-year-old from Bielefeld lives with his dog Lucky in a lonely house in the country. Despite adverse living conditions, he has survived in his own unique and inimitable way.

LSD: Insight or Insanity?

Documentary about the potentially dangerous and unpredictable drug LSD. Various experts discuss how LSD is made and the hazards involved in using it while avid users explain why they enjoy taking it.

Bad Axe

A real-time portrait of 2020 unfolds as an Asian-American family in Trump’s rural America fights to keep their restaurant and American dream alive in the face of a pandemic, Neo-Nazis, and generational scars from the Cambodian Killing Fields.

School Town King

It follows two teenage rappers in Bangkok who use their musical talent to navigate their difficult circumstances.

The Balloonist

Meet Brian Boland—the beloved, eccentric hot air balloonist and artist from the rural Upper Valley of Vermont.

Ultraviolet

In Vancouver, British Columbia, two teenagers attempt to create a feature length documentary about their lives. The main character James (played by himself) becomes obsessed with the project and is pushed into a more introverted, lonely existence. His best friend Quinn (played by himself) sets out to help him, but is met with the real answer as to why James is keeping himself inside: the rejection of what he thinks is the love of his life. The two of them go their separate ways, with James going deeper into a depression he’s not sure he can escape from.

When the War Comes

Hundreds of teenagers join the Slovak Recruits paramilitary group to get ready for the final clash of civilizations and to fight whoever invades their country.

Cazul Antonio

A documentary about a young farmer’s experience of being kidnapped by extraterrestrials.

Come On Children

Five boys and five girls ages 13 to 19 live on a farm for ten weeks, to be filmed, and to see what might emerge for each of them personally.

Pick up the Wind

A short film following Anthony, a young child from the small, rural town of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. We see him in different moments of his daily life as he interacts with different forms of environmental, familial, and social influences. While Anthony displays contradictory traits of creativity, destruction, rigidity, and tenderness as he interacts with his external and internal worlds, we see a story built from the the multidimensionality of Anthony's layered personality as a young man.

Appearances

An atmospheric and dreamy picture poem from Argentina's vast La Pampa region, where ancient stories of spirits are evoked in dark and evocative images between reality and the beyond.

Nightshave

A narrator recounts a story about his missing friend, the downfall of a sheep shearing gang and sightings of a hairy beast in 1980s rural New Zealand.

Death of a Skyline

A group of citizens lobbied to save the landmark Alberta Wheat Pool grain elevator, one of the defining features of Mayerthorpe’s landscape, from being torn down in 2003 - as thousands of others had been. This film documents those efforts while exploring the broader history and significance of the grain elevator.

Les doléances

Plot unavailable

Prime Farmland

This documentary film follows farmers and activists fighting together to stop the Indiana Enterprise Center, a mega-sized industrial park planned west of South Bend, Indiana

Bauxita

Brazil is one of the most dangerous countries for environmentalists. The rural community of Belisário holds the country's second largest bauxite reserve, right below one of the most bio-diverse areas in the world: the Atlantic Forest. The small community was shaken when the beloved Gilberto, a Franciscan Friar, received a death threat followed by the lines: "you've been talking against mining way too much". PT: O Brasil é um dos países mais perigosos do mundo para defensores do meio ambiente. Em Minas Gerais, a comunidade rural de Belisário abriga a segunda maior reserva de bauxita do país, em uma das áreas de maior biodiversidade do mundo: a Mata Atlântica. A tranquilidade do pequeno vilarejo foi abalada quando Frei Gilberto, um franciscano que dedica sua vida à preservação da natureza, recebeu uma ameaça de morte com o seguinte aviso: "você tem falado demais contra a mineração".

Reading, Writing, and Reefer

Made for TV documentary on the widespread habitual use of marijuana among schoolchildren and teenagers in the 1970s. Part of the NBC Special Treat series.