What Killed the Roman Empire?

Why did the Roman Empire, which dominated Europe and the Mediterranean for five centuries, inexorably weaken until it disappeared? Archaeologists, specialists in ancient pathologies and climate historians are now accumulating clues converging on the same factors: a powerful cooling and pandemics. A disease, whose symptoms described by the Greek physician Galen are reminiscent of those of smallpox, struck Rome in 167, soon devastating its army. At the same time, a sudden climatic disorder that was underway as far as Eurasia caused agricultural yields to plummet and led to the westward migration of the Huns. Plagued by economic and military difficulties, attacked from all sides by barbarian tribes, the Roman edifice gradually cracked.

Malartic

Ten years after an enormous open-pit gold mine began operations in Malartic, the hoped-for economic miracle is nothing more than a mirage. Filmmaker Nicolas Paquet explores the glaring contrast between the town’s decline and the wealth of the mining company, along with the mechanisms of an opaque decision-making system in which ordinary people have little say. Part anthropological study, part investigation into the corridors of power, Malartic addresses the fundamental issue of sustainable and fair land management.

Plan 9 From Syracuse

On August 15th, 2006, filmmaker Ryan Dacko set out to get a 30-minute meeting with a major Hollywood producer by running on foot from Syracuse, New York to Hollywood, California.

Elena

In 1937, tens of thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent were exterminated by the Dominican army, on the basis of anti-black racism. Fast-forward to 2013, the Dominican Republic's Supreme Court stripped the citizenship of anyone with Haitian parents, retroactive to 1929, rendering more than 200,000 people stateless. Elena, the young protagonist of the film, and her family stand to lose their legal residency in the Dominican Republic if they don't manage to get their documents in time. Negotiating a mountain of opaque bureaucratic processes and a racist, hostile society around, Elena becomes the face of the struggle to remain in a country built on the labor of her father and forefathers.

Grizzly Man

Werner Herzog's documentary film about the "Grizzly Man" Timothy Treadwell and what the thirteen summers in a National Park in Alaska were like in one man's attempt to protect the grizzly bears. The film is full of unique images and a look into the spirit of a man who sacrificed himself for nature.

Hoxsey: When Healing Becomes a Crime

In the 1920s, former coal miner Harry Hoxsey claimed to have an herbal cure for cancer. Although scoffed at and ultimately banned by the medical establishment, by the 1950s, Hoxsey's formula had been used to treat thousands of patients, who testified to its efficacy. Was Hoxsey's recipe the work of a snake-oil charlatan or a legitimate treatment? Ken Ausubel directs this keen look into the forces that shape the policies of organized medicine.

Hammer and Cycle

A group of college students leave New Haven, CT on bicycles and plan a 4,000-mile adventure to benefit Habitat for Humanity.

Doctors of the Dark Side

Doctors of the Dark Side is the first feature length documentary about the pivotal role of physicians and psychologists in detainee torture. The stories of four detainees and the doctors involved in their abuse demonstrate how US Army and CIA doctors implemented the Enhanced Interrogation Techniques and covered up signs of torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Interviews with medical, legal and intelligence experts and evidence from declassified government memos document what has been called the greatest scandal in American medical ethics. Based on four years of research by Producer/Director Martha Davis, written by Oscar winning Mark Jonathan Harris, and filmed in HD by Emmy winning DP Lisa Rinzler, the film shows how the torture of detainees could not continue without the assistance of the doctors.

The Host : Histoires de famille

Don't Call It "Ghost Town"

Two unique perspectives on the city of Liverpool come from interviews with the director's parents.

Titanic: Stories from the Heart

James Cameron, Jon Landau, and Kate Winslet reflect on the making of Titanic, sharing unseen footage, behind-the-scenes insights, and memories that shaped cinema’s most unforgettable love story.

Cool Water

21-year-old Keith Blauschild, formally trained in the culinary arts, is also a self-taught ice carver. Together with his fiancee Angela Boone, Keith sculpts intricate but impermanent artworks for catered affairs, hotels, cruise ships and for advertising promotions. In this short documentary profile, Keith is filmed as he fashions a prototype (a sword-bearing warrior fighting a dragon) for an upcoming ice carving competition. At the contest site, the young man joins scores of other chainsaw-wielding sculptors busily freeing their creations from blocks of ice. Although Keith does not win a prize, his devotion to ice-carving remains intact. Moving from his home in New Jersey to a new life in Florida, Keith is featured as the "Person of the Week" on a Florida news broadcast

Breaking Rachmaninoff

A humorous documentary about the search for a great composer who managed to overcome his depression by spelling his own name wrong.

The Laramie Project

"The Laramie Project" is set in and around Laramie, Wyoming, in the aftermath of the murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard. To create the stage version of "The Laramie Project," the eight-member New York-based Tectonic Theatre Project traveled to Laramie, Wyoming, recording hours of interviews with the town's citizens over a two-year period. The film adaptation dramatizes the troupe's visit, using the actual words from the transcripts to create a portrait of a town forced to confront itself.

Cao Bang, les soldats sacrifiés d'Indochine

So Help Me God

Some 20 years ago, two sex workers were murdered in an upper-class Brussels neighborhood. Celebrated Belgian magistrate Anne Gurwez decides to revisit this cold case, pouring over the evidence with the use of new technologies and tracking down then-suspects.

The Typewriter and Other Headaches

This third opus will take us into the homes of some of the Adamant and Averroes & Rosa Parks’ protagonists, during the visits led by their caregivers.

Innovations in Film: 65mm Black and White Film in Oppenheimer

FotoKem gives in-depth tour of the new scientific and artistic workflows that had to be invented in order to realize Christopher Nolan's unique vision of using both color and black & white 65mm film in the same motion picture

Dead Set!

A documentary celebrating the culture, spirit and style of Australian music featuring interviews and live performances from You Am I, Spiderbait, Regurgitator, Custard, Grinspoon, Jebediah, Something for Kate, Frenzal Rhomb, Ammonia, Crow, and Bodyjar.

Face 'Caché'

A documentary on the shooting of Michael Haneke's movie 'Hidden' (Caché). Including interviews with Michael Haneke, Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil.

Labyrinth of Passion

An array of outrageous people, including a desperate nymphomaniac and a terrorist with an acute sense of smell, seek love and happiness in Madrid.

Destroy All Monsters

At the turn of the century, all of the Earth's monsters have been rounded up and kept safely on Monsterland. Chaos erupts when a race of she-aliens known as the Kilaaks unleash the monsters across the world.

Waking Ned

When a lottery winner dies of shock, his fellow townsfolk attempt to claim the money.

Hi, Mom!

Vietnam vet Jon Rubin returns to New York and rents a rundown flat in Greenwich Village. It is in this flat that he begins to film, 'Peeping Tom' style, the people in the apartment across the street. His obsession with making films leads him to fall in with a radical 'Black Power' group, which in turn leads him to carry out a bizarre act of urban terrorism.

American Graffiti

A couple of high school graduates spend one final night cruising the strip with their buddies before they go off to college.

The Insider

A research chemist comes under personal and professional attack when he decides to appear in a 60 Minutes exposé on Big Tobacco.

Shotgun Stories

Shotgun Stories tracks a feud that erupts between two sets of half brothers following the death of their father. Set against the cotton fields and back roads of Southeast Arkansas, these brothers discover the lengths to which each will go to protect their family.

Carlito's Way

Free after years in prison, Carlito Brigante intends to give up his criminal ways, but it's not long before the ex-con is sucked back into the New York City underworld. Reconnecting with his dancer girlfriend, Carlito gets entangled in the shady dealings of his friend Dave Kleinfeld, who also serves as his lawyer. An encounter with shifty gangster Benny Blanco sets the duo on a dangerous path.

Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl

Monty Python perform many of their greatest sketches at the Hollywood Bowl, including several from pre-Python days.

Wild Strawberries

Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his pregnant and unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.

New York Stories

Three tales of love, ambition, and neurosis unfold in the city that never sleeps. In "Life Lessons" (Martin Scorsese), a tormented painter channels heartbreak into his art. In "Life Without Zoë" (Francis Ford Coppola), a precocious 12-year-old navigates privilege and loneliness in a Manhattan hotel. And in "Oedipus Wrecks" (Woody Allen), a man’s domineering mother literally becomes a looming presence over New York.

Female Trouble

Dawn Davenport progresses from a teenage nightmare hell-bent on getting cha-cha heels for Christmas to a fame monster whose egomaniacal impulses land her in the electric chair.

The Gospel According to St. Matthew

Along a rocky, barren coastline, Jesus begins teaching, primarily using parables. He attracts disciples; he's stern, brusque, and demanding. His parables often take on the powers that be, so he and his teachings come to the attention of the Pharisees, the chief priests, and elders. They conspire to have him arrested, beaten, tried, and crucified, just as he prophesied to his followers.

Youth Without Youth

Professor of language and philosophy Dominic Matei is struck by lightning and ages backwards from 70 to 40 in a week, attracting the world and the Nazis. While on the run, the professor meets a young woman who has her own experience with a lightning storm. Not only does Dominic find love again, but her new abilities hold the key to his research.

Accattone

A pimp with no other means to provide for himself finds his life spiralling out of control when his prostitute is sent to prison.

The Merchant of Venice

Venice, 1596. Bassanio begs his friend Antonio, a prosperous merchant, to lend him a large sum of money so that he can woo Portia, a very wealthy heiress; but Antonio has invested his fortune abroad, so they turn to Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, and ask him for a loan.

The King and I

Widowed Welsh mother Anna Leonowens becomes a governess and English tutor to the wives and many children of the stubborn King Mongkut of Siam. Anna and the King have a clash of personalities as she works to teach the royal family about the English language, customs and etiquette, and rushes to prepare a party for a group of European diplomats who must change their opinions about the King.

Three Colors: Red

Part-time model Valentine unexpectedly befriends a retired judge after she runs over his dog. At first, the grumpy man shows no concern about the dog, and Valentine decides to keep it. But the two form a bond when she returns to his house and catches him listening to his neighbors’ phone calls.

Eyes of Laura Mars

A famous fashion photographer develops a disturbing ability to see through the eyes of a serial killer.

Missing

Based on the real-life experiences of Ed Horman. A conservative American businessman travels to Chile to investigate the sudden disappearance of his son after a military takeover. Accompanied by his son's wife he uncovers a trail of cover-ups that implicate the US State department which supports the dictatorship.