Gifted and Challenged: The Making of 'Shortbus'

A look at the unusual process used in the making of the film Shortbus (2006) featuring interviews, behind the scenes footage and clips from the feature film. Director John Cameron Mitchell starts with the concept of using real sex in a film with a positive message. The cast of unknowns is selected from homemade audition tapes and then a callback audition workshop. More acting workshops are used to develop the characters and script. The project overcomes a number of obstacles and the rest of the film's development is followed up until its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

The Last Repair Shop

In a warehouse in the heart of Los Angeles, a dwindling handful of devoted craftspeople maintain more than 80,000 student musical instruments, the largest remaining workshop in America of its kind. Meet four unforgettable characters whose broken-and-repaired lives have been dedicated to bringing so much more than music to the schoolchildren of this city.

Cult People

In interviews, various actors and directors discuss their careers and their involvement in the making of what has come to be known as "cult" films. Included are such well-known genre figures as Russ Meyer, Curtis Harrington, Cameron Mitchell and James Karen.

Kenneth: Ron Padgett

Ron Padgett (1942- ) is a poet and editor whose artistic career took off during his teenaged years in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There, along with Joe Brainard and Dick Gallup, he produced The White Dove Review, an art and culture magazine. Both Padgett and Brainard serendipitously moved together to New York City, where Padgett studied at Columbia University under the tutelage of Kenneth Koch and interacted with various Beat poets. He has taught poetry at various schools in the City, edited volumes such as the Full Court Press and Teachers & Writers Magazine and written volumes of poetry including 2013’s Collected Poems which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He also wrote “memoirs” of both Brainard and fellow Tulsan Ted Berrigan.

Billy Joel: Building the Bridge

In 1986, Billy Joel released the album titled The Bridge on July 29th on Columbia Records. Go behind the scenes with Billy and learn about the songwriting and recording process behind the album.

Post New Bills: The Story of Green Patriot Posters

A short documentary illustrating how art can influence public perception towards environmental issues. Green Patriot Posters is a highly acclaimed multimedia design campaign that challenges artists to deepen public understanding and ignite collective action in the fight against climate change. So far, it has reached five million people through print media, public space and digital culture. The film features interviews with key Green Patriot Posters contributors (Shepard Fairey, Michael Bierut, DJ Spooky, Mathilde Fallot) and its founders (The Canary Project, Dmitri Siegel).

Explorer: Lake of Fire

In 2001, satellite imagery captured a mysterious “thermal anomaly” on an unexplored volcano at the ends of the Earth. What lies inside could provide new clues to help predict volcanic eruptions around the globe. But the island is so remote with conditions that are so extreme. No one has ever been able to reach the top to investigate what lies inside.. until now.

Disney Presents: Main Street Electrical Parade - Farewell Season

Catch the spark after dark at Disneyland Park. And say farewell to one of the Magic Kingdom's most celebrated traditions - The Main Street Electrical Parade. Where else, but in The Main Street Electrical Parade, could you see an illuminated 40-foot-long fire-breathing dragon? And hear the energy of its legendary melody one last time? It's unforgettable after-dark magic that will glow in your heart long after the last float has disappeared.

The Roots of Wolverine: A Conversation with Stan Lee and Len Wein

Stan Lee and Len Wein talk about X-Men & Wolverine.

4 men in Orkney

The Beauty President

In 1992, at the height of the AIDS pandemic, activist Terence Alan Smith made a historic bid for president of the United States as his drag queen persona Joan Jett Blakk. Today, Smith reflects back on his seminal civil rights campaign and its place in American history.

The Congolese Rainforests: Living on Borrowed Time

In June 2010, French actress Marion Cotillard spent a week in the heart of the tropical forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo with members of Greenpeace France and Greenpeace Africa. She delivers in video a strong testimony on the looting of Congolese forests which benefits a few industrial groups, often European.

Godzilla: King of The Monsters- The Antarctic Base

In Monarch's Antarctic Base, a frozen fortress buffeted by screaming winds and surrounded by impenetrable ice, King Ghidorah shakes off his icy slumber and escapes in one of the film's most thrilling sequences. Join the filmmakers as they reveal how King Ghidorah was brought to terrifying life inside Monarch's underground biolab with its towering ice wall.

Twin Peaks: The Phenomenon

"Twin Peaks: The Phenomenon" is a three-part short documentary briefly chronicling the history of Twin Peaks. Produced and released on YouTube as part of the build-up to the premiere of the 2017 series, it was released on home video as part of Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series and Twin Peaks: From Z to A.

The Finest Kind: A People's History of the Lockeport Lockout, 1939

In the fall of 1939, more than 600 fishermen and fish handlers in the tiny town of Lockeport, Nova Scotia walked the picket line in front of the town's only employers, Swim Brothers and the Lockeport Company. Both fishplants had locked their doors rather than recognize the Canadian Fishermen's Union as official bargaining agent. For eight weeks, as autumn turned to winter, the men, with their wives and families, held firm. It was a bread-and-butter struggle that made national headlines--one of the first major attempts by Nova Scotia fishermen and fishhandlers to win union recognition, and one of the first major tests of the N.S. Trade Union Act, passed in 1937.

Hold Your Breath and Cross Your Fingers: The Story of 'Dark Passage'

Bogart was interested in this project because it offered a chance to work with his new bride. The studio wasn't convinced, but the result speaks for itself.

Preschool to Prison

Preschool to Prison is a compelling examination of how the United States public school system is built and operated like prisons. Zero-tolerance policies are used to justify suspension and arrests that set up a pathway to send children of color and children with special needs from school to prison. Children are being suspended, restrained, dragged, physically manhandled, and subsequently arrested for minor offenses such as throwing candy on a school bus. These personal accounts from people affected by the school-to-prison pipeline give riveting tales about the generational impact on society.

Deep Ocean: The Lost World of the Pacific

The same submarine which successfully captured the world's first moving images of a giant squid in its natural habitat is used for exploring the deep sea cliffs off the coast of New Guinea. The team encounters true living fossil species one after another. Join this exciting deep sea adventure!

Gary Hemming, le beatnik des cimes

The American mountaineer Gary Hemming marked the era of the 1960s. The story of this "exceptional" character is intimately linked to that of the rescue of the two German mountaineers on the west face of the Drus, in 1966, a rescue which he had took the initiative. While the official emergency services of the EHM try to reach them from above, a pirate rope made up of Gary Hemming, René Desmaison, Lothar Mauch, Gil Bodin, Mike Brurke, François Guillot, the filmmaker Gérard Bauer organizes to join them from below and succeeded after a fierce struggle the rescue. The press seizes the event and elevates Gary Hemming to the rank of national hero. All the newspapers feature this big guy with a cool attitude, mismatched clothes, jovial smile and long blond hair on the front page. From then on, he was nicknamed: "the beatnik of the peaks".

The Seafarers

Members of the American Federation of Labor, the Atlantic & Gulf Coast District of the Seafarers International Union commissioned budding filmmaker and magazine photographer Stanley Kubrick to direct this half-hour documentary. The director's first film in color, it is more of an industrial film than a documentary, it served as a promotional tool to recruit sailors to the union.