Looking for a Happy Ending

“The Soviet Story” is a story of an Allied power, which helped the Nazis to fight Jews and which slaughtered its own people on an industrial scale. Assisted by the West, this power triumphed on May 9th, 1945. Its crimes were made taboo, and the complete story of Europe’s most murderous regime has never been told. Until now...

In an intimate and joyful story of love in the face of loss, celebrated poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley find strength—and unexpected hilarity—in what might be their final year together.

A subjective documentary that explores various theories about hidden meanings in Stanley Kubrick's classic film The Shining. Five very different points of view are illuminated through voice over, film clips, animation and dramatic reenactments.

Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.

This searing investigative work shadows a group of activists risking unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ program raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic. Unfettered access and a remarkable approach to protecting anonymity exposes this under-reported atrocity–and an extraordinary group of people confronting evil.

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.

Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.

The history of cinematic sound, told by legendary sound designers and visionary filmmakers.

A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.

A string of threatening emails escalates into a revenge plot involving a newly married US marshal and his ex-girlfriend.

A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.

Before computer graphics, special effects wizardry, and out-of-this world technology, the magic of animation flowed from the pencils of two of the greatest animators The Walt Disney Company ever produced -- Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. Frank and Ollie, the talent behind BAMBI, PINOCCHIO, LADY AND THE TRAMP, THE JUNGLE BOOK, and others, set the standard for such modern-day hits as THE LION KING. It was their creative genius that helped make Disney synonymous with brilliant animation, magnificent music, and emotional storytelling. Take a journey with these extraordinary artists as they share secrets, insights, and the inspiration behind some of the greatest animated movies the world has ever known!

Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.

George Orwell was one of the most visionary authors of the 20th century, whose novels 1984 and Animal Farm foretold a chilling, authoritarian future. Acclaimed director Raoul Peck interweaves clips, readings from Orwell's diary, cinematic references, and modern-day footage to craft not only a portrait of the writer, but a fresh take on how prophetic his work has become.

Al Pacino's deeply-felt rumination on Shakespeare's significance and relevance to the modern world through interviews and an in-depth analysis of "Richard III."

Performance artist Marina Abramovic prepares for a major retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Pete Postlethwaite stars as a man living alone in the devastated future world of 2055, looking at old footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?

A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.

Artists in LA discover the work of forgotten Polish sculptor Stanislav Szukalski, a mad genius whose true story unfolds chapter by astounding chapter.

A 1993 documentary film about Bruce Lee. The film includes interviews from some of his fellow students and opponents who worked alongside him in his movies.

As Russian writer Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) thinks it is impossible that his novel Doctor Zhivago is published in the Soviet Union, because it supposedly shows a critical view of the October Revolution, he decides to smuggle several copies of the manuscript out of the country. It is first published in 1957 in Italia and the author receives the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958, which has consequences.

An examination of the life of great Russian author Leo Tolstoy, who penned the 1877 novel Anna Karenina.

An artist had a vision for art and expressed it in his paintings, fashion designs, and photographs. He created a virtual reality exhibition and virtual reality artworks that people could experience and feel.

Thirty years after the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred on the night of April 26, 1986, its causes and consequences are examined. In addition, a report on efforts to strengthen the structures covering the core of the nuclear plant in order to better protect the population and the environment is offered.

St. Petersburg, Russia, December 30th, 1916. Grigori Rasputin is assassinated. The story of the humble peasant who became the most influential adviser to czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of the last czar, Nicholas II Romanov.

Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Iceland, July 9, 2016. The surprising discovery of a canister —containing four reels of The Village Detective (Деревенский детектив), a 1969 Soviet film—, caught in the nets of an Icelandic trawler, is the first step in a fascinating journey through the artistic life of film and stage actor Mikhail Ivanovich Zharov (1899-1981), icon and star of an entire era of Russian cinema.

Painter Françoise Gilot shared Pablo Picasso's life from 1943 to 1953. This union nourished their respective artistic creations.

A short film by Barry Lowe and Dino Mahoney, starring Pauline Burton as Anna. The film is an introduction to the great Soviet era modernist poet, Anna Akhmatova; shot in winter in Saint Petersburg (Leningrad), it contains rare interviews with people who knew her, academics, and dramatized readings of some of her poems.

This 56-minute documentary on America's most controversial and unique composer manages to cover a great many aspects of Cage's work and thought. His love for mushrooms, his Zen beliefs and use of the I Ching, and basic bio details are all explained intelligently and dynamically. Black Mountain, Buckminster Fuller, Rauschenberg, Duchamp are mentioned. Yoko Ono, John Rockwell, Laurie Anderson, Richard Kostelanetz make appearances. Fascinating performance sequences include Margaret Leng-Tan performing on prepared piano, Merce Cunningham and company, and performances of Credo In Us, Water Music, and Third Construction. Demystifies the man who made music from silence, from all sounds, from life.

Alan Yentob profiles the most successful female architect there has ever been, the late Zaha Hadid, who designed buildings around the globe from Austria to Azerbaijan.

M.C. Escher is among the most intriguing of artists. In 1956 he challenged the laws of perspective with his graphic Print Gallery and his uncompleted master-piece quickly became the most puzzling enigma of modern art. Fifty years later, can mathematician Hendrik Lenstra complete it? Should he?

Explorations in 21st Century American Architecture Series: Ray Kappe has long been a cult figure in the architectural scene in and around Los Angeles. In 1972, he founded the influential, avant garde Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-ARC), where many of the younger-generation architects have studied or taught.

No understanding of the modern movement in architecture is possible without knowledge of its master builder, Mies van der Rohe. Together with documentation of his life, this film shows all his major buildings, as well as rare film footage of Mies explaining his philosophy. Phyllis Lambert relates her choice of Mies as the architect for the Seagram building. Mies's achievements and continuing influence are debated by architects Robert A.M. Stern, Robert Venturi, and Philip Johnson, by former students and by architectural historians. Mies is seen in rare documentary footage.

The story of Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) and his masterpiece, The Gulag Archipelago, published in Paris in 1973, which forever shook the very foundations of communist ideology.

M'hamed Issiakhem (Kabyle: Mḥemmed Isyaxem; Arabic: محمد إسياخم)—born on June 17, 1928, in Taboudoucht (Aghribs), then part of the Tizi Ouzou Department in Algeria, and who died on December 1, 1985, in Algiers—was an Algerian painter and a leading figure of modern painting in Algeria. In 1943, he handled a grenade stolen from a US military camp, and it exploded; two of his sisters and a nephew were killed. Hospitalized for two years, he underwent the amputation of his left arm. From 1947 to 1951, he studied in Algiers, first at the Société des Beaux-Arts and later at the École des Beaux-Arts. "A country without artists is a dead country... I hope we are alive..." These words were spoken in a film by Fawzi Sahraoui—produced by the RTA in 1985 and shot just months before the painter M'hamed Issiakhem passed away. It is a fascinating docudrama in which Issiakhem opens up with subtlety, passion, and generosity.

A documentary on the life and work of the composer Sofia Gubaidulina.

Departing from peripheral details of some paintings of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, a female narrator unravels several stories related to the economic, social and psychological conditions of past and current artists.