The Meme Machine

An exploration of the origins of memes, how they spread, and the stories behind some of the most popular “human memes” like Ermahgerd Girl, Overly Attached Girlfriend, and Chocolate Rain Guy.

2016-12-16 | en

This Is How a Child Becomes a Poet

The last day of Patrizia Cavalli’s home. Before it’s all gone.

2023-08-30 | fr

Contratempo

2008-02-13 | pt

The Codes of Gender

Arguing that advertising not only sells things, but also ideas about the world, media scholar Sut Jhally offers a blistering analysis of commercial culture's inability to let go of reactionary gender representations. Jhally's starting point is the breakthrough work of the late sociologist Erving Goffman, whose 1959 book The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life prefigured the growing field of performance studies. Jhally applies Goffman's analysis of the body in print advertising to hundreds of print ads today, uncovering an astonishing pattern of regressive and destructive gender codes. By looking beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that tend to focus on either biology or objectification, The Codes of Gender offers important insights into the social construction of masculinity and femininity, the relationship between gender and power, and the everyday performance of cultural norms.

2010-10-13 | en

Carmen Miranda: Bananas Is My Business

A biography of the Portuguese-born Brazilian singer Carmen Miranda, whose most distinctive feature was her tutti-frutti hat. From her arrival in the US as the "Brazilian Bombshell" to her Broadway career and Hollywood stardom in the 1940s.

1995-04-13 | pt

Nas: Time Is Illmatic

Time Is Illmatic is a feature length documentary film that delves deep into the making of Nas' 1994 debut album, Illmatic, and the social conditions that influenced its creation.

2014-04-04 | en

Boris Ryzhy

Russian Poet Boris Ryzhy was handsome, talented and famous. So why did he end his own life at the age of 26? A quest to find the answer takes the filmmaker to the notorious neighbourhood in the cold industrial city of Yekaterinenburg where Boris grew up...

2008-12-01 | ru

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.

1938-04-21 | de

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.

1938-06-02 | de

From the Depths

Both an activist and a documentarian, Valentina Pedicini also brings her background in anthropology to this impressively captured, claustrophobic nonfiction feature. Venturing beneath sea level, From the Depths profiles the lone woman at work in the last coal mine in Sardinia, Italy.

2013-11-13 | it

How to Cook Your Life

A Zen priest in San Francisco and cookbook author use Zen Buddhism and cooking to relate to everyday life.

2007-05-10 | en

France / Tour / Detour / Two / Children

In this astonishing twelve-part project for and about television — the title of which refers to a 19th-century French primer Le tour de la France par deux enfants — Godard and Miéville take a detour through the everyday lives of two children in contemporary France.

1979-01-01 | fr

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.

2004-05-14 | en

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.

2004-01-15 | en

Fanalysis

Actor/cult icon Bruce Campbell examines the world of fan conventions and what makes a fan into a fanatic.

2002-03-05 | en

Last Fast Ride: The Life, Love and Death of a Punk Goddess

Henry Rollins narrates Lilly Scourtis Ayers' no-holds-barred profile of volatile Bay Area punk legend Marian Anderson, whose hypnotic beauty, devil-may-care rebellion and shocking sexual exploits onstage launched her to infamy before tragically dying of a heroin overdose at the tender age of 33.

2011-03-10 | en

Happy on the Ground: 8 Days at Grammy Camp

Talented teen musicians from around the USA spend a week working with Grammy nominated professionals

2011-04-16 | en

Edith+Eddie

Edith and Eddie, ages 96 and 95, are America's oldest interracial newlyweds. Their unusual and idyllic love story is threatened by a family feud that triggers a devastating abuse of the legal guardianship system.

2017-03-02 | en

Ukraine in Flames

A 1943 Soviet war propaganda film by Ukrainian director Oleksandr Dovzhenko and Yuliya Solntseva. It is Dovzhenko's second World War II documentary, and dealt with the Battle of Kharkiv. The film incorporates German footage of the invasion of Ukraine, which was later captured by the Soviets.

1943-04-01 | ru

Seven Islands and a Metro

This film is a tale of the cities of Bom Bahia / Bombay / Mumbai, through a tapestry of fiction, cinema verite, art objects, found footage, sound installation and literary texts.

2006-01-01 | hi