WISHBONER: Making an Awkward Thanksgiving

Funny Up North

July 2011 •English

Documentary featuring a cavalcade of Northern comedy stars including the great Frank Randle, George Formby, Arthur Askey, Norman Evans and many more. The North of England has always enjoyed its own very particular brand of comedy, best seen today in Coronation Street. 80 years ago however Mancunian Studios produced feature films for the northern masses. Funny Up North tells the story of the Mancunian Studios, its eccentric owner John E Blakeley and its cavalcade of stars including such household names as Arthur Askey, Jimmy Jewell, George Formby and the legendary Frank Randle. Hosted by Professor Chris Lee, the authority on northern cinema, Funny Up North takes you on a journey from its humble beginnings to its sad demise in the 1960s.

No tan nuestras

March 2005 •Spanish

The Falklands/Malvinas War has proved a powerful motif in contemporary Argentine film-making and Ramiro Longo's new documentary offers a unique take on the conflict and its pervasive legacy. While Argentina suffered 649 casualties during the War, subsequently over 350 ex-servicemen have committed suicide while attempting to come to terms with civilian life in the aftermath of the 1982 defeat. Longo's film is structured around an extended interview with War veteran Sergio Delgado who provides a moving testimony on the conflict and the ways in which it has subsequently haunted his life and aspirations. As much an insider's view of the conflict as a tale of the legacy of trauma, Not Really Ours offers a reflection on memory, fear and the shaping of a nation's psyche. Longo's deft editing juxtaposes telling footage alongside Delgado's story. The result is both a moving tapestry of war and its scars and a telling reflection on the ways in which official history is constructed.

Night and Fog

April 1959 •French

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Dogtown and Z-Boys

May 2002 •English

This award-winning, thrilling story is about a group of discarded kids who revolutionized skateboarding and shaped the attitude and culture of modern day extreme sports. Featuring old skool skating footage, exclusive interviews and a blistering rock soundtrack, DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS captures the rise of the Zephyr skateboarding team from Venice's Dogtown, a tough "locals only" beach with a legacy of outlaw surfing.

Indietracks

June 2016 •English

In 2007 an indiepop music festival was born in the unlikeliest of settings - a heritage steam train site, Butterley Derbyshire. Bringing together passionate characters from two very distinct worlds this affectionate portrait is told from the point of view of the retired volunteers that run the locos who have "steam in their blood" and don't really know very much about "this indiepop music".

Billy the Kid

December 2007 •English

"I'm not black, I'm not white, not foreign, just different in the mind. Different brains, that's all," explains 15-year-old Billy in Jennifer Venditti's provocative coming of age film. Following Billy as he bicycles through the quiet streets of small town Maine, we watch him traverse the frustrating gap between imagination and reality, grappling with isolation and first-time young love. By turns exhilarating and disturbing, we see the world from the intimate view of an expressive and seemingly fearless outsider.

The Dungeon Masters

September 2008 •English

The Dungeon Masters explores the subculture of role-playing games, specifically Dungeons & Dragons, which for over 30 years has offered gamers the chance to escape their mundane lives and participate in a world they might otherwise never experience. Popularity and power are based on creativity and imagination rather than social status or wealth, and success is based not on who you know but on what you do.

Ask the Sexpert

May 2017 •English

A sex columnist gains popularity even while a ban on comprehensive sex education in schools is adopted by approximately a third of India’s states.

Isaiah vs. The Hodag

December 2020 •English

A young man living with his parents in Wisconsin comes face to face with a terrifying monster while searching for the elusive cryptic known as the Hodag.

Google Me

April 2007 •English

Jim Killeen googled his own name and made a documentary about the men with whom he shares it.

Your Mommy Kills Animals

January 2007 •English

American Swing

October 2009 •English

Chronicles the rise and fall of 1970s New York City nightclub Plato's Retreat.

Up the Yangtze

September 2007 •Chinese

A luxury cruise boat motors up the Yangtze - navigating the mythic waterway known in China simply as "The River." The Yangtze is about to be transformed by the biggest hydroelectric dam in history. At the river's edge - a young woman says goodbye to her family as the floodwaters rise towards their small homestead. The Three Gorges Dam - contested symbol of the Chinese economic miracle - provides the epic backdrop for Up the Yangtze, a dramatic feature documentary on life inside modern China.

Cirque du Soleil: Quidam

December 1999 •English

A young girl has already seen everything there is to see and her world has lost all meaning. Her anger shatters her world and she finds herself in the universe of QUIDAM, where she is joined by a playful companion, as well as another mysterious character who attempts to seduce her with the marvelous, the unsettling and the terrifying.

No End in Sight

July 2007 •English

Chronological look at the fiasco in Iraq, especially decisions made in the spring of 2003 - and the backgrounds of those making decisions - immediately following the overthrow of Saddam: no occupation plan, an inadequate team to run the country, insufficient troops to keep order, and three edicts from the White House announced by Bremmer when he took over.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston

March 2006 •English

This 2005 documentary film chronicles the life of Daniel Johnston, a manic-depressive genius singer/songwriter/artist, from childhood up to the present, with an emphasis on his mental illness and how it manifested itself in demonic self-obsession.

Into Great Silence

September 2005 •German

An intimate portrayal of the everyday lives of Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse, high in the French Alps (Chartreuse Mountains). The idea for the film was proposed to the monks in 1984, but the Carthusians said they wanted time to think about it. The Carthusians finally contacted Gröning 16 years later to say they were now willing to permit Gröning to shoot the movie, if he was still interested.

Brothers at War

March 2009 •English

BROTHERS AT WAR is an intimate portrait of an American family during a turbulent time.  Jake Rademacher sets out to understand the experience, sacrifice, and motivation of his two brothers serving in Iraq. The film follows Jake’s exploits as he risks everything—including his life—to tell his brothers’ story.

Horns and Halos

March 2002 •English

"What if someone wrote your biography? Would there be horns and halos involved?"

State of Bacon

May 2014 •English

State of Bacon tells the kinda real but mostly fake tale of an oddball group of characters leading up to the annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival. Bacon-enthusiasts, Governor Branstad, a bacon queen, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, members of PETA, and an envoy of Icelanders are not excluded from this bacon party and during the course of the film become intertwined with the organizers of the festival to show that bacon diplomacy is not dead.