First Run Features (Firm)
Description
Silent Waters is set in 1979 in Pakistan, when General Zia-ul-Haq took control of the country and stoked the fires of Islamic nationalism. Ayesha, a Muslim woman who gets by on her late husband’s pension and by teaching young girls the Koran, invests her hopes in her beloved son Saleem. But when Saleem takes up with a group of Islamic fundamentalists just as a group of Sikh pilgrims come to town, Ayesha’s haunted past turns her present life upside...
Description
James Thurber: The Life and Hard Times is the first major documentary on the life and work of one of America's greatest humorists. Known for his classic short story, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Thurber was a legendary contributor of prose and cartoons to The New Yorker magazine where he worked for many years. Narrated by George Plimpton, this documentary includes interviews with Edward Albee, John Updike, Alistair Cooke, Roy Blount Jr., Fran...
Description
Leon is not like most 10-year olds. This innocent looking boy with an overly fertile imagination is a young hellion, a consummate liar and thief well-versed in breaking and entering his neighbors’ homes and running away from his own. His explosively dysfunctional family reaches new levels of lunacy when Mom decides to pack her bags to start a new life in Greece. Leon is prepared to do anything to kill the pain of it all, from destroying the neighbors’...
Description
In this film by Academy Award winner Cynthia Scott, seven old women become stranded at a deserted farmhouse miles from civilization. They don't have much food, or a decent place to sleep. Or much in common. But these surprising, remarkable women turn a crisis into a magical time of humor and spirit.
Description
Shane Black (Lethal Weapon), John Carpenter (Halloween), Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption), William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver), and dozens of other Hollywood screenwriters share penetrating insights and hilarious anecdotes in Peter Hanson’s Tales from the Script, the most comprehensive documentary ever made about screenwriting. By analyzing their triumphs and recalling their failures, the participants...
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Charismatic cleric Abdul Aziz Ghazi, an ISIS supporter and Taliban ally, is waging jihad against the Pakistani state. His dream is to impose a strict version of Shariah law throughout the country, as a model for the world. A flashpoint in Aziz's holy war took place in 2007, when the government leveled his flagship mosque to the ground, killing his mother, brother, only son and 150 students. With unprecedented access, Among the Believers follows Aziz...
Description
Simply and eloquently, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explains how the world's economy works. Drawing not only from his academic expertise but also from time spent on the ground in countries around the world, Stiglitz offers fresh thinking about the questions and challenges facing all of us - from well-off Americans to those mired in Third World poverty. This five part series will appeal to experts and non-experts alike, as Stiglitz's...
Description
A look into the complex and contradictory personality of Yossef Nachmani, the man largely responsible for the first Zionist settlements in the Galilee. As director of the Jewish National Fund office in the Galilee, Nachmani acquired as much land from Arabs as possible to establish Jewish settlements upon it. The film focuses on events in Tiberius, Nachmani's hometown, a mixed community where Arabs and Jews coexisted harmoniously. Nachmani left behind...
9) September 11
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Eleven acclaimed directors each make an 11 minute short film in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The result is a daring and moving global cinematic reply that "forces us to look at the entire event afresh" (The New York Times)...Featuring films by: Alejandro Gonzlez Inrritu (Babel, Amores Perros); Mira Nair (The Namesake, Vanity Fair); Ken Loach (The Wind That Shakes the Barley); Sean Penn (Into the Wild) and more.
Description
Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant looms just 35 miles from Times Square. With over 50 million people living in close proximity to the aging facility, its continued operation has the support of the plant's operators and the NRC -- Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- yet has stoked a great deal of controversy in the surrounding community, including a vocal anti-nuclear contingent concerned that what happened at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant could happen...
Description
In 1986, Ross McElwee and Marilyn Levine were making a film about the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall, when the imposing structure was still very much intact as the world’s most visible symbol of hardline Communism and Cold War lore. They thought they were making a documentary on the community of tourists, soldiers, and West Berliners who lived in the seemingly eternal presence of the graffiti emblazoned eyesore...But in 1989, as the original...
12) Tokyo Fiancee
Description
Based on Amelie Nothomb's bestselling novel, Tokyo Fiancee is an entertaining romantic comedy that will appeal to fans of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amelie and Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation.. The young, pixie-like Amelie is in love with all things Japanese, which prompts her to buy a one-way ticket to Tokyo in order to completely immerse herself in Japanese culture. She offers to work as a French tutor, and soon finds herself enjoying a passionate...
Description
Simply and eloquently, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explains how the world's economy works. Drawing not only from his academic expertise but also from time spent on the ground in countries around the world, Stiglitz offers fresh thinking about the questions and challenges facing all of us - from well-off Americans to those mired in Third World poverty. This five part series will appeal to experts and non-experts alike, as Stiglitz's...
Description
Guy Martin is the chef of Le Grand Vefour, the legendary, Michelin 3-star Parisian restaurant. As a kid, he dreamed of being a doctor or a rock star. First trained in a pizzeria, 20 years later he is recognized as one of the best chefs in the world, with dozens of awards and restaurants in four countries. "Guy Martin: Portrait of a Grand Chef" reveals Martin's philosophy of cooking, which ranges from resolutely traditional to savagely creative. It...
15) L'Iceberg
Description
Fiona is the manager of a fast-food restaurant. She lives comfortably with her family in the suburbs. In other words, Fiona is happy. Until the day she accidentally gets locked into a walk-in freezer. She escapes the next morning, half frozen and barely alive, only to realize that her husband and two children didn't even notice she was missing. But when Fiona develops an obsession for everything cold and icy - snow, polar bears, refrigerators, icebergs...
Description
Simply and eloquently, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explains how the world's economy works. Drawing not only from his academic expertise but also from time spent on the ground in countries around the world, Stiglitz offers fresh thinking about the questions and challenges facing all of us - from well-off Americans to those mired in Third World poverty. This five part series will appeal to experts and non-experts alike, as Stiglitz's...
Description
Talent Has Hunger is an inspiring film about the power of music to consume, enhance, and propel lives. Filmed over 7 years, the film is a window into the mysterious world of the artist, the passion that can grip and sustain a young player from childhood through the last days of life and the years of sacrifice and dedication a budding artist needs to fulfill one’s talent. The film focuses on the challenges of guiding gifted young people through the...
18) Magical Girl
Description
One of the breakout hits of Spain's burgeoning low-budget filmmaking scene, Carlos Vermut's debut, Diamond Flash, instantly established the young filmmaker as a deft practitioner of the thriller genre. Vermut's follow-up, Magical Girl, employs a classic noir premise, taking his exploration of the darkest side of human nature to exhilarating new extremes. Luis (Luis Bermejo) is desperate to fulfill his terminally ill daughter's last wish: to own the...
19) Come Undone
Description
After their award-winning collaboration in Wild Side, screenwriter Stephane Bouquet and screenwriter/director Sebastien Lifshitz come together again to create the sensual and meditative COME UNDONE, which explores a young boy’s homosexual awakening and the turbulence of first love. Taking place at a seaside town near western France, Mathieu (Jeremie Elkaim), a quiet 18-years-old spending the summer with his troubled family, meets the handsome and...
20) Dance for Camera
Description
Dance for Camera presents six films that are among the most outstanding examples of a new film genre that merges dance and film. Selected from festivals in Europe and North America, and winners of over 17 international awards, these films present an array of humor, drama, beauty and rhythm not usually seen on film or stage made by young emerging artists from around the world.