Sharkwater
For filmmaker Rob Stewart, exploring sharks began as an underwater adventure. What it turned into was a beautiful and dangerous life journey into the balance of life on earth. Driven by passion fed from a lifelong fascination with sharks, Stewart debunks historical stereotypes and media depictions of sharks as bloodthirsty, man-eating monsters and reveals the […]
BLOKADA
BLOKADA is a unique view from within on the most massive, longest, and politically most significant student protest in the country, since 1971, that started in April of 2009 at the Faculty of humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. The struggle against the commercialization of education and the blockade of teaching classes lasted for 34 […]
Warrior Women
In the 1970s, with the swagger of unapologetic Indianness, organizers of the American Indian Movement (AIM) fought for Native liberation as a community of extended families. Warrior Women is the story Madonna Thunder Hawk, one such AIM leader who cultivated a rag-tag gang of activist children – including her daughter Marcy – into a group […]
Two Cars, One Night
Set in the carpark of a rural pub in Tek Kaha, New Zealand, this award-winning short comedy from Taika Waititi tells the story of two brothers, Romeo and Ed, who wait in the car while their parents are inside drinking. Romeo spots Polly, an eleven-year-old girl who is also waiting for her parents in their […]
Girl Inside
Following 26-year-old Madison during a crucial three years of her transition from male to female, GIRL INSIDE is a beautiful film that tracks her emotional, intellectual and spiritual journey of self-discovery that is as important as – if not more than – the physical journey of hormones and surgery. Sharing the spotlight is Vivien, Madison’s […]
Requiem for the American Dream
REQUIEM FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM is the definitive discourse with Noam Chomsky on the defining characteristic of our time – the deliberate concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a select few. Through interviews filmed over four years, Chomsky unpacks the principles that have brought us to the crossroads of historically unprecedented inequality […]
First Peoples, First Screens 2 Presented by OPIRG Kingston
Sudan, Remember Us
In April 2019, the Paris-based filmmaker Hind Meddeb travelled to Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, at a jubilant moment in the country’s history. The long-time dictator Omar Al-Bashir had recently been overthrown after a 30-year regime marked by genocidal violence in Darfur. Meddeb began filming with young activists rallying for a citizen’s government by staging sit-ins, making […]
Island Earth
A rich and complex tale of a young indigenous scientist’s journey through the corn fields of GMO companies and loi patches of traditional Hawaiian elders reveals modern truths and ancient values that can save our food future. To feed all the humans on the planet, we are going to have to grow as much food […]
Thunder Blanket (Episode 1)
THUNDER BLANKET is a 5-part series that explores a young Mohawk woman’s battle against breast cancer and the complexity of being a traditionalist searching for a cure in a modern world. Roxann Karonhiarokwas Whitebean, a young mother and independent filmmaker, finds her career grinding to a halt when she is diagnosed with breast cancer a […]
United in Anger: A History of ACT UP
UNITED IN ANGER: A HISTORY OF ACT UP is a unique feature-length documentary that combines startling archival footage that puts the audience on the ground with the activists and the remarkably insightful interviews from the ACT UP Oral History Project to explore ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) from a grassroots perspective – […]
Sacred Water: Standing Rock Part 1
The people of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation of North and South Dakota are fighting to stop a pipeline from being built on their ancestral homeland. The Dakota Access Pipeline would snake its way across four states, bisecting sacred Indigenous sites and burial grounds along the route. The tribe fears that a leak could contaminate […]
State of Exception
As Rio de Janeiro prepares to host the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Olympics, a community of self-described “urban Indians” are threatened with forced eviction to make way for a stadium named after the original indigenous inhabitants of the territory. As the mega-events begin threatening a number of other communities with displacement, residents unite […]
With This Ring
Filmed over the course of six years, WITH THIS RING follows the meteoric rise of three Indian women who sidestep traditional roles to become world champion boxers. Worried that boxing will disfigure their faces and hurt their chances of getting married, their parents are reluctant to embrace their chosen careers. Facing pressure to conform, the women […]
Living Downstream
Raised in small-town Illinois, cancer seems to run in Sandra Steingraber’s family. Sandra was diagnosed with bladder cancer when she was just twenty years old. Her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when Sandra was in high school. Many of her aunts and uncles have struggled with the disease. One aunt even died from the […]
What Is Democracy?
What does it mean for the people to rule—and is that something we even want? Director Astra Taylor’s idiosyncratic, philosophical journey takes us from ancient Athens’ groundbreaking experiment in self-government to capitalism’s roots in medieval Italy; from modern-day Greece grappling with financial collapse and a mounting refugee crisis to the United States reckoning with its […]
