Beanie Babies, the stuffed toys created by Ty Warner that inspired a collecting craze in the late 90s, are the subject of this layered and riveting look at how they spawned an unprecedented investment bubble and a frenzy of American greed. This documentary also features illuminating interviews with passionate collectors, notable influencers and company insiders.
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Profile of seminal punk group The Clash.
This is the untold story of the personal battles that gave rise to the multi-billion dollar video game industry. Brought to life by Academy Award® winning director Daniel Junge, this documentary is a tale of brilliant innovations, colossal failures, and ego-driven rivalries on a massive scale. It is a 50-year-long, multi-generation epic featuring corporate coups, industrial espionage and the promise of unimaginable riches being just one cartridge away. Told in chronological order and featuring the sons of the brilliant inventor of the first video game console, Ralph Baer, the co-founder of Atari, Nolan Bushnell, and many more experts in the gaming industry, this documentary highlights the programmers, engineers, management and business practices they followed to compete against each other and become the gaming tycoons we know today.
A documentary on the life and career of one of the most influential film directors of all time, Steven Spielberg.
German director Werner Herzog begins work on his 1982 epic “Fitzcarraldo” but soon runs into serious setbacks, from casting problems to his own stubborn refusal to use special effects. After having to reshoot much of the film because the lead actor was recast, his crew must then haul an old-fashioned steamboat over a mountain using manpower alone. With a resolve bordering on insanity, Herzog struggles to realize his vision, vowing to see the film completed — even if it leads to his undoing.
A purely observational non-fiction film that takes viewers into the ethically murky world of end-of-life decision making in a public hospital.
Under the shadow of Mount Kenya, young Maasai Warriors have remarkably formed a cricket team. In a community deep with tradition, where female genital mutilation (FGM) is still a rite of passage, these young Maasai express their frustrations at inequality by smacking cricket balls on the plains of Kenya and dreaming of life beyond their own village. Thus begins a journey all the way to England; the home of cricket. It is a journey which gives the Warriors the courage to face their elders in the hope of ending FGM.
Twenty five years after Miguel died from AIDS, his niece, filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo, embarks on an excavation into a quagmire of unresolved family drama. Like many gay men in the 1980s, Miguel moved from Puerto Rico to New York City; he found a career in theater and a rewarding relationship. Yet, on his deathbed he grappled to reconcile his homosexuality with his Catholic upbringing. Now, decades after his death, Cecilia locates Miguel’s lover Robert, who has been shunned and demonized by the family, in order to understand the whole story.
An audition for men aged between 16 and 99. There are no props nor make-up, just pure improvisation. All that is required is the willingness to engage openly with the topic and language of the words on the page. No small challenge, since the text in question is the scandalous novel published anonymously in 1906 “Josefine Mutzenbacher, or the Life Story of a Viennese Whore, as Told by Herself” which, as this film confirms, continues to be the subject of passionate and controversial discussions about desire, even today. What might be world-class pornographic literature for some is seen by others as an abusive depiction of child sexuality.
Before Google, Yahoo and even Apple, before the Silicon Valley cliché of informal dress code, skateboards running the corridors and wild creativity became commonplace, one company embodied the digital economy lifestyle and business style: the one firm coming out of the Age of Aquarius was Atari. The story of Atari is two-thirds the story of Nolan Bushnell, founder and visionary, and one-third the first and probably biggest boom and bust of the new economy some 20 years before the new economy even existed. Atari was showing that technology is cool, way before the personal computer revolution took place and they were reaching out to an ever-growing audience with something that is still cool today: video games. Atari literally introduced the digital world to the mass consciousness.
Dr. Anne Innis Dagg re-traces the steps of her groundbreaking 1956 journey to South Africa to study giraffes in the wild. Now, at 85 years old, Anne sees a startling contrast between the world of giraffes she once knew and the one it has become. Weaving through the past and present, her harrowing journey gives us an intimate look into the factors that destroyed her career and the forces that brought her back.
An up-close and personal behind the scenes look at the life of Australian music phenom, The Kid Laroi, and his journey to global stardom.
