Degrees North

Mary J. Blige set the music world on fire with her trailblazing 1994 LP “My Life.” The singer, producer and actress reveals the demons and blessings that inspired the record and propelled her to international stardom. She celebrates the 25th anniversary of her most influential work by performing the album live for the first time.

On the eve of the 60th anniversary of the 1957 Little Rock school desegregation crisis, educational inequality remains among the most urgent civil rights issues of our time. With its school district hanging in the balance following a state takeover in January 2015, Little Rock today presents a microcosm of the inequities and challenges manifesting in classrooms all across America. Through case studies in Little Rock, New York City, and Los Angeles, Teach Us All seeks to bring the critical lessons of history to bear on the current state of U.S. education and investigate: 60 years later, how far have we come-or not come-and how do we catalyze action from here?

Investigative journalists, scientists, and citizens trace the fallout of a new American fossil fuel boom. From the oil fields of West Texas to tanker traffic busting the Panama Canal at its seams to an energy revolution in Asia, “Blowout” takes a deep dive into American energy’s global impacts on profits, public health, and climate change.

Burzynski, the Movie is the story of a medical doctor and Ph.D biochemist named Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski who won the largest, and possibly the most convoluted and intriguing legal battle against the Food & Drug Administration in American history. His victorious battles with the United States government were centered around Dr. Burzynski’s gene-targeted cancer medicines he discovered in the 1970’s called Antineoplastons, which have currently completed Phase II FDA-supervised clinical trials in 2009 and could begin the final phase of FDA testing in 2011–barring the ability to raise the required $300 million to fund the final phase of FDA clinical trials.

First hand witness to the infamous World War II fire bombing and destruction of his hometown, Dresden, Germany, 15-year-old Diether Warneck lost his girlfriend and bicycled to the front-lines of the war, enlisting in the German army under Hitler’s rule. This single decision would haunt him for the rest of his life. Recalling the series of events that lead to his survival, Diether shares the extreme guilt he hid for seventy years while experiencing a life filled with love, family, intrigue, art and personal accomplishment.

Set amid arrests and subsequent trials surrounding the 2008 Republican National Convention, this portrait of two young activists caught in the web of an opportunistic mentor and a desperate justice system poignantly describes both the problems of power and the power of forgiveness and love.

Hanna Ranch is a feature documentary about visionary cattleman Kirk Hanna and his personal struggle to protect a once prominent way of life in Colorado. Born into a life on the family ranch, Hanna became a leader in the environmental ranching movement that set out to protect the West from the relentless encroachment of development and misuse. Featured in the book Fast Food Nation and dubbed the “eco-cowboy,” he was an early adopter of Holistic Resource Management practices, sat on numerous environmental boards and was president of the Colorado Cattleman’s Association. Hanna’s opinion was so widely sought and respected, many even saw him as a future governor of Colorado. But when his dream of harmony and sustainability ran up against the reality of family conflict and mounting threats to the land, Hanna lost hope. Kirk’s legacy and fight live on as his family and friends continue to protect the West by saving Hanna Ranch.

In the history of aviation, there have been only 14 of them: sole survivors of a commercial aviation disaster. Most have never spoken publicly about the loss, the guilt, the immense pressure of feeling “spared.” Who, after all, could ever truly understand? The answer is only each other. Sole Survivor brings four of them together (George Lamson, Cecilia Cichan, Bahia Bakari and Jim Polehinke) to share their very complex, personal stories for the first time. They revisit the most harrowing moments of their lives in an effort to heal and overcome their most perplexing questions.

REAL BOY is the coming-of-age story of Bennett Wallace, a transgender teenager on a journey to find his voice-as a musician, a friend, a son, and a man. As he navigates the ups and downs of young adulthood, Bennett works to gain the love and support of his mother, who has deep misgivings about her child’s transition. Along the way, he forges a powerful friendship with his idol, Joe Stevens, a celebrated transgender musician with his own demons to fight.

Celebrated conceptual artist Ryan Gander investigates the selfie – the icon of a new kind of self-regard that hardly existed just ten years ago. He discovers the roots of the selfie go back hundreds of years before smartphones. In the age of social media, when we are told to be our best selves and live our best lives, he investigates what that really means and what technology is doing to our sense of self.

For over 40 years Val Kilmer, one of Hollywood’s most mercurial and/or misunderstood actors has been documenting his own life and craft through film and video. He has amassed thousands of hours of footage, from 16mm home movies made with his brothers, to time spent in iconic roles for blockbuster movies like Top Gun, The Doors, Tombstone, and Batman Forever. This raw, wildly original and unflinching documentary reveals a life lived to extremes and a heart-filled, sometimes hilarious look at what it means to be an artist and a complex man.

A documentary told from the voices of the “second golden age” of animation in the 1990s and 2000s about the rise, fall and rise again of hand-drawn animation. They were trained by animation masters that created the principles of animation, they took animation to heights no one dreamed of – and then came the computer.