Playing Hard

From the Montana Rockies to the wheat fields of Kansas and the Gulf of Mexico, families who work the land and sea are crossing political divides to find unexpected ways to protect the natural resources vital to their livelihoods. These are the new heroes of conservation, deep in America’s heartland.

As most of the world moves forward toward gay equality, Russia is seemingly heading backward. Antigay sentiment and legislation are spreading rapidly throughout the country. In 2013, the Russian parliament passed a ban on so-called ‘gay propaganda’ that effectively makes nearly any public discussion of gay equality a crime. It is my hope that this documentary will educate viewers to their reality.

The remarkable true story of Donald Trump’s family history – one of the most extraordinary immigration success stories ever told – and what it reveals about the United States’ 45th President

In the wake of a devastating personal tragedy, struggling would-be filmmaker Parker Smith decides to take a road-trip across America. Intending to make a “lo-fi” documentary about his journey he purchases a decade old camera off of eBay, and is surprised to discover that it holds a long forgotten video tape containing strange home video footage of the notorious bodybuilder Gregg Valentino, a/k/a ‘The Man Whose Arms Exploded’. Convinced that Valentino’s odd tape found its way into his hands for some important reason, Parker sets off from Austin, Texas to New York to find the fading bodybuilder armed with only his beloved cat, two cameras and a minivan.

Never-before-aired NASA footage presents evidence that the Moon is being used as a base.

A storm grows, a sea otter pup is separated from her mother, and a young woman bound for adventure blows in to town. On a wild and windswept beach these lives collide and an entire species’ survival gets personal. Through Katie’s eyes you will see our playful pup, otter number 501, get an amazing second chance at life in the wild. As the two learn to navigate the opportunities and risks of life without anchor we see the incredible efforts people have undertaken to save sea otters from the brink of existence. Framed against the strikingly beautiful Monterey Bay coastline, the last stronghold of these iconic animals, Katie discovers just how serious this threat remains. Their adventure, unexpected as it was, illustrates what we can do to contribute to the growing movement to protect the southern sea otter…and ourselves.

I AM is an utterly engaging and entertaining non-fiction film that poses two practical and provocative questions: what’s wrong with our world, and what can we do to make it better? The filmmaker behind the inquiry is Tom Shadyac, one of Hollywood’s leading comedy practitioners and the creative force behind such blockbusters as “Ace Ventura,” “Liar Liar,” “The Nutty Professor,” and “Bruce Almighty.” However, in I AM, Shadyac steps in front of the camera to recount what happened to him after a cycling accident left him incapacitated, possibly for good. Though he ultimately recovered, he emerged with a new sense of purpose, determined to share his own awakening to his prior life of excess and greed, and to investigate how he as an individual, and we as a race, could improve the way we live and walk in the world.

NOTFILM is a feature-length experimental essay on FILM — its author Samuel Beckett, its star Buster Keaton, its production and its philosophical implications — utilizing additional outtakes, never before heard audio recordings of the production meetings, and other rare archival elements.

Born to Be Wild observes various orphaned jungle animals and their day-to-day behavioural interactions with the individuals who rescue them and raise them to adulthood. The film unfurls in two separate geographic spheres. Half of it takes place in the rain forests of Borneo, where celebrated primatologist Dr. Birute Galdikas assists baby orangutans; the other half takes place on the arid savannahs of Kenya, where zoologist Dame Daphne Sheldrick works with baby elephant calves.

NOTHING TO HIDE is an independent documentary dealing with surveillance and its acceptance by the general public through the “I have nothing to hide” argument. The documentary was produced and directed by a pair of Berlin-based journalists, Mihaela Gladovic and Marc Meillassoux. It was crowdfunded by over 400 backers. NOTHING TO HIDE questions the growing, puzzling and passive public acceptance of massive corporate and governmental incursions into individual and group privacy and rights. After the emotion initially triggered by the Snowden revelations, it seems that the general public has finally accepted to live in a monitored digital world.

Josh Alexander’s Loudmouth documents the winding road that is Al Sharpton’s life story as an iconic activist and spiritual leader.

When Nirvana burst onto the scene in 1991, the music they played spoke directly to an angry and disenfranchised generation. As grunge took over MTV and radio, the music industry was transformed overnight. But just three years later, the drug-related deaths of several musicians, capped by the suicide of Kurt Cobain, closed the books on an all too brief era. Hit So Hard follows the rise to fame (and the near-fatal fall from it) of Patty Schemel, drummer for Courtney Love’s seminal rock band, Hole. Given a Hi-8 video camera just before Hole’s infamous Live Through This world tour, Patty captured stunningly intimate footage of the scene that has never been seen… until now. Not just an all-access backstage pass to the music that shaped a generation, Hit So Hard is a harrowing tale of overnight success, the cost of addiction, and ultimately, recovery and redemption.