WORLD PREMIERE When school remains open during a winter storm, twelve-year-old documentary filmmaker Zachary Maxwell seeks out answers from the adults calling the shots. Through tireless efforts which included countless letters, emails, phone calls and other creative forms of outreach, Zachary goes inside the New York City government to understand how weather-related emergencies influence school closings. Anatomy […]
NYC PREMIERE How did you first learn about sex? Before the Internet put a shocking amount of sexually explicit information at our fingertips, generations of Americans first encountered the birds and the bees at school, usually through educational films. Brenda Goodman assembles an eye-opening array of these well-intentioned but often funny teaching tools to reveal […]
Frederick Wiseman’s second film as a director looks at an urban Philadelphia high school, capturing interactions between students, teachers, parents and administrators. The film was lauded by critics (“brilliant” wrote Richard Schickel) and dreaded by locals (it didn’t play on Philadelphia public television for over 30 years). A landmark in American documentary, this is an […]
NYC PREMIERE Recognizing the persistence of income inequality in South America, a group of activist economists join together to offer an alternative path to eliminating poverty: encouraging the poor to open savings accounts and thereby become active agents within the existing economic system. Fundación Capital partners with impoverished women to put their plan for financial […]
NYC PREMIERE In 1984, Keva Rosenfeld profiled the senior class of a typical California high school in All American High, exploring teenage life through the eyes of Rikki, a Finnish exchange student trying to make sense of a foreign culture of big hair, prudishness and popularity. It’s fitting that a film about high school should […]
WORLD PREMIERE Illustrating the transformative power not only of music, but of mentorship, Ben Niles’s film is an uplifting look at Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program for inner- city youth. Several diverse and inviting kids are followed for two years as they devote their weekends to developing their musical proficiency, receiving hands-on instruction typically impossible in […]
NYC PREMIERE Sesame Street’s Big Bird may be one of the world’s most recognizable characters, but far less familiar is Caroll Spinney, the man who has brought to life the yellow- feathered Muppet—as well as the irascible Oscar the Grouch—since 1969. Through Spinney’s rich personal archive and behind-the-scenes show footage, this endearing film celebrates a […]
2013 AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER WORLD PREMIERE Director Michael Kleiman follows Peruvian families living in remote regions as their children experience the One Laptop per Child program, gaining access to the Internet for the first time. Web considers both the benefits and complications that arise from digital connections. Alongside the poignant and sometimes humorous local stories, […]
The never-broadcast prologue to Oliver Stone’s epic, ten-hour Showtime series The Untold History of the United States (“I cannot recommend it highly enough,” enthused The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald) deepens the provocative filmmaker’s exploration of how the United States became an empire. Focusing on events in the lead-up to World War II, this two-hour segment applies […]
NYC PREMIERE This funny and sometimes bizarre exploration of the Icelandic Phallological Museum shows a very different side to penis envy. Siggi, the museum’s curator, has spent decades collecting every mammal’s member save one— the human’s. Enter Páll, a now-ancient legendary Icelandic adventurer and lothario, willing to donate his upon death; and Tom, an oddball […]