US PREMIERE Sorious Samura is Sierra Leone’s best-known investigative journalist, making documentaries for CNN, Channel 4 and BBC and winning two Emmy awards. But he wrestles with creating stories for a white gaze. He embarks on a project with Sierra Leone playwright Charlie Haffner to create an epic work of national theatre meant to reclaim […]
WORLD PREMIERE An uplifting, entertaining profile of the grande dame of Cuban music, Omara Portuondo, the internationally beloved chanteuse best known in the States as a member of the famed Buena Vista Social Club. The filmmakers follow octogenarian Omara—feisty, charming, with a naughty sense of humor, and still in possession of her fantastic voice—on her […]
WORLD PREMIERE The style. The fashion. The moves. Saturday Night Fever left an indelible stamp on our cultural memory of the 1970s—and there was one man behind it all. Robert Stigwood, a producer impresario, best known for managing the Bee Gees, took the swagger of a Bay Ridge, Brooklyn disco, and brought it to the […]
US PREMIERE An experimental portrait of Ilhan Mimaroglu, the legendary Turkish pioneer of electronic music who passed away in 2012. Through a multilayered structure that mirrors Ilhan Mimaroglu’s music, the film also tells the story of his vibrant wife Güngör, who migrated to the USA from Turkey in the early 1960s and became an activist […]
NYC PREMIERE Alanis Morissette’s first radio hits came when she was a teenager, but when she decided to center her personal truths and heartbreaks in 1995’s “Jagged Little Pill” she became a phenomenon. While the world struggled to pathologize the young artist’s “needless” anger, women growing up listening to the album, found in Morisette a […]
NYC PREMIERE Much like a tale straight from the lyrics of a country-western ballad, Wanita Bahtiyar rises from humble beginnings and makes her way to international stardom in Nashville—or that’s what Australia’s self-proclaimed “Queen of Honky Tonk” would hope will happen. I’m Wanita follows the singer as she attempts an international pilgrimage from Down Under […]
NYC PREMIERE “Revivify Fanny. And my work is done,” said David Bowie. Fanny was the first rock band of women to release an LP with a major label, putting out five albums in the early 70s. They broke barriers of race, gender, and sexuality in a group that included two Filipina American sisters and queer […]
WORLD PREMIERE With rare access, this film takes us through the final years in the life of Earl “DMX” Simmons. Documenting his many sides— from the charismatic performer on Simmons’s “It’s Dark as Hell and Hot” tour and raucous bad-boy behavior, to the doting father who takes time to reach out to young men in […]
WORLD PREMIERE Dean Martin had a laid-back charm that made him successful in everything from big-screen comedies to television variety shows to live acts in Las Vegas. Filmmaker Tom Donahue (This Changes Everything) explores Martin’s varied career, including his complicated relationships with Jerry Lewis, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, and others. We hear from admirers […]
NYC PREMIERE A unique and stimulating view of the life and legacy of American labor leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez and the farmworker movement. Through stunning archival photographs, footage, performances, and interviews with icons that include Carlos Santana, Joan Baez, Cheech Marin, Edward James Olmos, Maya Angelou, and Chavez’s United Farm Workers co-founder […]