Journey into the six decade reign of one of the world's most influential women. Follow Queen Elizabeth II's remarkable life, from her youth--when few expected she'd ever wear the crown--to her uncle Edward VIII's stunning abdication, and her father's subsequent coronation as King George VI. Witness her experiences during World War II, her own sudden ascension to the throne, and her eventful reign of more than 60 years.. She defines the role of a modern...

The Babushkas of Chernobyl journeys into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone several decades after the world’s worst nuclear disaster in April 1986. The tightly regulated 1000 square mile Dead Zone remains one of the most radioactively contaminated places on Earth, complete with military border guards.. Surprisingly, a defiant, spirited group of elderly women scratches out an existence in this lethal landscape. The resilient babushkas are the last survivors...

Taking 18 months to complete, this dizzyingly surreal pinscreen animation interprets music by Mussorgsky as interplay between shadow/light, permanence/impermanence, motion/stillness, human/animal, and night/day. Parker and Alexeieff slowly created the imagery for this dream-like world by constantly adjusting the pins on the board and then filming what their shadows generated.

SPOOK SPORT announces itself as a new kind of film ballet comprised of “color, music, and movement,” and is a lively interpretation of a night at a graveyard where colored shapes representing bats, ghosts, and spooks jump, shimmy, bounce, glide, and spiral across the frame. Bute hired animator Norman McLaren to draw these forms directly onto the filmstrip. Filmed in two-color Cinecolor.

In a special two-part series, acclaimed filmmaker David Sutherland (The Farmer's Wife, Country Boys) creates an unforgettable portrait of Robin Charboneau, a 32-year-old divorced single mother and Oglala Sioux woman living on North Dakota's Spirit Lake Reservation.. Sutherland follows Robin over three years as she struggles to raise her two children, further her education, and heal herself from the wounds of sexual abuse she suffered as a child. Kind...

This straightforward family melodrama was filmed while Solax was still located in Flushing, New York. FALLING LEAVES echoes aspects of O’Henry’s 1907 short story “The Last Leaf” and depicts the clever attempts of a concerned young girl trying to save her older sister who is dying of consumption. Music by Tamar Muskal.

The lights dim, and across the silver screens of the world comes the flickering image of a lady. She is a movie star. In our movie stars, and in the entertainment industry as a whole, many women have worked to achieve a unique place in shaping the cultural love of history. For no one has had the influence on what we wear, how we talk, and often, how we simply perceive this world, as did, and do, the ladies who shape and appear in films, on stage and...

Robert Shurtleff fought with the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment during the American Revolution, suffering at least two wounds in battle. While this is hardly woth noting in our history books, what is worth noting is that Robert Shurtleff was a woman..a courageous young woman named Deborah Gannett who fought bravely disguised as a man. History by its expansive nature is selective. Perhaps, in the case of women, a bit too selective. Deborah Gannett is...

Homeboy Industries, the world’s largest gang intervention and re-entry organization, offers an unparalleled 18-month job-training program for recovering drug addicts and ex-gang members. The short documentary HOMEGIRLS intimately follows the lives of two of the programs’ female participants, Maria and Joselyn, over four months as they attempt to leave the past behind and start anew.. Through cinéma vérité filmmaking, our complex subjects face...

Blending documentary and fiction, the film follows a poor transgender woman in Chile who hears about a plastic surgery TV competition. She decides to try out, to pursue her gender reassignment surgery. There, she meets an enigmatic woman who hopes to emulate fashion icon Naomi Campbell. The film gains gravitas through its unforced look at class, race and gender.. Official Selection at Outfest and the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival....