The Truth About Reading
The Truth About Reading looks at the illiteracy problem in America, highlighting people who learned to read as adults, and sharing proposed solutions for working towards a future where every child learns to read proficiently.
A political and poetic wondering/wandering about the relevance and context of re-reading Marx 150 years after the publication of The Communist Manifesto
The Truth About Reading looks at the illiteracy problem in America, highlighting people who learned to read as adults, and sharing proposed solutions for working towards a future where every child learns to read proficiently.
A documentary on the late American entertainer Dean Reed, who became a huge star in East Germany after settling there in 1973.
An educational film about the life cycles of various types of pond life.
A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.
A feature length Marxist documentary looking at 20th Century fascism, early English settler colonialism in the Americas and the prospects of a contemporary neofascism. The film focuses on the political economy of these forms, drawing on Rajani Palme Dutt's view that fascism represented an organisation of capitalist decay, to illustrate the various different laws of motion which condition the development of reactionary political movements.
What happens when you travel to the birthplace of green slime? For an entire generation of classic Nickelodeon fans, it's like finding the Holy Grail.
On June 26, 1975, during a period of high tensions on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, two FBI agents were killed in a shootout with a group of Indians. Although several men were charged with killing the agents, only one, Leonard Peltier, was found guilty. This film describes the events surrounding the shootout and suggests that Peltier was unjustly convicted.
This documentary offers a glimpse into the 1997 federal election in the Halifax electoral district. Two strong female politicians, Liberal candidate Mary Clancy and NDP party leader Alexa McDonough, are caught in a tight competition in one of the most contested races in the country. Director Meredith Ralston follows the two women around the campaign trail for weeks, getting inside an election that was often described as “nasty.” Both larger than life and hungry to win, in quieter moments Clancy and McDonough reveal the strains and contradictions of their chosen careers. Why Women Run highlights the accomplishments of women in politics and the problems many women face participating in the political process.
From the unique vantage point of 200 miles above Earth's surface, we see how natural forces - volcanoes, earthquakes and hurricanes - affect our world, and how a powerful new force - humankind - has begun to alter the face of the planet. From Amazon rain forests to Serengeti grasslands, Blue Planet inspires a new appreciation of life on Earth, our only home.
Jokes as a weapon of resistance: how satire sustains a beleaguered culture.
Climate change is among the world’s greatest challenges. As a small Caribbean island, Cuba is disproportionately affected by climate change through extreme weather events. Up to 10% of Cuban territory could be submerged by the end of the century, wiping out coastal towns, polluting water supplies, destroying agricultural lands and forcing one million people to relocate. Finding solutions is now essential. In this documentary, Dr Helen Yaffe goes to Cuba to find out about ‘Tarea Vida’ (Life Task), a long-term state plan to protect the population, environment and the economy from climate change. The Cuban approach combines environmental science, natural solutions and community participation in strategies for adaptation and mitigation. Produced by DaniFilms with Dr Helen Yaffe from the University of Glasgow for the COP26 conference in Glasgow.
Every school day, African-American teenagers William Gates and Arthur Agee travel 90 minutes each way from inner-city Chicago to St. Joseph High School in Westchester, Illinois, a predominately white suburban school well-known for the excellence of its basketball program. Gates and Agee dream of NBA stardom, and with the support of their close-knit families, they battle the social and physical obstacles that stand in their way. This acclaimed documentary was shot over the course of five years.
The Academy Award® nominee Cosmic Voyage combines live action with state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery to pinpoint where humans fit in our ever-expanding universe. Highlighting this journey is a "cosmic zoom" based on the powers of 10, extending from the Earth to the largest observable structures in the universe, and then back to the subnuclear realm.
ŽIŽEK! trails the thinker as he crisscrosses the globe, racing from New York City lecture halls, through the streets of Buenos Aires, and even stopping at home in Ljubljana, Slovenia. All the while Žižek obsessively reveals the invisible workings of ideology through his unique blend of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Marxism, and critique of pop culture.
At 14, best friends Robb Reiner and Lips made a pact to rock together forever. Their band, Anvil, hailed as the "demi-gods of Canadian metal" influenced a musical generation that includes Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax. Following a calamitous European tour, Lips and Robb, now in their fifties, set off to record their 13th album in one last attempt to fulfill their boyhood dreams.
Two storytellers put forth their versions of the story of Shravan Kumar. The art for the film uses painted images from a wooden portable shrine called a Kaavad. The film is a collaborative work between traditional Kaavad storytellers and Kaavad artists from Rajasthan, together with the filmmaker. Combining lush animation with live-action, the film is an interpretation of two stories which are forever fused in the act of telling and retelling.
Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx formed one of the most famous duos in world history. In contrast to Marx, however, Engels seems to have fallen into oblivion today. Unjustly so. Moving archive images, documentary footage and graphic novels lead us back to the time of Friedrich Engels, who shaped the Communist movement like no other.
The first feature-length documentary that fully explores how the toxic social and political Canadian context after 1968 created some of the most nihilistic and imaginative Canadian cult films of the 1970s and 80s and beyond.
Dan Aykroyd, John Candy, Gilda Radner and Cheech and Chong present this compilation of classic bad films from the 50's, 60's and 70's. Special features on gorilla pictures, anti-marijuana films and a special tribute to the worst film maker of all-time, Ed Wood.
The impact of Marx on the 20th century has been all-pervasive and world-wide. This program looks at the man, at the roots of his philosophy, at the causes and explanations of his philosophical development, and at its most direct outcome: the failed Soviet Union.