Directed by Chantal Akerman • Documentary • 2003 • 110 minutes

FROM THE EAST retraces a journey from the end of summer to deepest winter, from East Germany, across Poland and the Baltics, to Moscow. It is a voyage Chantal Akerman wanted to make shortly after the collapse of the Soviet bloc "befo...

Directed by Heddy Honigmann • Documentary • 1999 • 108 minutes

THE UNDERGROUND ORCHESTRA is a glorious documentary profile of musicians who play on the sidewalks of Paris and in the Metro. Filmmaker Heddy Honigmann (METAL AND MELANCHOLY and O AMOR NATURAL), illuminates the lives and music of a r...

Directed by Irena Salina • Documentary • With Maude Barlow, Shelly Brime • 2008 • 83 minutes

"This award-winning documentary investigates what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century: the world water crisis. Building a case against the growing priva...

Directed by Tiffany Hsiung • Documentary • 2016 • 104 minutes

THE APOLOGY follows the personal journeys of three former 'comfort women' who were among the 200,000 girls and young women kidnapped and forced into military sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.

Some 70 ...

Directed by Natalia Almada • Documentary • 2011 • 72 minutes

Martin, the night watchman, arrives with the setting sun in his rumbling blue Chevrolet. The cemetery mascots, EI Negro y La Negra, chase his truck down the road and greet him with wagging tails. The sound of construction fades away as...

Directed by Leila Sansour • Documentary • 2017 • 90 minutes

Reports predict that if trends continue the Christian community of Bethlehem, a city that provides a model for a multi-faith Middle East, may be unsustainable within one generation. The enormous wall and ongoing Israeli settlements are ...

Directed by Pegi Vail • Documentary • 2013 • 79 minutes

Are tourists destroying the planet-or saving it? How do travelers change the remote places they visit, and how are they changed? From the Bolivian jungle to the party beaches of Thailand, and from the deserts of Timbuktu, Mali to the breath...

Directed by Wanda Nolan • Animation • 2016 • 6 minutes

Mystery of the Secret Room takes viewers on a spellbinding voyage between the real and the imaginary. An inspiring portrait of family, adversity, and resilience, this richly hued animated short tells the tale of 10-year-old Grace, who uses h...

Directed by Vicky Funari & Julia Query • Documentary • With Julia Query, Siobhan Brooks, Kristina, Ellen, Star, Joyce Wallace • 2000 • 70 minutes

Winner of the Audience Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Live Nude Girls Unite! is "a partisan tale from the inside" (Boston Pho...

Directed by Tatiana Huezo • Documentary • 2011 • 104 minutes

On the surface THE TINIEST PLACE is the story of Cinquera, a village literally wiped off the official map during El Salvador's 12-year civil war. But on a deeper level it is a story about the ability to rise, to rebuild and reinvent on...

Directed by Anocha Suwichakornpong • Drama • With Visra Vichit-Vadakan, Arak Amornsupasiri, Achtara Suwan • 2017 • 105 minutes

A shape-shifting narrative around memory, politics and cinema, the film weaves together the stories of several characters. We meet a young waitress serving breakfast at...

Directed by Cynthia Beatt • Documentary • With Tilda Swinton • 2010 • 60 minutes

In 1988 director Cynthia Beatt and the Tilda Swinton embarked on a filmic journey along the Berlin Wall to create the short film CYCLING THE FRAME (28', color, 1988). Riding her bicycle from the Brandenburg Gate to ...

Directed by Claire Denis • Documentary • With Mathilde Monnier • 2004 • 84 minutes

Emphasizing raw physicality, craft, and in-the-moment fervor over exposition, Towards Mathilde, from filmmaker Claire Denis (Beau Travail, 35 Shots of Rum, Let the Sunshine In), is a documentary portrait par excel...

Directed by Lynne Sachs • Documentary • 2013 • 64 minutes

Since the early days of New York’s Lower East Side tenement houses, working class people have shared beds, making such spaces a fundamental part of immigrant life. Initially documented in Jacob Riis’ now controversial late 19th Century ph...

Directed by Madeline Anderson • Documentary • 1970 • 30 minutes

In 1969, black female hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina went on strike for union recognition and a wage increase, only to find themselves in a confrontation with the state government and the National Guard. Featuring An...

Directed by Lizzie Borden • Drama • With Honey, Adele Bertaei, Jeanne Satterfield, Flo Kennedy, Ron Vawter, Eric Bogosian • 1983 • 80 minutes

The movie that rocked the foundations of the early indie film world, this provocative, thrilling classic is a fantasy of female rebellion set in America t...

Directed by Vivian Qu • Drama • With Vicky Chen, Meijun Zhou, Le Geng • 2017 • 107 minutes

In a small seaside town, two schoolgirls are assaulted by a middle-aged man in a motel. Mia, a teenager who was working on reception that night, is the only witness. For fear of losing her job, she says no...

Directed by Marlon Riggs • Documentary • 1995 • 87 minutes

Having grappled with the stereotypes imposed upon black people by white America, Riggs turned his attention to another fraught issue: the definitions of “blackness” that African-Americans impose on each other. Weaving together poetry, co...

Directed by Jacqueline Audry • Drama • With Edwige Feuillere, Simone Simon • 1950 • 96 minutes

OLIVIA is a remarkable work by one of France’s first ground-breaking female filmmakers, which easily merits rediscovery today after being neglected for almost 70 years. 

Plunging the viewer—and the ma...