A man crouches and pokes at what first appears to be a wad of chewed-up pink bubble gum on the ground. “That’s what a scab will do to ya, by God,” he says, his voice quavering with emotion. The pink wad is brain tissue from a striker shot in the head by a strikebreaker. That’s one of the harsh realities of Harlan County USA. Barbara Kopple’s documentary camera looks at this forgotten corner of 197
Party Monster: The Shockumentary is a 1998 documentary film detailing the rise of the club kid phenomenon in New York City, the life of club kid and party promoter Michael Alig and Alig's murder (with Robert "Freeze" Riggs) of fellow club kid and drug dealer Angel Melendez. Produced by World of Wonder and based in part on the James St. James book on the murder, Disco Bloodbath, the film combines i
In the mid-1990s, a team of American science students took on the might of the Las Vegas casinos, and came home with millions of dollars. Hardworking engineering students during the week, they became high-rolling gamblers by the weekend and proved that, in one game at least, the house doesn’t always win.The game was blackjack, and the students were from the world-renowned Massachusetts Institu
The second World War had a profound effect on the course of the 20th century, and unfortunately, its horrors, including “ethnic cleansing,” terrorism, despotism, invasions, the curtailment of civil rights, and rampant nationalism, are still concerns of the modern day. The documentary series The World at War is outstanding in its ability to unfold the complex issues of WWII in a clear, objective, a
In an exclusive, National Geographic Channel will take viewers on the gripping passage to death and drama on high-seas when the ill-fated Costa Concordia, sunk off the coast of Italy on the 13th of January 2012. Suspense-filled, the documentary pieces together survivor testimony along with footage taken during the ship's evacuation, using footage from images captured on cameras and mobile phones d
HIGH TECH SOUL is the first documentary to tackle the deep roots of techno music alongside the cultural history of Detroit, its birthplace. From the race riots of 1967 to the underground party scene of the late 1980s, Detroit’s economic downturn didn’t stop the invention of a new kind of music that brought international attention to its producers and their hometown.
Infamy is an intense journey into the dangerous lives and obsessed minds of six of America’s most prolific graffiti artists. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Doug Pray (Hype and Scratch) who teamed up with writer, publisher, and graffiti guru Roger Gastman, the movie takes you deep into the world of street legends Saber, Toomer, Jase, Claw, Earsnot, and Enem. With brutal honesty, humor and charisma
Is the hobbit a new human species or nothing more than a modern human with a crippling deformity? On the far-flung island of Flores, in the Indonesian archipelago, a team of archaeologists happened upon a tiny 18,000-year old skeleton. It was no more than a meter tall. They assumed they have found the remains of a young girl. But other signs suggested she was in fact much older. They had discovere
In RiP: A remix manifesto, Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers.The film's central protagonist is Girl Talk, a mash-up musician topping the charts with his sample-based songs. But is Girl Talk a paragon of people power or the Pied Piper of