Losing the Light

The life of internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin is told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis.

Though legendary lyricist Howard Ashman died far too young, his impact on Broadway, movies, and the culture at large were incalculable. Told entirely through rare archival footage and interviews with Ashman’s family, friends, associates, and longtime partner Bill Lauch, Howard is an intimate tribute to a once-in-a-generation talent and a rousing celebration of musical storytelling itself.

Before computer graphics, special effects wizardry, and out-of-this world technology, the magic of animation flowed from the pencils of two of the greatest animators The Walt Disney Company ever produced -- Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. Frank and Ollie, the talent behind BAMBI, PINOCCHIO, LADY AND THE TRAMP, THE JUNGLE BOOK, and others, set the standard for such modern-day hits as THE LION KING. It was their creative genius that helped make Disney synonymous with brilliant animation, magnificent music, and emotional storytelling. Take a journey with these extraordinary artists as they share secrets, insights, and the inspiration behind some of the greatest animated movies the world has ever known!

Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, co-creators of the hit television series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, reflect on the creation of the masterful series.

Musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother and her beloved dog.

A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.

SEDUCED AND ABANDONED combines acting legend Alec Baldwin with director James Toback as they lead us on a troublesome and often hilarious journey of raising financing for their next feature film. Moving from director to financier to star actor, the two players provide us with a unique look behind the curtain at the world's biggest and most glamourous film festival, shining a light on the bitter-sweet relationship filmmakers have with Cannes and the film business. Featuring insights from directors Martin Scorsese, 'Bernando Bertolucci' and Roman Polanski; actors Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain and a host of film distribution luminaries.

As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.

A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.

In this documentary, wealthy entrepreneur Bryan Johnson puts his body and fortune on the line to defy aging and extend his life beyond all known limits.

The Making-of James Cameron's Avatar. It shows interesting parts of the work on the set.

Just two years away from turning 30, participants in Michael Apted's documentary series are facing serious questions of identity and purpose, wondering whether they've found their place in the world.

Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City's African American and Latinx Harlem drag-ball scene. Made over seven years, PARIS IS BURNING offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion "houses," from fierce contests for trophies to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women — including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza.

Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino in conversation about The Irishman.

In candid conversations with actor Jonah Hill, leading psychiatrist Phil Stutz explores his early life experiences and unique, visual model of therapy.

Amber Heard and Nicole Kidman discuss their characters Mera and Atlanna.

A celebration of the universe, displaying the whole of time, from its start to its final collapse. This film examines all that occurred to prepare the world that stands before us now: science and spirit, birth and death, the grand cosmos and the minute life systems of our planet.

A documentary about the making of David Fincher's 2008 film THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON. Virtually every element in the evolution of the Fincher's film is documented here, from the project's attachment to numerous other directors during the 1990s, to its shoot in 2006 and 2007 in New Orleans, to its complex, CGI-intensive postproduction process.

From the heights of her modeling fame to her tragic death, this documentary reveals Anna Nicole Smith through the eyes of the people closest to her.

An atmospheric essay, which is an alternative version of Count Dracula, a film directed by Jess Franco in 1970; a ghostly narration between fiction and reality.

Experimental mash-up of circus and sideshow footage.

In one of those wonderful coincidences of history, lumière, the French word for “light,” was also the last name of brothers Auguste and Louis, whose brilliant invention, the cinematograph, helped to inaugurate the most beloved art form of the last 130 years. Institute Lumière director Thierry Frémaux uses Lumière, Le Cinema! to guide the viewer through over a hundred shorts—some famous, some forgotten, some never before seen—directed by Lumière and company. In the process, Frémaux illuminates how the brothers employed the camera as a creative instrument as they (and their operators) mastered framing, staging, and subject selection for quotidian and exotic microdocumentaries as well as the first ever fictional motion pictures. The result is not only a glorious re(telling) of the genesis of cinema but a profound meditation on the beautiful world captured—and the mysterious world imagined—by the Lumières.

The film follows five people who lost their sight in armed conflicts, gathering fragments of their present-day lives. Through an enveloping sound composition, veiled archival material, footage shot by the protagonists themselves, and a sensitive visual approach, the film explores memory, perception, and our relationship to the visible. Steering away from spectacle, it invites us to hear what often goes unheard, and to feel differently. In an age saturated with images, this documentary offers a sensory experience where listening becomes a gesture of resistance and human reconnection.

Hercules travels by bicycle from Krefeld on the Lower Rhine to Olympus, the throne of ancient deities. The Hercules myth, as a primal myth of male power, is questioned through biographical reflections and the staging of mythological echoes. The dramaturgical structure of the hero's journey disintegrates in a multi-material perspective into questions about male identity, ideals and remorse.

A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.

Made with virtually no budget during COVID-19 quarantine in 2020, IRANIAN LIVES MATTER abstractly recounts the true story of what occurred in Iran during the November 2019 protests, sparked by a surprise hike in gasoline prices, which quickly spread across the entire nation and was subsequently crushed by the dictator's iron fist, resulting in the death of approximately 1500 protesters, as reported by Reuters. IRANIAN LIVES MATTER is an experimental documentary, an audio-visual endurance test that audibly takes its audience through the chaos in the streets of Iran as the brutal regime cracks down on Iranian protesters, while visually showing the hands of the dictatorship as it crosses out 1500 lives one by one to further emphasize the scale of the massacre and show to a world desensitized to news of mass killings in the Middle East what the term "1500 dead" truly means.

Two gay men in Japan discuss the end of their respective relationships.

A pleasant tasting summer film made in New York and Searsmont, Maine. With poems by Daniel Shapiro (age five), performances by Dana Reitz, Yoshiko Chuma and Wang Pint; music by Duke Ellington and Gamelon of Bali.

With the use of montage sequences, voiced over with the observations of the children, van der Keuken was able to use artistic expression to portray the sightless children’s unique perspective of the world.

Jo; or The Act of Riding a Bike is Zefier's third film.

A theoretical exercise can stem from a physical one: using the camera as if it was the vibrating device placed on the olive trees for the harvest of its fruit, the final result is a series of original and intriguing images. The camera shakes, gets in and out of focus, and we don’t exactly know what is happening. At first this is a strange disorientation, but then you get used to it through the cyclical mechanical noise that joins the images. The words of a peaceful female voice allows you to frame the film: a visual exercise after all can also be free.

Outtakes, commentary from Zefier's third film: Jo; or The Act of Riding a Bike.

The Last Gift: Jim’s Courage, Our Hope is a moving short documentary exploring the intersection of science, altruism, and human dignity at the end of life. The film follows Jim Dunn, a man living with HIV who chooses to participate in UC San Diego’s Last Gift Study, a pioneering research effort enabling people nearing death to donate their bodies to science immediately after passing, helping researchers uncover where HIV persists despite treatment. Through intimate conversations, reflections on mortality, and moments shared with his wife Susan, clinicians, advocates, and scientists, the film reveals Jim’s profound desire to contribute to a future free of HIV. With honesty and grace, it captures the emotional complexity of end-of-life decisions and the extraordinary courage behind them. Jim’s legacy reminds us that scientific progress is built not only on data, but on human generosity, relationships, and hope.

This film was made out of the capture of a live animation performance presented in Rome in January 2005 by Pierre Hébert and the musician Bob Ostertag. It is based on live action shooting done that same afternoon on the Campo dei Fiori where the philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned by the Inquisition in 1600. A commemorative statue was erected in the 19th century, that somberly dominate the market held everyday on the piazza. The film is about the resurgence of the past in this place where normal daily activities go on imperturbably. The capture of the performance was reworked, shortened and complemented with more studio performances.

A hen questions the meaning of her life on a farm.

This powerful documentary explores the intersection of two crises — war and the HIV epidemic. The film follows HIV-positive Ukrainian activist Yana Panfilova as she joins “Through Positive Eyes,” a global photo-storytelling project. The film looks to the resilience of a new generation, navigating survival and community through art and activism.

Pictures taken between France and Mexico running at 8 frames per second.

A new type of cinema you can perceive with your butt hole.