Director: Louise Osmond
Genre: Documentary
Run Time: 1 hour 25 minutes
In Theaters May 6th, 2016
Lisa Immordino Vreeland follows up her acclaimed debut "Diana Vreeland: The Eye has to Travel" with PEGGY GUGGENHEIM: ART ADDICT. A colorful character who was not only ahead of her time but helped to define it, Peggy Guggenheim was an heiress to her family fortune who became a central figure in the modern art movement. As she moved through the cultural upheaval of the 20th century, she collected not only art, but artists. Her colorful personal history included such figures as Samuel Beckett, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp as well as countless others. While fighting through personal tragedy, she maintained her vision to build one of the most important collections of modern art, now enshrined in her Venetian palazzo.
In 2004, musician Izzat Majeed founded Sachal Studios to create a space for traditional music in a nation that had rejected its musical roots. Sharia law had decimated Pakistani orchestras in the late 1970s, and yet the Sachal musicians remain committed to revitalizing the customs of their forefathers. After several largely unnoticed classical and folk album releases, the group produces a record combining South Asian improvisation with jazz. One track in particular, a cover of Dave Brubeck's "Take Five," becomes a runaway hit, and Sachal find themselves presented with the opportunity of a lifetime—the chance to perform live with Wynton Marsalis at Lincoln Center. As Obaid-Chinoy and Schocken's camera follows the musicians around New York, they intimately capture both the challenges and joys of this Eastern and Western musical fusion, culminating in virtuosic concert footage of Sachal and Marsalis's unprecedented collaboration.
The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds the voices of the Earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of a mysterious button that was discovered in its seabed. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline, the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian indigenous people, of the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.
Janis Joplin is one of the most revered and iconic rock & roll singers of all time, a tragic and misunderstood figure who thrilled millions of listeners and blazed new creative trails before her death in 1971 at age 27. With “Janis: Little Girl Blue,” Oscar-nominated director Amy Berg (“Deliver Us from Evil,” “West of Memphis”) examines Joplin’s story in depth for the first time on film, presenting an intimate and insightful portrait of a complicated, driven, often beleaguered artist. Joplin’s own words tell much of the film’s story through a series of letters she wrote to her parents over the years, many of them made public here for the first time (and read by Southern-born indie rock star/actor Chan Marshall, also known as Cat Power). Joplin was a powerhouse when she sang, and her meteoric rise and untimely demise changed music forever.
By 1970, Steve McQueen ruled Hollywood. He was the King of Cool and the world’s most notorious ladies’ man. Hot off the back of classics like “The Thomas Crown Affair” and “Bullitt,” the racing fanatic began production of his passion project, “Le Mans,” centered on the 24-hour car race in France. But the infamously troubled production was plagued with financial troubles, on-set rivalries and the star’s own personal issues. This documentary film interweaves stunning, newly discovered footage and McQueen’s private recordings with original interviews to reveal the true story of how this cinema legend would risk everything in pursuit of his dream.
In Kingdom of Shadows, Bernardo Ruiz takes an unflinching look at the hard choices and destructive consequences of the U.S.-Mexico “drug war,” weaving together the stories of a U.S. drug enforcement agent on the border, an activist nun in violence-scarred Monterrey, Mexico, and a former Texas smuggler, to reveal the human side of an often misunderstood conflict that has resulted in a growing human-rights crisis that only recently has made international headlines.
Welcome to Leith chronicles the attempted takeover of a small town in North Dakota by notorious white supremacist Craig Cobb. As his behavior becomes more threatening, tensions soar, and the residents desperately look for ways to expel their unwanted neighbor. With incredible access to both longtime residents of Leith and white supremacists, the film examines a small community in the plains struggling for sovereignty against an extremist vision.