Browse Movies : Completed : 2013 : Documentary (Page #2)

In 1992 Professor Richard Davidson, one of the world’s leading neuroscientists, met the Dalai Lama, who encouraged him to apply the same rigorous methods he used to study depression and anxiety to the study of compassion and kindness, those qualities cultivated by Tibetan meditation practice. The results of Davidson’s studies at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, are portrayed in Free the Mind as they are applied to treating PTSD in returning Iraqi vets and children with ADHD. The film poses two fundamental questions: What really is consciousness, and how does it manifest in the brain and body? And is it possible to physically change the brain solely through mental practices?

A protrait of Brandon Darby, a radical activist turned FBI informant who has been alternately vilified and deified. In 2005, Darby became an overnight hero when he traveled to Katrina-devastated New Orleans and braved toxic floodwaters to rescue a friend stranded in the Ninth Ward. Soon after, he co-founded Common Ground, a successful grassroots relief organization. But over the next few years, he began hiding a shocking secret. After two young protestors were arrested at the 2008 Republican National Convention, Darby revealed he had been instrumental in the indictment as an FBI informant.

An IMAX® 3D adventure to the lush tropical islands of remote West Papua, where life flourishes above and below the sea. Join Jawi, a young island boy, as he takes us on a journey of discovery to this magical place where we encounter whale sharks, sea turtles, manta rays, and other iconic creatures of the sea. Home to more than 2,000 species of sea life, this exotic locale features the most diverse marine ecosystem on earth.

Celebrating the iconic store’s 111th anniversary, Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s shares the compelling story of the legendary Fifth Avenue landmark which has launched the careers of many of the world renowned designers, and continues to be the aspiration of every designer around the globe. The story is told by fashion icons such as Karl Lagerfeld, Vera Wang, Marc Jacobs, Georgina Chapman, Christian Louboutin and Michael Kors, among others, as well as celebrity and socialite clientele, longstanding employees, and members of the Goodman family.

As we meet best friends and professional surfing legends Tom Carroll and Ross Clarke-Jones, middle age is upon them and their children are getting older - but they can't stop exploring the globe for that elusive rush of adrenaline and thrill of danger, in search of the ultimate wave.

This chilling and inventive documentary examines a country where death squad leaders are celebrated as heroes, challenging them to reenact their real-life mass-killings in the style of the American movies they love.

When the Indonesian government was overthrown in 1965, small-time gangster Anwar Congo and his friends went from selling movie tickets on the black market to leading anti-communist death squads in the mass murder of over a million people. Anwar boasts of killing hundreds with his own hands, but he's lived in his country with impunity ever since. When approached to make a film about their role in the genocide, Anwar and his friends eagerly comply-but their idea of being in a movie is not to provide reflective testimony, but to dance their way through musical numbers, twist arms in film noir gangster scenes, and gallop across the prairies as yodeling cowboys.

Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini wasn’t merely the lightweight champ. He fought for his father and for those in small towns across America. The Good Son is an intimate history, a saga of fathers and fighters, loss and redemption and finally, forgiveness.

Academy Award winning director Alex Gibney takes an unprecedented look in The Last Gladiators at the National Hockey League’s most feared enforcers and explores the career of Chris “Knuckles” Nilan. The role was simple: protect their teammates no matter the cost. For Chris this meant a shattered body, addiction to drugs, and harming the people closest to him. But in the process, he won the love of hockey’s holy city, Montreal, and helped the team win the Stanley Cup. Through interviews with hockey’s toughest guys, the film explores what it means to enforce the unspoken code of the NHL.

1975. In Rome, Claude Lanzmann filmed a series of interviews with Benjamin Murmelstein, the last President of the Jewish Council in the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, the only "Elder of the Jews" not to have been killed during the war. A rabbi in Vienna, following the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938, Murmelstein fought bitterly with Adolf Eichmann, week after week for seven years, managing to help around 121,000 Jews leave the country, and preventing the liquidation of the ghetto.

2012. Claude Lanzmann, at 87 – without masking anything of the passage of time on men, but showing the incredible permanence of the locations involved –exhumes these interviews shot in Rome, returning to Theresienstadt, the town “given to the Jews by Hitler”, a so-called model ghetto, but a ghetto of deceit chosen by Adolf Eichmann to dupe the world. We discover the extraordinary personality of Benjamin Murmelstein: a man blessed with a dazzling intelligence and a true courage, which, along with an unrivaled memory, makes him a wonderfully wry, sardonic and authentic storyteller.

Through these three periods, from Nisko in Poland to Theresienstadt, and from Vienna to Rome, the film provides an unprecedented insight into the genesis of the Final Solution. It reveals the true face of Eichmann, and exposes without artifice the savage contradictions of the Jewish Councils.

Morgan Neville follows half a dozen diverse and gifted back up singers from throughout music history, each of whom has a story to tell of life in the shadows of superstardom (Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, Sting, Joe Cocker, Bette Midler to name just a few). These talented artists represent a range of styles that come from all eras of popular music, but each singer belongs to the first family of American voice. Now is their turn for the spotlight.

The film depicts the fortunes of a young male King Penguin, who returns to the place where he was born and raised. Known as Penguin City, this sub-Antarctic island is home to albatrosses, leopard seals and elephant seals—and six million penguins! Somehow our hero must earn his place among the inhabitants and fulfill his destiny by finding a mate and raising a family.

American Promise spans 13 years as Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, middle-class African-American parents in Brooklyn, N.Y., turn their cameras on their son, Idris, and his best friend, Seun, who make their way through one of the most prestigious private schools in the country. Chronicling the boys' divergent paths from kindergarten through high school graduation at Manhattan's Dalton School, this provocative, intimate documentary presents complicated truths about America's struggle to come of age on issues of race, class and opportunity.

Following world famous French soprano Natalie Dessay from the first repetitions until the premiere under the direction of Jean-Francois Sivadier, we meet a very special woman, a piece of art, a myth: La Traviata.

In 1968, a young college drop-out named George A. Romero directed Night of the Living Dead, a low budget horror film that shocked the world, became an icon of the counterculture, and spawned a zombie industry worth billions of dollars that continues to this day.

Birth of the Living Dead shows how Romero gathered an unlikely team of Pittsburghers -- policemen, iron workers, teachers, ad-men, housewives and a roller-rink owner -- to shoot a revolutionary guerrilla style film that went on to become a cinematic landmark, offering a profound insight into how our society worked in a singular time in American history.

Focuses on the advent of digital media sharing, including the rise of game-changing company Napster and its controversial online pioneers Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker. The digital revolution ultimately created a technology paradigm shift and upended both the music industry and music artists, and changed the world.

Enzo Avitabile, renowned Neapolitan saxophonist and singer/songwriter, is here filmed by Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme, a longtime admirer of Avitabile’s music. This work represents an incredible opportunity as one of the world’s great directors tells us not just about the music of a singular artist in its fusion of Neapolitan, world music (and especially Arab with performances by Naseer Shamma and Palestinian singer Amal Murkus) and jazz but also of a city, Naples, with all of its treasures and contradictions, as Enzo creates amazing new music with collaborators from all over the world, including Eliades Ochoa of Buena Vista Social Club, Naseer Shamma, Daby Touré and Trilok Gurtu. Music and a movie you will never forget!

Freda Kelly was just a shy Liverpudlian teenager when she was asked to work for a local band hoping to make it big. Though she had no concept of how far they would go, Freda had faith in The Beatles from the beginning, and The Beatles had faith in her.

History notes that The Beatles were together for 10 years, but Freda worked for them for 11. Many people came in and out of the band's circle as they grew to international stardom, but Freda remained a staple because of her unfaltering loyalty and dedication. As the Beatles' devoted secretary and friend, Freda was there as history unfolded; she was witness to the evolution – advances and setbacks, breakthroughs and challenges – of the greatest band in history.

In Good Ol' Freda, Freda tells her stories for the first time in 50 years. One of few films with the support of the living Beatles and featuring original Beatles music, the film offers an insider perspective on the beloved band that changed the music industry.

Hurricane Sandy. Wildfires in the West. "Brown-Outs" in the East. Farmers losing crops to the worst drought since the Dust Bowl. Climate change is no longer a prediction for the future, but a startling reality of today. Yet, as evidence of our changing climate mounts and the scientific consensus proves human causation, there continues to be no political action to thwart the warming of our planet. “Greedy Lying Bastards” investigates the reason behind stalled efforts to tackle climate change despite consensus in the scientific community that it is not only a reality but also a growing problem placing us on the brink of disaster. The film details the people and organizations casting doubt on climate science and claims that greenhouse gases are not affected by human behavior. From the Koch Brothers to ExxonMobil, to prominent Senators and Justices, this provocative exposé unravels the layers of deceit threatening U.S. democracy.

Two bartenders try to achieve their dreams through bartending. An injured Marine turns his goals to becoming a principal bartender at the best cocktail bar in the world. A young man leaves his white-collar job to buy the corner bar in his hometown years later he struggles to keep afloat. The bar is three deep, and the bartenders are in the weeds at the greatest cocktail party since before Prohibition. Hey Bartender is the story of the rebirth of the bartender and the comeback of the cocktail.

The film examines the life of the notorious pimp and author of seven ground-breaking books. It includes insightful interviews with well-known artists, scholars, friends and family members that create a riveting tapestry as colorful as the subject himself. The autobiographical work of Iceberg Slim is considered to be the genesis of blaxploitation films and gangster rap and it continues to influence artists today.