Advanced search

Pictures From a Hiroshima Schoolyard is a documentary focused around a set of old Japanese children's drawings found in the closet of a member of All Souls Church in Washington, DC in 1995. Current parishioners unearth the dramatic story behind the drawings and discover that they were drawn in 1947 by students of a school less than a half-mile from where the first atomic bomb in history was detonated. The children who made them (now in their late 70s) reflect on their early lives amidst the rubble of their decimated city and the hope they shared through their art. The pictures are restored and taken back to Japan where they are reunited with the artists and exhibited in the very building where they were created.

Ramsey Denison investigates a terrifying pattern of police corruption and discovers that behind the shimmering surface of Las Vegas lies a police department with individuals willing to go to any lengths to cover up crimes.

Pretty Slick documents the BP oil spill's environmental impact across Gulf states. Filmmaker Fox investigates cleanup efforts, conducts water tests, and reveals public safety prioritized below tourism and oil industry interests.

Hiding in the Walls unwinds the fraught history of lead poisoning in Baltimore and follows the adult survivors who are on a mission to reclaim the narrative.

Cafeteria Man is the true story of rebel chef Tony Geraci and his mission to radically reform Baltimore's public school food system with a recipe for change.

Political Animals is a powerful, award winning documentary about four California lawmakers -- all women -- who took the fight for equality from the streets into the halls of government to create lasting social justice and equality.

The first feature-length documentary film to fully investigate the growing threat to Earth's life-support systems from the loss of biodiversity. If current trends continue, scientists warn that half or more of all plant and animal species on Earth will become extinct within the next few decades. Call of Life investigates the scope, the causes, and the predicted effects of this unprecedented loss of life, but also looks deeper, at the ways in which both culture and psychology have helped to create and perpetuate the situation. The film not only tells the story of a crisis in nature, but also in human nature, a crisis more complex and threatening than anything human beings have ever faced before.

Fourteen-year-old filmmaker Dylan D'Haeze explores how communities can develop zero waste strategies and looks at building a sustainable lifestyle for today and for future generations.

Five diverse students on the autism spectrum take us into their lives and into their classrooms to show us how they're making college work.

An exploration of teenagers' consumption habits and their perspectives on the environment.

The colorful story of former Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey offers an example of an authentic hero, a true political "maverick". The documentary cuts through contemporary biases based on ideologies and party affiliations to open a unique window onto an important span of our nation's history. In so doing, it enables that history to illuminate present day politics and issues in a new light.

"Plant This Movie" explores the zeitgeist of urban farming around the world, from Havana, Cuba to communities of urban farmers in cities as diverse as Shanghai, Calcutta, Addis Ababa, London, and Lima.

In 'Jens Jensen The Living Green' follows the career of Danish-born JENS JENSEN (1860 - 1951) from street sweeper, to 'dean of landscape architecture', to pioneering conservationist. Jensen battles corruption and unbridled industrial expansion to make the modern city livable by bringing 'the living green' into the wretched lives of Chicago's workers. Striking cinematography and an evocative soundtrack illuminate colorful witness from Prairie School architect ALFRED CALDWELL and an intensely reflective interview with JENSEN. Today, residents of underserved communities still suffer the effects of 'park deserts' and 'food deserts' - but the healing power of nature is recognized. Jensen leveraged his relationships with FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, HENRY FORD and JULIUS ROSENWALD to stop the steel mills from industrializing the entire shoreline and preserve native Midwestern landscapes.

In 1994, close to one million people were killed in a planned and systematic genocide in the African country of Rwanda, the largest systematic murder of a single race since the Holocaust. How did this carnage occur when the world declared after WWII that it would never tolerate such mass murder again? Who was responsible? Why did the international community fail to respond? This sensitively filmed documentary attempts to answer these questions. Forsaken Cries incorporates historical footage of the colonial period, interviews with survivors and analyses of key issues including: international law; history of the Great Lakes region; failure of the international community, US policy and NGOs; the refugee crisis; women's human rights violations; and the war crimes tribunal. This is a case study of the horrendous consequences of neglecting preventive diplomacy.

Narrated by Robert Redford and co-produced by The Redford Center at the Sundance Preserve and Alpheus Media, Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars, follows the story of ordinary Texans - mayors, ranchers, farmers, CEOs, community groups, legislators, and lawyers - that came together to oppose the construction of 19 conventional coal-fired power plants that were slated to be built in Eastern and Central Texas and that were being fast-tracked by the Governor.

In the artificial landscape that is Los Angeles, where even palm trees are imported, nothing epitomizes man's short-sighted efforts to reshape the face of the earth more than the LA River: modified beyond recognition, its flow tapped before it even reached the surface, the river was used, abused and essentially forgotten. But when an unassuming boater insists on seeing it as a river again, a local controversy takes on national dimensions, and the once-derided eyesore turns into a source of hope for the City of Dreams. 'Rock the Boat' is a fun, high-energy and, ultimately, moving film that tells this every-man's adventure and looks at the price nature has to pay for our urban lifestyle.

Young people and the environment.

New Guinea, second largest island on earth, is home to over 100,000 species found nowhere else on earth, and to ancient human cultures, including the Moi people. The future of the Moi's homeland is now threatened by the Indonesian government, who are bent on the logging and development of this last frontier in New Guinea's wild east. Filmed at great personal risk, this award-winning documentary is a moving, inside look at the destruction of one of the world's fragile indigenous cultures- clinging to the last vestige of their traditional ways.

Describes the citizens and special interest groups that fight against any law or act restricting the use or possession of guns despite statistics that prove an increase in accidents, crimes and deaths due to the accessibility of hand guns.

While the classroom as a vehicle for educational success remains largely unchallenged, a few public schools across the country are trying a different approach to engaging students in the learning process, using the communities and neighborhoods where students live as classrooms - creating not only a different type of learning environment, but a different kind of student.

Pembe ya Ndovu travels through the heart of Africa in a journey to uncover the serious threats to African wildlife and biodiversity, especially the elephant population.

When the Spill Hit Homer personalizes the impact of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Homer was a quiet fishing village near Alaska's magnificent Price William Sound until it was hit by one of the greatest ecological disasters of our time. The film provides a first-hand account of the spill's devastating impact on residents of this fishing port and nearby Alaskan Native villages, which rely on the sea for their subsistence. Residents tell their own sad and angry stories, providing dramatic evidence of the spill's devastation and the local frustration with Exxon's inadequate cleanup efforts. The film is a useful tool for studying ecological disasters and the many lessons they provide.

Can a town marked by the last mass lynching make peace with its past? UNSPOKEN is a documentary feature film that traces the journey of resident Stephanie Calabrese who picks up an iPhone camera to uncover buried truths and explore how the community has been impacted by its racial divide through the lens of her own whiteness. Stephanie's foray into filmmaking offers an insider's intimate look at the impact of the 1946 quadruple lynching, segregation and integration through today in Monroe, Georgia, and shatters a code of silence that has distanced neighbor from neighbor for generations.

Growing Up Green profiles a unique statewide, hands-on environmental education program in Michigan, the Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative. For the very first time, both rural and urban schools across the state are working to increase academic performance by involving students in local efforts to improve the environments they inhabit.