Category: Documentary

Portland, 1988. Filmmaker Gus Van Sant shoots Drugstore Cowboy, the project that will bring he and his collaborators a formidable burst of mainstream attention. Starring Matt Dillon, Kelly Lynch, and Heather Graham, the film follows a roving quartet of drug addicts — and, consequently, drug thieves, especially from the businesses of the title — who wash up in Portland’s then-gritty Pearl District. A death among their own spooks the leader of the pack into trying to clean up, and an encounter with a sepulchral junkie priest does its part to convince him further. Or maybe we should call him a Junkie priest, portrayed as he is by a controversial cameo from writer William S. Burroughs. “I’m going back to the old days,” Burroughs says of his role early in the above documentary on the making of Drugstore Cowboy. “The old days when they used to give people morphine in jail. The old days before the methadone programs.”

Sasha and Marina are raising their three adorable children in a wooden izba in a village in Voronezh region of Russia. They have no indoor plumbing and subsist mostly on a diet of cheap processed food and bread-and-mayo sandwiches. Sasha works in the IT industry, but a person of his talents cannot find steady work in the countryside and is forced to eke out a living as a computer repairman for his colorful neighbors. Sasha drives from client to client in his 1972 Lada, making barely enough money to cover his gas expenses, while Marina is busy running their impoverished, even by village standards, household. The Kiselyovs have happiness in spades – the heart of their family is their youngest child, the precocious and charming Katya. What kind of a future awaits this little girl?

An intimate documentary exploration of heritage and history against the backdrop of a brewing Afro-centric revolution as the U.S. government prepares to invade the island nation of Grenada. First hand accounts from activists Angela Davis, Fania Davis and Fannie Haughton weave together director Damani Baker’s family portrait of utopian dreams, resistance and civil unrest with a film score composed by music luminary Meshell Ndegeocello.

Acclaimed actor and FDNY veteran Steve Buscemi looks at what it’s like to work as a New York City firefighter. Utilizing exclusive behind-the-scenes footage and firsthand accounts from past and present firefighters, explore life in one of the world’s most demanding fire departments while illuminating the lives of the often ‘strong and silent’ heroes.

Made in 2005, this documentary traces the history of NY, NY, beginning with the formation of the producing partnership between Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff. It was they who developed the initial script with writer Earl Rauch. Winkler met Scorsese at a screening of Mean Streets, and when Scorsese heard that Winkler was developing a script set in the “big band” era, he asked to read it. Winkler and Chartoff discuss casting, and Scorsese and Kovacs discuss the look of the film. Editor Tom Rolf notes the irony (some might say the injustice) that Minnelli, who brought Kander & Ebb into the project, did not have a hit with the title song, which wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar. It didn’t get noticed until two years later, when Frank Sinatra recorded it. Today most people probably don’t realize it was written for a movie.

In the middle of ХХ century the Ukrainian cultural elite faced the problem of choice: to escape and save their national identity or assimilate and remain in the Soviet Union. The film tells the story of New York Group of Poets, founded in 1950. Ukrainian poets, who grew up in the English-speaking world, in the middle of XX century are trying to preserve their culture and grow it to the level of world culture.