FILM & MEDIA
THE SECOND OSWALD
The limited series audio podcast sheds light on a little known aspect of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Could the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, been set up to be the patsy? The series focuses on writer Kerry Thornley who served with Lee Harvey Oswald in the US Marines and wrote a novel about him a year before he killed JFK. Thornley would later implicate himself in the conspiracy and became a major influence on Q-Anon and other fringe underground groups through his writings. This is not just another conspiracy theory. Written by former National Public Radio (NPR) commentator and Peabody award winner Andrei Codrescu. [ more ]
THE KARMA KILLINGS
A modern-day crime thriller mixed in with Indian mythology and class warfare. The documentary delves into India’s most infamous serial killings and its impact on a nation. Told through the people directly involved, the film unravels the complexities of the case and goes beyond the sensational headlines to present a suspenseful and scary mystery. And has a huge twist – one of the killers maybe innocent? [ more ]
THE RUSSIAN WOODPECKER
A Ukrainian victim of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster discovers a dark secret and must decide whether to risk his life by revealing it, amid growing clouds of revolution and war. Winner Grand Jury Prize at 2015 Sundance Film Festival — World Cinema Documentary Competition. [ more ]
GINSBERG’S KARMA
“Ginsberg’s Karma” is an insightful and entertaining look at a transformative phase in the poet Allen Ginsberg’s life -- his first trip to India in 1962 would transform him into America’s first hippie. While in India, he experimented with mind-altering drugs, spiritualism, and become a political activist. The documentary follows poet Bob Holman as he travels to India to piece together Ginsberg’s life in there, and interviews many of the writers who knew him during his trip. Ginsberg’s adventures and what he experienced in India are the bridge between the Beat generation of the 1950s to the hippie counterculture of the 1960s in America. Funded by National Endowment for the Humanities. [ more ]
THE HUMAN TOWER
Set in three countries, the film is a global story of fearless skills and heart-bounding suspense. In the slums of Mumbai, India, Sandeep, a coach with high dreams and a debilitating case of malaria leads his team to break the record and build India’s biggest human tower at the one-day Dahi Handi Festival. While in Vilafranca de Penedes, Spain, a legendary coach, Melilla, takes his dreams to Santiago, Chile, hoping to share the castellers’ tradition that goes back 400 years. Pressed for time, Melilla needs to prepare the Chilean team for the Universal Forum of Cultures where they will attempt the first seven-level tower in Chile. Helped by Luis, a scholar, they develop a model to unify Chilean society from the bottom up through the human towers. But all it takes is one shaky foot to send hundreds of bodies tumbling into the mud or onto the crumbling pavement. A passion beyond race, borders, and ages. [ more ]
THE HYDRA
THE HYDRA is about the rise of ecstasy and other synthetic drugs in Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Using archival footage, interviews, and meticulous recreations — the film tells the extraordinary covert operation lead by General Vladimir Tymoshenko with SBU (formerly KGB) in coordination with the DEA and other European law enforcement agencies to track down and end ecstasy manufacturers and rogue operators originating from Ukraine. [ more ]
PIGEON KINGS OF BROOKLYN
Look up from the busy hectic streets of New York City life, and you will see a flock of purebred pigeons flying in circles around an abandoned tenement building in Bushwick. Their aerial acrobatics are guided by their keeper, a street-wise Puerto Rico man nicknamed 2Tone. On the other end of Brooklyn, Goodwin and his pal, Super 13, tend their pigeon coop and flock of 300 birds. Each one trying to lure each other’s pigeons away in order to get bragging rights. The film is told through the voices and perspectives of the pigeon keepers and brings the audience into this obscure and dying culture in New York City. NTSC. Full HD. 9 minutes. Producers: Ram Devineni, Ashok Sinha & Martina Sönksen. Vimeo Staff Pick. Released on Narratively.
VEGAS: BASED ON A TRUE STORY
Eddie Parker, his wife Tracy and their 12-year-old son Mitch lead blue-collar lives on the outskirts of America’s pleasure capital, Las Vegas. A compulsive gambler, Eddie has never won big. Tending her small garden in the desert, Tracy tries to keep the fragile family life together. Then an elusive stranger shows up claiming there’s something special about their home and he makes an offer that quickly turns into the family’s obsession. The only question is how deep are they willing to go? Selected for competition for the 65th Venice Film Festival and Tribeca Film Festival. [ more ]
THE DEATH OF PABLO NERUDA
An interactive story and film about the death of Chile’s greatest poet, Pablo Neruda, and how his funeral became a powerful act of resistance against the brutal Pinochet dictatorship. Featuring Ariel Dorfman and published by the Virginia Quarterly Review. [ watch ]
O SONHO BOLLYWOODIANO
Three Brazilian actresses decide to go to Índia to break into the film industry, but once they are inside the heart of Indian Culture, their dreams and wills start to change on the contrast between the East and the West, the ancient and the contemporary values, between the individual the the collective yearning. Selected for competition for the 33rd Mostra Internacional de Cinema em Sao Paulo and the Busan International Film Festival. [ more ]
MONTEDORO
A middle-aged American woman unexpectedly discovers her true origin after her adopted parents have died. Deeply moved and uncertain of her identity, she decides to travel to a remote region in Southern Italy in search of her natural birth mother, she has never known or seen. She arrives to an apocalyptic and abandoned landscape and a collapsing village resting on a majestic hill. With the help of two mysterious hermit women, she undergoes a fascinating and magical voyage through time and memory inhabited by ghosts and ancient people that are long extinct, but will come to life one last time. [ more ]
KISS FOR GABRIELA
Gabriela Leite is the first known sex worker to run for Brazilian Congress. The film accompanies her 2010 campaign as she faces 822 opponents and challenges the male dominated political system to see if a sex worker, activist, wife, mother, and cultural icon can beat the odds and win the election. Winner at the 2011 Fusion Film Festival. [ more ]
FABULOUS HAIR!
In a tucked-away corner of Northern Philadelphia is a neon-green-tinged hair salon called Void of Colour, owned by charismatic hair designer Sina Washington, who follows in her grandma and aunt’s footsteps. In this choose-your-own-adventure three-part series — which was a winner of Eko’s “Challenge of Diversity” competition and screened at the Tribeca Film Festival’s Media and Games Summit — you decide the fate of Sina and her fashion-forward friends; simply click the pop-ups on screen to follow Sina’s models and their suspenseful storylines. [ more ]