America the Beautiful

A miners’ strike is brew­ing in Butte, Mon­tana, in the rev­o­lu­tion­ary year of 1917. Tens of thou­sands of men have already lost their lives in the copper mines of the … read more

Detroit’s story has encap­su­lat­ed the iconic nar­ra­tive of Amer­i­ca over the last cen­tu­ry— the Great Migra­tion of African Amer­i­cans escap­ing Jim Crow; the rise of man­u­fac­tur­ing and the middle class; the love affair with auto­mo­biles; the flow­er­ing of the Amer­i­can dream; and now … the col­lapse of the econ­o­my and the fading Amer­i­can mythos. With its vivid, painter­ly palette and haunt­ing score, DETROPIA sculpts a dream­like col­lage of a grand city tee­ter­ing on the brink of dis­so­lu­tion. These soul­ful prag­ma­tists and stal­wart philoso­phers strive to make ends meet and make sense of it all, refus­ing to aban­don hope or resis­tance. Their grit and pluck embody the spirit of the Motor City as it strug­gles to sur­vive postin­dus­tri­al Amer­i­ca and begins to envi­sion a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent future. (Car­o­line Libresco)

Heidi Ewing ist aufgewach­sen in der Nähe Detroits, wollte zunächst in den For­eign Ser­vice ein­treten, entsch­ied sich jedoch schnell, Filme zu machen.
Rachel Grady und Heidi Ewing lern­ten sich 1997 bei einem Pro­jekt kennen, 2001 grün­de­ten sie die gemein­same Pro­duk­tions­fir­ma Loki Films in New York und real­isierten preis­gekrönte Doku­men­tarfilme für Kino und TV. JESUS CAMP (2007) wurde für den Oscar nominiert und in 40 Län­dern aus­ges­trahlt. Gemein­same Filme u.a.: THE BOYS OF BARAKA (2005), 12TH & DELAWARE (2010), A DREAM PREFERRED (2015), THE EDUCATION OF MOHAMMAD HUSSEIN (2013), NORMAN LEAR: JUST ANOTHER VERSION OF YOU (2016).

One region, two lan­guages: Brault’s film ELOGE DU CHIAC takes place in New Brunswick, in the east­ern­most part of Canada, where both French and Eng­lish are spoken. A ded­i­cat­ed young … read more

In some parts of St. Louis, Mis­souri, preg­nant moth­ers hope they will have girls. Half of the boys who grow up here don’t live to cel­e­brate their eigh­teenth birth­day. This … read more

What is this land that promis­es a better future for so many people, luring them to come and settle, to cul­ti­vate it, to live? What is this land whose real­i­ty … read more

In 1979, short­ly before he died, James Bald­win wrote an unfin­ished work in which he reflect­ed on his life as a homo­sex­u­al writer in the con­text of the black Civil … read more

What char­ac­ter­izes public life? What­ev­er it is, it could hardly be more lively than in Jack­son Heights, where 167 dif­fer­ent lan­guages are spoken. There are shops, restau­rants, and places of … read more

In LONG STORY SHORT, over 100 people at home­less shel­ters, food banks, adult lit­er­a­cy pro­grams, and job train­ing cen­ters in Los Ange­les and the Bay Area in Cal­i­for­nia dis­cuss their … read more

In the early 1980s, Diego Echev­er­ria took a 16mm camera into the streets of the South­side of Williams­burg, then a pri­mar­i­ly Puerto Rican neigh­bor­hood and one of the city’s poor­est, … read more