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- Documentary series focusing on great American artists and personalities.
- Anthology series which ran on PBS throughout the 1980s.
- Independent Lens is an award-winning PBS documentary series that streams on the PBS App and airs on public television. Independent Lens documentaries focus on stories of underrepresented communities and universal challenges found across America. The series has been awarded numerous Emmys and Peabodys, and has been nominated for 10 Academy Awards.
- A documentary of the successful career and assassination of San Francisco's first elected gay city supervisor.
- Shot on one day by 25 different cameramen across the USA under the co-ordination of Arthur J. Bressan Jr. this film documents Gay Pride parades across the United States in the late 70s.
- In San Francisco, an immigrant widow welcomes the new year with some unhappiness: she's sixty-two now, she wants to make a trip to China to pay last respects to her ancestors, a fortune teller has told her this is the year she'll die, and a daughter, Geraldine, remains unmarried. Geraldine does have a boyfriend, but she's not sure she's ready for marriage, and, anyway, he lives in Los Angeles and Geraldine doesn't want to leave her mother alone in her declining years. Mrs. Tan's cheerful brother-in-law tries to help out. Is there any solution that will enable Mrs. Tan to hold onto her culturally influenced and deep-seated hopes, yet keep those hopes from suffocating Geraldine?
- Hollywood Chinese is a captivating look at cinema history through the lens of the Chinese American experience. Directed by triple Sundance award-winning filmmaker, Arthur Dong, this documentary is a voyage through a century of cinematic delights, intrigues and treasures. It weaves together a wondrous portrait of actors, directors, writers, and movie icons who have defined American feature films, from the silent era to the current new wave of Asian American cinema. At once entertaining and enlightening, Hollywood Chinese reveals long-untold stories behind the Asian faces that have graced the silver screen, and weaves a rich and complicated tapestry, one marked by unforgettable performances and groundbreaking films, but also by a tangled history of race and representation.
- A young boy named James comes of age in 1940s Louisiana and grapples with what it means to be black during a time of racism and poverty. James's mother accompanies her son to town to see about the boy's nagging toothache, and his journey soon becomes an eye-opening odyssey.
- A divorced woman moves to a new city, trying to rebuild her life. She joins the choir of a local church and is inspired by the choirmaster, a curmudgeonly old gentleman who will accept nothing but perfection from his group. As Christmas approaches and the choir practices for a performance of Handel's "Messiah', issues of racism and ageism, accusations against a young choir member, and the director's health issue threaten to undermine the performance.
- In this film made over ten years, filmmaker Barbara Sonneborn goes on a pilgrimage to the Vietnamese countryside where her husband was killed. She and translator (and fellow war widow) Xuan Ngoc Nguyen explore the meaning of war and loss on a human level. The film weaves interviews with Vietnamese and American widows into a vivid testament to the legacy of war.
- After the Manongs labored to build America, their San Francisco Manilatown community is wiped out by urban renewal, and 50 old-timers are forcibly evicted from the International Hotel by 300 cops in the dead of night. This film documents destruction of the last block of Manilatown in Kearney Street.
- "Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena" is Chicana filmmaker Lourdes Portillo's foray into the legacy of the tejana singer Selena Quintanilla. Portillo interviews family members such as Selena's father and sister, community members, and anonymous fans. She also includes comments by leading Latina writers and scholars such as Sandra Cisneros, Cherrie Moraga, and Rosa Linda Fregoso.
- This is the story of one simple invention, the vibrator, and its relationship to one complex human behavior, the female orgasm. The history of the vibrator and its medical use had virtually vanished until historian, Rachel Maines, researching needlework patterns in early 20th century women's magazines, ran across ads for electric vibrators. Piquing her curiosity, she traced the origins of this early electrified appliance and made an astonishing discovery. Under the guise of a medical treatment, Victorian doctors had used vibrators to relieve women of symptoms of hysteria by masturbating them to orgasm. Why did women need this treatment? Female sexual satisfaction was, and continues to be, misunderstood or, worse, ignored. Almost 70% of women do not reach orgasm by penetration alone. Yet, the social, legal and religious definition of "real" sex is just that: penetration of the vagina to MALE orgasm. FEMALE orgasm isn't even considered. Is it any wonder that a lot of women were unsatisfied? Their dissatisfaction was labeled "hysteria." Symptoms of hysteria were vague - being cranky, reading French novels while wearing tight corsets, etc. It was a disease manufactured by doctors creating a lucrative clientele and a mutually camouflaged procedure that satisfied both. In the late 1920s, vibrators began appearing in blue movies. The camouflage was blown. Doctors dropped the treatment and manufacturers stopped advertising. The vibrator went underground and it disappeared from the annals of history until Maines happened upon it. In the 1970s, the feminist movement, the birth control pill and legalized abortions ushered in the sexual revolution. Artist and author, Betty Dodson almost single handedly brought the vibrator back into women's lives because of an accidental discovery. When Dodson and her lover used a barber's scalp massager on her clitoris, she experienced intense orgasms. Inspired by this revelation, she began a crusade to teach women how to have orgasms with vibrators - alone and with partners. In 2004, thirty years after Dodson's happy discovery, the female orgasm is under attack again. Former fifth grade teacher, Joanne Webb, was arrested for selling vibrators to two undercover cops in a small Texas town. She had broken a state law that prohibits the sale of devices that stimulate the genitals. Texas and three other states have enacted these laws, a backlash to feminism. In these states, however, it is legal to advertise and sell Viagra. This double standard for women has far-reaching contemporary implications for sexual freedom, civil liberties and the right to privacy.
- This documentary is about the internment of Japanese Americans in camps during World War II.
- A 13-part documentary mini-series (directed by Chris Marker) on the significance of ancient Greek culture in the creation of the modern Western Civilization.
- The first biographical film on the famed Mexican artist, DIEGO RIVERA: I PAINT WHAT I SEE traces his life from childhood through his Cubist period, his leading role in the Mexican mural renaissance, his fame as a muralist in the USA, and his later years. The film explores Rivera's life and work, including his stormy relationship with Frida Kahlo and the destruction of his famous mural at Rockefeller Center. Shot on location in Mexico and the United States, the film includes a remarkable collection of archival film and photographs, much of which has not been seen before. The text is drawn from the writings of Rivera and Kahlo and from other historical texts. Using Rivera's own words, this richly detailed film brings to life the difficulty he faced in his transition from studio artist to public and political artist, and the conflicts that arose from that point onward.
- A collective cinematic love letter to the elusive French filmmaker Chris Marker, Emiko Omor's timely film captures the persona of a filmmaker who is at once both contradictorily present in and distant from his body of work. Notoriously private, self-described as the 'best known author of unknown works,' Marker is widely known for a few key cinematic works such as LA JETEE (1963) and SANS SOLEIL (1983), but his wider filmography remains undiscovered. Through interviews with Marker's colleagues and admirers, Omori lovingly describes a man whose preference for personal privacy has rendered him perhaps cinema's most famous enigma: a man who is his works. --Samuel B. Prime, Melnitz Movies Director
- Mrs. Judo- Be Strong, Be Gentle, Be Beautiful documents the life-long journey of Keiko Fukuda's decision to defy thousands of years of tradition, choose her own path, and become the highest-ranking woman in judo history.
- San Francisco Chinatown photo studio in early to mid-twentieth century captured dreams and life in an immigrant community becoming American.
- Skin Stories explores the transformative power of the ancient body art of tattoo as a pathway to explore one's inner self, to honor the past, and preserve a culture for the future.
- Ed Hardy emblazoned on clothing worn by Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and Mick Jagger, on wine and dozens of other products. Now you'll meet the real Ed Hardy, the godfather of modern tattooing and artist extraordinaire who gave up a promising career in the fine arts to pursue his childhood obsession: tattoos.
- "Women Behind the Camera" reveals the courageous lives of pioneer camerawomen from Hollywood to Bollywood and beyond, from war zones to children's laughter, in a way that had never been seen before.
- A documentary about Bay Area singer, songwriter, and activist for peace and social justice, Malvina Reynolds. Her well-known original songs include "Little Houses" made popular by Pete Seeger in the 1960's and used as the theme song on the hit TV show "Weeds". Her songs have been recorded by Harry Bellafonte, Joan Baez, and Marianne Faithful, among others. Pete Seeger introduced one of her songs in his Carnegie Hall Concert from 1963, referring to her as a songwriter who "writes a song before breakfast" alluding to her prolific output.
- Chronicles the life and work of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, focusing on the years that he spent in the US, the work he created there and his influence on American artists.
- A compelling study of the Hopi - a Native American tribe recognized for populating the North American continent and in particular, Arizona - that captures their deep spirituality and reveals their integration of art and daily life.
- A series of half-hour programs exploring through dramatic re-enactments, vintage film clips, and music some aspect of African-American cultural history.
- American cowboys have been writing poetry for more than a century. This little-known literary tradition both belies the macho image of the Western Heroes and serves as an imaginative form of oral history.
- A demonstration of sound recorded in Dolby Stereo.
- A life rampant, street level story of mentorship and everyday heroism in tough circumstances. An inner city coach's son, estranged in his youth from his father, spends five years on ball fields in inner city Oakland and Havana, following the lives of two extraordinary youth baseball coaches, Roscoe in Oakland and Nicolas in Havana. The coaches meet on videotape and two years of red tape later, Coach Roscoe and nine Oakland players travel to Havana to play Coach Nicolas' team. For one week, the players and coaches eat, dance, swim, argue and play baseball together. But when the parent of an Oakland player is murdered back home, it brings back the inescapable reality and challenges of life in an American inner city.
- The award-winning documentary, Coming to Light, tells the dramatic story of the life of Edward S. Curtis, his creation of his monumental work, and his changing views of the people he set out to document. More importantly, the film gives Indian people a voice in the discussion of Curtis images. Hopi, Navajo, Cupig, Blackfeet, Piegan, Suquamish and Kwakiutl people, many of them descended from Curtis's photographic subjects, tell stories about the people in the photographs, and discuss the meaning of the images from their own perspectives.
- When retired doctor Kay Taylor went on a medical mission to Central America, she made a startling discovery: the deadliest cancer killer of women in the developing world is cervical cancer - a preventable disease - killing almost 300,000 women yearly. When found early, it is treatable. Detection is simple: a vinegar wash on the cervix that reveals precancerous cells that are treated in one visit. In 2005, Dr. Taylor founded Prevention International: No Cervical Cancer (PINCC) She and two volunteers packed medical equipment in suitcases and traveled to a poor clinic in Honduras to train health practitioners in this 'see and treat' technique. Now, six years later, PINCC-trained practitioners in Latin America, Africa, and India are saving countless lives one their own.
- Documentary on young South Korean women who work in sex related enterprises adjacent to American military bases in South Korea. Also explores the lives of Korean American women who came to the United States as wives of American servicemen.
- A KCTS Pacific Northwest TV film series
- Part memoir, part history, part investigation, Chinese Couplets spans two centuries, three countries and four generations of women in this intimate story that reveals the impact of America's Chinese Exclusion Acts on filmmaker Felicia Lowe's family. Lowe offers a nuanced, engaging approach to the debate that details the long-term, multi-generational effects of ethnically motivated immigration policies while imparting a cautionary tale of living with cultural pluralism in the 21st century.
- A lucid portrait of one of the most unconventional and influential composers of the 20th Century. Throughout his life, Lou Harrison (1917-2003) studied and experimented freely with western, eastern and custom-made instruments, embracing artistic playfulness over the classical rules of composition. His unbounded thinking and unbridled experimentation blossomed into the creation of a vast body of work for dance, opera, orchestra and unlikely pairings of chamber instruments. This film offers a rare glimpse into the intimate personal struggles and artistic development of a legendary composer. It is the culmination of more than two decades of research and documentation by filmmaker/music producer Eva Soltes who enjoyed a close relationship with Harrison.
- The city of Berkeley was wracked by tension resulting from the "People's Park War." This documentary traces reports on what happened in the streets, especially through the words of key participants.
- Five Chicana cultural critics gather over a meal to discuss and debate the life, death, and legacy of Selena Quintanilla-Pérez.
- Profiles the career of Roy DeCarava, the first African-American photographer to receive a Guggenheim fellowship.
- 1985– 1h 25mNot Rated7.7 (137)TV EpisodeThe dramatic story of eminent photographer Edward S. Curtis and the creation of his monumental portfolio of Native American images. Descendants of his photographic subjects tell stories about the photos and reveal their meaning to Indian people today.
- Based on two short stories by Hisaye Yamamoto this play details the domestic tension between an illiterate Japanese immigrant farmer and his educated wife in 1930s California