Scenes from the Glittering World

Adolescents

2020 · ★ 7.4

Emma and Anaïs are best friends and yet everything in their life seems to set them apart, their social backgrounds but also their personalities. From the age of thirteen to eighteen, Adolescentes follows the two teenagers during these years where radical transformations and first times punctuate daily life. Through their personal stories, the film offers a rare portrait of France and its recent history.

The Shaman's Apprentice

2001 · ★ 8

Scientist Mark Plotkin races against time to save the ancient healing knowledge of Indian tribes from extinction.

Homeland

2000 · ★ 7.5

Following four Lakota families over three years, Homeland explores what it takes for the Lakota community to build a better future in the face of tribal and government corruption, scarce housing, unemployment, and alcoholism. Intimate interviews with a spiritual leader, a grandmother, an artist, and a community activist from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation reveal how each survives through family ties, cultural tradition, humor, and a palpable yearning for self-reliance and personal freedom.

Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting

2021 · ★ 8

Examining the movement that is ending the use of Native American names, logos, and mascots in the world of sports and beyond.

Full Out: Inside Ohio Show Choir

2022

Four unique high school show choirs in Ohio prepare themselves to win during their highly-anticipated, grueling and glamorous competition season.

Tribal Justice

2017

Two formidable Native American women, both chief judges in their tribe's courts, strive to reduce incarceration rates and heal their people by restoring rather than punishing offenders, modeling restorative justice in action.

Foundational Black American

Uncover the hidden history of Foundational Black Americans and Black Indians-present before Columbus and vital to building the U.S.-in this powerful documentary that reclaims a buried legacy.

Permission to Exist

2020

In just sixty years, South Korea went from being one of the poorest countries on the Asian continent to having the 12th largest economy in the entire world. Every year, it is measured that Korean students have some of the highest test scores and a higher rate of acceptance into Ivy League schools compared to all other nations. But on the flip side, South Korea also has one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world, the highest gender pay gap of all developed countries, and the highest plastic surgery rate per capita. Always expected to receive top scores and constantly bombarded by media and messages that seem to demand nothing short of visual “perfection,” how do these individuals come to accept and learn to love themselves as they are?

The Lost Spirits

2009

The last surviving Native Americans on Long Island are the focus of The Lost Spirits. The film chronicles their struggles as an indigenous people to maintain their identity amidst relentless modernization and a heartless bureaucracy.

NUKED

2023 · ★ 7.5

The US detonated 67 nuclear weapons over the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands during the Cold War, the consequences of which still reverberate down four generations to today. "NUKED," is a timely new feature documentary focussing on the human victims of the nuclear arms race, tracing the displaced Bikinian's ongoing struggle for justice and survival even as climate change poses a new existential threat. Using carefully restored archival footage to resurrect contemporaneous islanders’ voices and juxtaposing these with the full, awesome fury of the nuclear detonations, NUKED starkly contrasts the official record with the lived experience of the Bikinians themselves, serving as an important counterpoint to this summer’s Oppenheimer.

Resolved

2007 · ★ 7.2

The fascinating complexity of high school debate gives way to a portrait of the equally complex racial and class bias of American education in Greg Whiteley's riveting documentary.

Incident at Oglala

1992 · ★ 7.1

On June 26, 1975, during a period of high tensions on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, two FBI agents were killed in a shootout with a group of Indians. Although several men were charged with killing the agents, only one, Leonard Peltier, was found guilty. This film describes the events surrounding the shootout and suggests that Peltier was unjustly convicted.