We Were Here is the first documentary to take a reflective look back at the arrival and impact of AIDS in San Francisco. It explores how the City's inhabitants were affected by the tragedy, and how they eventually triumphed over the calamitous epidemic.
We Were Here, however, extends beyond the human toll of AIDS and the city of San Francisco and speaks to our capacity as individuals to rise to the occasion, and to the incredible power of a community coming together with love, compassion, and determination. It is the response to the AIDS epidemic over the past 30 years that galvanized the gay community turning it into a powerful political force that is currently fighting for – and winning – the battles for Marriage Equality and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and why every progressive political organization takes a page from the LGBT playbook. We Were Here is a powerful and emotional story about what we can accomplish as human beings.
Filmmakers David Weissman and Bill Weber co-directed the 2001 documentary, The Cockettes, chronicling San Francisco's legendary theater troupe of hippies and drag queens, 1969 – 1972. We Were Here revisits the city a decade later, as its flourishing gay community is hit with an unimaginable disaster. It tells the forgotten story of not only all the lives lost during this time, but of those that lived, and their courageous and extraordinary achievement.
The Redemption of General Butt Naked follows Joshua Milton Blahyi – aka General Butt Naked – a brutal African warlord who has renounced his violent past and reinvented himself as a Christian evangelist. Today, Blahyi travels the nation of Liberia as a preacher, seeking out those he once victimized in search of an uncertain forgiveness. Filmmakers Eric Strauss and Daniele Anastasion track his often troubling path up-close, finding both the genuine and disconcerting in Blahyi's efforts, raising questions about the limits of faith and forgiveness in the absence of justice.
The Interrupters follows Ameena, Cobe and Eddie as they go about their work, and while doing so reveals their own inspired journeys of hope and redemption. From acclaimed director Steve James and bestselling author Alex Kotlowitz, this film is an unusually intimate journey into the stubborn persistence of violence in our cities. The film attempts to make sense of what CeaseFire's Tio Hardiman calls, simply, "the madness".
"We all get dressed for Bill," says Anna Wintour about Bill Cunningham, the 80-year-old New York Times photographer and unlikely man-about-town. Cunningham has two weekly columns in the Style section of The New York Times: "On The Street," in which he identifies fashion trends as he spots them emerging on the street; and "Evening Hours," his ongoing coverage of the social whirl of charities that benefit the cultural life of the city. The result is far from simple picture taking—it is cultural anthropology.
Still, no one knows a thing about Bill Cunningham, the man himself. Intensely private and averse to any kind of attention, it took filmmaker Richard Press and producer Philip Gefter years to convince Bill to be filmed. Using only small consumer cameras and no crew, Bill Cunningham New York has the intimacy and immediacy of a home movie.
Bill Cunningham New Yorkchronicles a man who is obsessively interested in only one thing—the pictures he takes that document the way people dress. Bill has lived in the same small studio above Carnegie Hall for fifty years, never eats in restaurants and gets around on a worn-out bicycle—his sole means of transportation. The contradiction of his monk-like existence and the extravagance of his photographic subject matter is one aspect of his private life revealed in the movie.
The film's cast of characters ranges from the downtown New York eccentrics Bill has photographed over the years to the uptown fixtures of New York culture (Tom Wolfe, Anna Wintour, etc) and pillars of "New York Society" who have never before appeared in a movie but who agreed because of their regard for Bill (David Rockefeller, Brooke Astor, Annette De La Renta, among others). The range of people reveals something of the delirious and delicious romp through New York that composes Bill's world.
A sartorial Weegee, habitually dressed in a blue work jacket, Bill Cunningham has tried to live his life as an unencumbered man. He wants only his independence to be able to point his camera when beauty crosses his path. With this singular goal, he has managed to create a poignant and ongoing chronicle of the intersection of fashion and society in New York over fifty years—in effect, a portrait of New York City itself.
The 2008 presidential elections in Ghana, West Africa, serve as a backdrop for this feature documentary that looks behind-the-scenes at the complex, political machinery of a third world democracy struggling to legitimize itself to its first world contemporaries. At stake in this race are the fates of two political parties that will do almost anything to win. Director Jarreth Merz follows the key players for almost three months to provide an unprecedented insider's view of the political, economic and social forces at work in Ghana. He builds suspense by taking the viewer down the back roads of the nation to capture each unexpected twist and turn in a contest that is always exciting and never predictable. Throughout the film, Merz depicts the pride and humanity of the larger-than-life politicians, party operatives and citizens who battle for the soul of their country.
Garfunkel and Oates probably aren’t what you expected when you first heard the band name. Instead of ’70s singer/songwriters, the duo are Los Angeles-based comedy-folk singers Riki Lindhome (Garfunkel) and Kate Micucci (Oates) who perform “Flight of the Conchords”-esque material to a growing fanbase. For their appearance on the Spirit Award stage, the pair went…
Everyone from Brett Ratner to Mel Gibson to Michael Fassbender’s penis was up to be mocked.
There were winners and there were losers, and then there were the musical performances. Both My Morning Jacket and Somali artist K’Naan took the stage during the show to spin tunes, entertaining the legion of stars in attendance as well as IFC viewers. Below, check out Kentucky rockers My Morning Jacket playing one of their…
“That that vision just was so realized and that it affects audiences the way it does is the big surprise to me and everybody else,” he said.
