First Run Features

A film about modern Japanese architecture, its roots in the Japanese tradition and its impact on the Nordic building-tradition. Winding its way through visions of the future, traditions, nature, concrete, gardens and high-tech, KOCHUU tells us how contemporary Japanese architects strive to unite the ways of modern man with the old philosophies in astounding constructions. Interviews with, and works by, Japanese architects Tadad Ando, Kisho Kurokawa, Toyo Ito and Kazuo Shinohara and Scandinavian architects Sverre Fehn, Kristian Gullichsen and Juhani Pallasmaa.

Haile Gerima and Ryszard Kapuscinski travel around Ethiopia talking to people about their current situations and what needs to be done for a prosperous country.

A busload of women become stranded in an isolated part of the Canadian countryside. As they await rescue, they reflect on their lives through a mostly ad-libbed script.

This essential new documentary pays tribute to the legacy of the late, legendary casting director Marion Dougherty and shines a light on one of the most overlooked and least understood crafts in filmmaking.

When Nicole, a young copy-shop employee, is hired to translate an ancient Chinese manuscript, she soon finds that the document has strange powers that little by little begin to exert an eerie influence over her life.

Brothers Joel, Dennis and Sonny work together as dancers at a low-rent gay bar in downtown Manila, in the Philippines. Despite his mother's pleas, Sonny decides to quit college to work full-time at the bar, while Dennis has moved beyond dancing into prostitution at the urging of the manipulative club manager. Joel, the eldest, tries to balance his secret gay life with his socially respectable role as a husband and father.

For 40 years, the community-organizing group ACORN advocated for America’s poorest communities, while its detractors accused it of promoting the worst of liberal policies. Riding high on the momentum of Barack Obama’s presidential victory in 2008, ACORN was at its political zenith when a hidden-camera video sparked a national scandal and brought it crashing down. The story involves voter fraud, a fake prostitute, and the rise of Breitbart.com.

A biographical portrait of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, twentieth century colossus: public intellectual, policy specialist, ambassador, and NY senator.

Once upon a time in the village of Kromer lived two beautiful young wolves. Cocksure Gabriel takes newcomer Seth under his paw and helps reconcile him to the vilification associated with being a wolf. They fall head-over-heels in puppy love, playing together around picturesque waterfalls, secluded woodlands, and moonlit lakes. One day a wicked old crone and her goofy sidekick kill their mistress, frame the wolves, and incite a torch-bearing mob of religious zealots to seek vengeance on the hapless pair. But who will live happily ever after?

This sequel to "Before Stonewall" documents the history of gay and lesbian life from the riots at Stonewall in 1969 to the present. Narrated by Melissa Etheridge, the film explains the work, struggles, victories, and defeats the gay community has weathered to become a vibrant and integral part of North American society.

Peppino is an aging taxidermist constantly ridiculed for being short and somewhat creepy. He meets Valerio, a handsome young man fascinated by Peppino's work. Peppino, in turn, becomes entranced by Valerio and offers him a large salary to come work as his assistant. But when Valerio meets Deborah, their fledgling romance is threatened by an insanely jealous third wheel.

In a triumphant career that lasted forty years Erroll Garner pushed the playability of the piano to its limits, developed an international reputation, and made an indelible mark on the jazz world. And yet, his story has never been told. Until now. The film explores Erroll's childhood in Pittsburgh; his meteoric rise in popularity while playing on 52nd street, New York's famed jazz epicenter; the origins of his most famous album (Concert By The Sea) and his most famous composition (Misty); his singular, virtuosic piano style; and his dynamic personality, both on and off the stage.

In 1986, Ross McElwee (Sherman's March) and Marilyn Levine were making a film about the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall, when the imposing structure was still very much intact as the world’s most visible symbol of hardline Communism and Cold War lore. They thought they were making a documentary on the community of tourists, soldiers, and West Berliners who lived in the seemingly eternal presence of the graffiti emblazoned eyesore. But in 1989, as the original film neared completion, the Wall came down, and McElwee and Levine returned to Berlin, this time to capture the radically different atmosphere of the reunified city.

A Jumpin' Night in the Garden of Eden was the first film to document the klezmer revival, tracing the efforts of two founding groups, Kapelye and Boston's Klezmer Conservatory Band, to recover the lost history of klezmer music. For nearly a millennium, this vigorous and soulful music was part of the celebration of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. In the early decades of this century, the music took root in America. Klezmer musicians learned hundreds of tunes by ear and their ears were open to Gypsy, Ukrainian and Greek melodies of the old world, as well as to the new sounds of American jazz. Music born in Eastern Europe lived on in the imaginations of composers for New York's Yiddish theater, men whose tunes entered the mainstream through such unlikely adapters as the Andrew Sisters. Eventually Klezmer went underground as its audience assimilated into mainstream American culture.

The true story of a young teenage girl whose mother is incarcerated for murder. Living in a Catholic Children's home run by an order of nuns, she provides poignant commentary about her mother, her own situation and her outlook for the future.

One of Mark Rappaport's later narratives (which won the Gold Hugo for Best First Feature at the Chicago International Film Festival in 1979), Impostors is an off-kilter comedy/mystery focused on two magicians trying to find Egyptian jewels, their promiscuous assistant, and a man who loves the assistant.

In a rapidly changing America where mass inequality and dwindling opportunity have devastated the black working class, three Detroit men must fight to build something lasting for themselves and future generations.

Daredevil mountain climbers on their attempt to break yet another speed climbing record.

Documentary about the making of Forgotten Silver.

New York in the Fifties is the story of a unique time and place, when New York was the hotbed of new artistic expressions, free love, drinking, hot jazz, and radical politics. The film combines stunning archival footage of New York with interviews and footage of icons of the day-Kerouac, Ginsberg, Baldwin, Mailer, Basie, etc. Offering modern day perspective and reminiscences are writers, actors, and artists such as Joan Didion, Robert Redford, Nat Hentoff, Gay and Nan Talese, John Gregory Dunne, William F. Buckley, and Calvin Trillin-all part of the rich cultural and artistic scene of the time. Based on the best-selling book by Dan Wakefield, the film also traces Wakefield's restless rebellion in conformist Indianapolis, and his escape to New York with dreams of writin ga novel, falling in love, meeting like-minded souls and questioning the meaning of life.