The 9 Lives of Barbara Dane
The 9 Lives of Barbara Dane illuminates the extraordinary story of a trailblazing woman and an unsung hero of American roots music: folk, blues and jazz singer, social justice activist, wife, mother of three, world traveler, feminist, record producer, maverick and general troublemaker.
In the late 1950s, Barbara was a rising star, inspired by the Black women blues singers of the 1920s . . .
Undocumented Justice
When ICE threatens 700,000 fellow Dreamers, Luis Cortes Romero fights back — and becomes the first undocumented attorney to argue a case at the U.S. Supreme Court. A charismatic immigration attorney and DACA recipient, Luis risks his own safety to join a powerful and highly visible legal team. Their stunning Supreme Court win fortifies a growing, vigorous and urgent campaign for compassionate immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship.
Pleistocene Park
Seeking no one’s help and asking nobody’s permission, in the most remote corner of Siberia, Russian scientist Sergey Zimov and his son Nikita are resurrecting a vanished Ice Age ecosystem. They are scouring the planet for holdovers from the Ice Age and transporting them, by whatever low-budget means they can contrive, to Pleistocene Park.
Twenty years ago Sergey . . .
The Long Shadow
When two daughters of the South set out to find causes for the continuing racial divisions in the United States, what they discovered was that the politics of slavery didn’t end after the Civil War. In an astonishingly candid look at slavery, The Long Shadow traces that institution’s tragic political and economic impact – from America’s founding to the ties to the racism still so prevalent today.
A Dangerous Idea
A dangerous idea has threatened the American Dream from the beginning – the belief that some groups and individuals are inherently superior to others and more deserving of fundamental rights. Such biological determinism provided an excuse for some of America’s most shameful history. And now it’s back.
The documentary reveals how biologically determined politics . . .
A New Color
Long before Black Lives Matter became a rallying cry, Edythe Boone embodied that truth as an artist, an educator, and a great-grandmother. When a deeply personal tragedy ignites a national outcry, everything that Edy has worked so tirelessly for comes into question.
From humble Harlem beginnings herself, the indefatigable “Edy” has for decades introduced underserved youth and seniors to the transformative power of art.
California and the American Dream Series
California and the American Dream is a 4 episode series created for PBS out of a partnership between producers/directors Jed Riffe (California’s ‘Lost’ Tribes/Ripe for Change), Emiko Omori (Ripe for Change), Lyn Goldfarb (The New Los Angeles) and Paul Espinosa (The Price of Renewal). The series explores the dynamics of culture, community, and identity in one of the most diverse regions in the world.
In the last 35 years, California has become . . .
Ishi, the Last Yahi
Ishi, the Last Yahi begins in 1492 when there were more than ten million Native Americans in North America. By 1910, their numbers had been reduced to fewer than 300,000. In California, massacres of Indians in the 1860s and 1870s had nearly exterminated the Native peoples in the state. Therefore the sudden appearance in northern California in 1911 of Ishi, “the last wild Indian in North America,” stunned the nation. For more than 40 years, Ishi had lived in hiding with a tiny band of survivors. When he walked into the white man’s world, he was the last Yahi Indian alive.
Smokin’ Fish
Cory Mann is a quirky Tlingit Businessman hustling to make a dollar in Juneau Alaska. He gets hungry for smoked salmon, nostalgic for his childhood and decides to spend a summer smoking fish at this family’s traditional fish camp. The unusual story of his life and the untold history of his people interweave with the process of preparing traditional food as he struggles to pay his bills, keep the IRS off his back, and keep his business afloat.
To Chris Marker: An Unsent Letter
A collective cinematic love letter to the elusive French filmmaker Chris Marker in documentary form, Emiko Omori’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 . . .
Waiting to Inhale
Waiting to Inhale: Marijuana, Medicine and the Law pioneered the movement towards the legalization of marijuana as the first documentary in the US to document the struggle for medical marijuana use, following the movement from 2000 to 2006 and offering exclusive footage of the first major scientific study of medical cannabis to take place in over thirty years.
Who Owns the Past?
The final decades of the twentieth century brought unprecedented changes for American Indians, especially in the areas of human rights and tribal sovereignty. In 1990, after a long struggle between Indian rights groups and the scientific establishment, the Native American Graves Repatriation and Protection Act was passed.
For American Indians, this was perhaps the most important piece . . .
