Arts, Music & Culture

Guitar icon Buddy Guy reflects on his legacy and passes along the blues lessons he himself received from legends Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf to a phenom of the next generation in this stirring documentary.

From 1968 to 1973, the public television variety show SOUL!, guided by the enigmatic producer and host Ellis Haizlip, offered an uncompromising celebration of Black culture. The series was among the first to provide expanded images of African Americans on television, shifting the gaze from inner-city poverty and violence to the vibrancy of the Black Arts Movement. Mr. SOUL! captures a critical moment in culture whose impact continues to resonate, and an unsung hero whose voice we need now more than ever.

Mr. Soul! was listed by the The American Library Association (ALA)’s Film and Media Round Table as one of its 12 Outstanding and Notable films for 2022: “a celebration of and an ode to Blackness”.

Louder Than A Bomb tells the story of four Chicago high school poetry teams as they prepare to compete in the world’s largest youth slam. By turns hopeful and heartbreaking, the film captures the turbulent lives of these unforgettable kids, exploring the ways writing shapes their world, and vice versa. Louder Than A Bomb is not about “high school poetry” as we often think of it. It’s about language as a joyful release, irrepressibly talented teenagers obsessed with making words dance.

From the director of the Oscar® -winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, and the critically-acclaimed Best of Enemies, The Music of Strangers tells the extraordinary story of The Silk Road Ensemble, an international musical collective created by legendary cellist Yo-Yo Ma. The Sound of Silk follows this group of diverse instrumentalists, vocalists, composers, arrangers, visual artists and storytellers as they explore the power of music to preserve tradition, shape cultural evolution and inspire hope.

The Black Power Mixtape examines the evolution of the Black Power Movement in the black community and diaspora from 1967 to 1975. The film combines music, startling 16mm footage (lying undiscovered in the cellar of Swedish Television for 30 years), and contemporary audio interviews from leading African American artists, activists, musicians and scholars.

32 Sounds is an immersive feature documentary and profound sensory experience from Academy-Award nominated filmmaker Sam Green (The Weather Underground, A Thousand Thoughts) featuring original music by JD Samson (Le Tigre, MEN). The film explores the elemental phenomenon of sound by weaving together 32 specific sound explorations into a cinematic meditation on the power of sound to bend time, cross borders, and profoundly shape our perception of the world around us. Join Oscar nominated filmmaker Green as he takes the audience on a journey through time and space exploring everything from forgotten childhood memories, to the soundtrack of resistance, to subaquatic symphonies and experience in new ways the astonishing sounds of our everyday lives. 32 Sounds investigates the mysterious nature of perception and the subtle yet radical politics that arise from sensation and being present in one’s body.

ROMEO IS BLEEDING is a documentary film following Donté Clark, a young poet in Richmond, CA, a community that struggles with gun violence stemming from a turf war spanning across multiple generations.
Donté transcends the violence in his hometown by writing poetry about his experiences. Using his voice to inspire those around him, he co-founded an arts organization called RAW Talent, where like-minded youth from both sides of Richmond mount Te’s Harmony, an urban adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, with the hope of starting a meaningful dialogue about violence in the city.

Celebrated by audiences at home and abroad, Indigenous artist Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu was one of the most important and acclaimed voices to ever come out of Australia. Blind from birth, he found purpose and meaning through songs and music inspired by his community and country on Elcho Island in far North East Arnhem Land. Living a traditional Yolngu life, his breakthrough album ‘Gurrumul’ brought him to a crossroads as audiences and artists around the world began to embrace his music.

¡Viva Maestro! is an intimate yet expansive exploration of Venezuela-born conductor Gustavo Dudamel’s creative life and values from critically acclaimed, award-winning filmmaker Ted Braun. The new feature documentary takes audiences on a cinematic and sonic journey inside the imagination of a musical genius and around the globe as Dudamel leads the world’s great orchestras and works with and inspires young musicians across the planet – in Los Angeles, Berlin, Mexico City, Hamburg, Vienna and finally Santiago, Chile. The story takes an unexpected turn one month later when deadly protests erupt across Venezuela in early 2017.Separated from the Venezuelan orchestras and renowned musical education program he leads, Dudamel faces a daunting series of challenges — to his duty to his mentor, the great Maestro José Antonio Abreu; to the friends he grew up performing with and the hundreds of thousands of young musicians he’s now responsible for; and to the aesthetic and moral values that have guided his life.

Experience the extraordinary life of author Kurt Vonnegut, through the 25-year friendship with the filmmaker who set out to document it.

From the producer of the Emmy-nominated The Price of Everything, a film about who gets seen and who gets left behind in today’s seductive, secretive and unregulated art world. The film follows a diverse group of compelling young artists on the brink of unimaginable success or failure as they challenge systems, break barriers and risk it all with the goal of making it in an industry where all the rules are currently being rewritten.

Movies were shot, edited and projected using photochemical film. But over the last two decades a digital process has emerged to challenge photochemical filmmaking. SIDE BY SIDE, produced by Keanu Reeves, takes an in-depth look at this revolution. Through interviews with directors, cinematographers, film students, producers, technologies, editors, and exhibitors, it examines all aspects of filmmaking — from capture to edit, visual effects to color correction, distribution to archiving. At this moment when digital and photochemical filmmaking coexist, it explores what has been gained, what is lost, and what the future might bring.

Ancient Chinese chime-bells, symphony orchestra, cello solo, and children’s chorus combine in this large-scale work commissioned to celebrate the reunification of Hong Kong with China.

The symphony is divided into three movements: Heaven explores the traditional past of the Chinese people; Earth explores the equilibrium between nature and the elements; Mankind commemorates those who fought and suffered in wars.

A documentary by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams based on a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ron Suskind. Imagine being trapped inside a Disney movie and having to learn about life mostly from animated characters dancing across a screen of color. A fantasy? A nightmare? Life, Animated is the real-life story of Owen Suskind, the son of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind and his wife, Cornelia. An autistic boy who couldn’t speak for years, Owen memorized dozens of Disney movies and turned them into a language to express love and loss, kinship, and brotherhood.

The whale hunters of the Faroe Islands believe that hunting is vital to their way of life, but when a local professor makes a grim discovery about the effects of marine pollution, environmental changes threaten their way of life forever. As the islanders come to terms with the health revelations, they face increasing pressure from the outside world to stop the whale hunts.

This 3D film project about the soul of buildings allows six iconic and very different buildings to speak for themselves, examining human life from the unblinking perspective of a manmade structure. Six acclaimed filmmakers bring their own visual style and artistic approach to the project. Buildings, they show us, are material manifestations of human thought and action: the Berlin Philharmonic, the National Library of Russia Halden Prison, the Salk Institute, the Oslo Opera House, and the Centre Pompidou. The series explores how these landmarks reflects our culture and guards our collective memory.

Blurring the boundaries between entertainment and high culture, this series takes the viewer into a fine selection of world’s most renowned museums. Artists from all genres, such as Vivienne Westwood or writer Karl Ove Knausgard, present their iconic masterpieces with a very personal touch, contextualized by art historian and popular professor of culture Matt Lodder from the UK.

Episodes: Museo del Prado, Madrid (Joyce DiDonato), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (Vivienne Westwood), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (Julie Mehretu), Musée d‘Orsay, Paris (Sasha Waltz), Uffizi Gallery, Florence (Wolfgang Joop), Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (Erwin Olaf), Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin (Katharina Grosse), Munch Museum, Oslo (Karl Ove Knausgård).