Painting with Light

Documentary film interviews leading Latinos on race, identity, and achievement.

Jack L. Warner, Harry Warner, Albert Warner and Sam Warner were siblings who were born in Poland and emigrated to Canada near the turn of the century. In 1903, the brothers entered the budding motion picture business. In time, the Warner Brothers moved into film production and would open their own studio in 1923.

Hollywood is a town of tinsel and glamour; but there is another Hollywood, a place where maverick independent exploitation filmmakers went toe to toe with the big guys and came out on top.

As the dissociated convenience of the Internet and globalized corporate culture continue to shut down brick-and-mortar video stores, what will happen to the longstanding, local hangouts with their rugged individuals known as clerks and the communities who love them? Videosyncracy follows three very different video rental stores as they negotiate their survival in three distinct Los Angeles neighborhoods: Old Bank DVD in the Downtown arts district, Vidiots in sunny seaside Santa Monica, and Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee in bustling North Hollywood. Their stories chronicle not only the birth and twilight of a particular kind of corner store, but also decades of personal lives intertwined with those of their communities, the new challenges and facilities of a rapidly changing world, and an enduring love of the movies, a slice of Americana on the brink of disappearance yet defiant to the end.

When a small Utah-based edited movie company is caught sanitizing Hollywood's copyrighted material, the film industry strikes back with a devastating blow.

World-renowned director Martin Scorsese narrates this journey through his favorites in Italian cinema.

In late eighties, in Ceausescu's Romania, a black market VHS bootlegger and a courageous female translator brought the magic of Western films to the Romanian people and sowed the seeds of a revolution.

A documentary about the era of classic monster movies that were made at Universal Studios during the 1930s and 1940s.

Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression.

Australian-born filmmaker George Miller offers a personal view of Australian films. He suggests that they can be regarded as visual music, public dreaming, mythology, and song-lines. In extrapolating the idea of movies as song-lines he examines feature films under the following categories: songs of the land; the bushman; the convicts; the bush-rangers; mates and larrikins; the digger; pommy bashing; the sheilas; gays; the wogs; blackfellas; and urban subversion. He then concludes that these films can be thought of as "Hymns that sing of Australia."

Home video changed the world. The cultural and historical impact of the VHS tape was enormous. This film traces the ripples of that impact by examining the myriad aspects of society that were altered by the creation of videotape.

A documentary capturing the modern day VHS culture and VHS collectors.

"Ni Muy Muy, Ni Tan Tan, Sim­ple­men­te, Tin Tan. Tin Tan was one of the grea­test com­de­dian-​ac­tors in the his­tory of Me­xi­can Ci­ne­ma. He be­gan his film ca­reer du­ring the early years of what be­ca­me the Gol­den Age of Me­xi­can Ci­ne­ma. Th­roughout the ma­jo­rity of his mo­vies he plays the cha­rac­ter of a pa­chu­co; the Chi­cano/Me­xi­cano in zoot suit, th­ro­wing out the ti­ri­li ph­ra­ses and words, and jam­min the jitty-​bug. With the sty­le and the slang down to a tee, he was pi­cked up in Cd. Jua­rez Chihuahua by an ac­ting trou­pe. Tou­ring ex­ten­si­vely th­rough-​out Me­xi­co with the trou­pe lan­ded him in Me­xi­co City with film con­tracts. It was in tho­se films that Tin Tan ex­po­sed the ima­ge of the pa­chu­co, which Me­xi­can Youth adop­ted. From the de­sert bor­der-​towns of Jua­rez y El Pa­so the sty­le took off in va­rious parts of the coun­try, most no­ta­bly in Me­xi­co City

A tribute to the Alamo Drafthouse located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, that was forced to close after three years when its lease was abruptly and unexpectedly terminated by its landlord. Employees and customers reflect on the impact the theater had made on its community in such a short amount of time.

Agüero interrupts the filming of 5 films that are being made in Chile in 1984, to ask each director the meaning in their work, at a time when making films in Chile was almost prohibited.