Q&A with Shunwei's venture investment partners, portfolio company founders, and other KOLs within its ecosystem. Founder Adam Bao has since launched a sister podcast called 'The Harbinger - China Tech & VC Podcast', which is an open platform that invites all top VCs and founders in China to share their insights.
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Q&A with China's top venture investors and founders. Created by Adam Bao while at Shunwei Capital, but we've since opened up the show to invite quality guests from all manner of funds and companies.
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Mike and Ken talk to award-winning documentary filmmakers about their art, their subjects, and their process.
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"Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV" with Mary Robertson & Emma Schwartz
21:03
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At one time, being “Slimed” on Nickelodeon was seen as the ultimate television rite of passage and a harmless bit of fun. But as “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV” — Mary Robertson (“Framing Britney Spears”) and Emma Schwartz’ (“Elon Musk’s Crash Course”) devastating investigation of the warped culture at Nickelodeon in the 90s and 2000s — re…
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Anatomy of a Scene from "The Greatest Night in Pop" with Bao Nguyen
30:12
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Director Bao Nguyen returns to “Top Docs” to illuminate the creative process behind his captivating, and now multi-Emmy nominated, Netflix doc “The Greatest Night in Pop” about the behind-the-scenes studio recording of the iconic 1980s famine relief song “We Are the World”. Bao takes us deep inside his approach to characterization and tension-build…
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Anatomy of a Scene from "Beckham" with Fisher Stevens
35:32
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Fisher Stevens returns to the pod bearing 5 Emmy Nominations for his 4-part Netflix Series about the British football legend. He digs in deep with us on the opening sequence of Episode 3 of the series: "Golden Balls". And his delight is evident in meeting his old friends once again--Victoria and David, certainly, but Luís Figo, Gary Neville, and ev…
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"Escaping Twin Flames" with Cecilia Peck & Inbal Lessner
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38:48
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We continue our Emmy coverage with a conversation with the filmmakers behind the Netflix series, “Escaping Twin Flames”: director Cecilia Peck as well as executive producer and editor Inbal Lessner (both of “Brave Miss World,” and “Seduced: Inside the Nexium Cult.”) Here is how Cecilia describes the series: “Escaping Twin Flames is a three part Net…
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It’s been 34 years since the stunning, untimely death of Jim Henson at the age of just 53. But, in the years since, Henson’s creations (aka The Muppets) have continued their reign on “Sesame Street”, at theme parks and in the movies. Jim Henson’s coterie of lovable characters is as present as ever. Academy Award-winning director Ron Howard (“A Beau…
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9 years after the debut of his remarkable docuseries “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst”, which included a stunning confession by Durst on a hot mic, acclaimed filmmaker Andrew Jarecki (“Capturing the Friedmans”) is still at it. In April 2024, HBO released the first of his new six-episode series, “The Jinx - Part Two”, an investigation …
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"Telemarketers" with Adam Bhala Lough & Sam Lipman-Stern
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Continuing our Emmy coverage, today we speak with the creators of the Emmy-nominated HBO documentary series, “Telemarketers”. Co-director Adam Bhala Lough describes the 3-part series this way: “Two scumbag telemarketers discover that there are cogs in the wheel of a multimillion dollar scam. And so they band together to try to take down the scam an…
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"Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa" with Lucy Walker
39:48
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“Climbing the mountain” is a fitting description of the uphill struggle that all documentary filmmakers face when taking on any new project. Acclaimed filmmaker Lucy Walker (“Bring Your Own Brigade”, “The Crash Reel”) takes that metaphor to new heights with “Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa,” her ambitious, multilayered new documentary …
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"Hollywoodgate" with Ibrahim Nash’at & Shane Boris
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When the U.S. military pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021, effectively ending America’s longest war, that seemed like the end of the story for most journalists. But for director Ibrahim Nash’at, the story that he wanted to tell was just beginning. In his haunting new documentary “Hollywoodgate”, Nash’at does what virtually no other journalist or fil…
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"STAX: Soulsville, U.S.A." with Jamila Wignot
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In the 1960s and 1970s, the Memphis sound was everywhere: Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Carla Thomas, Isaac Hayes — the list goes on. Not only did the Memphis sound (a.k.a. Memphis soul) bring an amazing range of musical talent to the world, it also shined a light on the unsung city of Memphis, Tennessee and on a remarkable record company called Stax…
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"Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York" with Anthony Caronna & Howard Gertler
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In the early 1990s, a serial killer stalked his victims not by slipping into houses under cover of darkness or by abducting victims from isolated highway rest stops, but rather by haunting crowded, lively gay bars in Manhattan–he even interacted with others in these bars, sometimes the very friends of his victims. What makes “Last Call: When a Seri…
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Sir David Attenborough’s still got it. As he proves in Netflix’s extraordinary nature series “Our Planet II”, the 98-year-old legendary British biologist, natural historian, narrator, and writer remains one of the documentary world’s great talents. Joining Mike and Ken on the pod, “Our Planet II" Series Producer Huw Cordey discusses the ins-and-out…
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"American Nightmare" with Felicity Morris & Bernadette Higgins
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39:11
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In 2015, a young California couple, Aaron Quinn and Denise Huskins, was awakened by a home invasion, drugged, and blindfolded; Denise was kidnapped. But that isn’t the only disturbing horror at the heart of the harrowing Netflix docuseries “American Nightmare”. Sensitively and imaginatively directed by Felicity Morris and Bernadette Higgins (“The T…
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Yance Ford’s voice is key to his new documentary on Netflix, so here’s how he describes “Power”: “Driven to contain threats to social order, American policing has exploded in scope and scale over hundreds of years. Now it can be described by one word: ‘Power’”. Yance’s narrative is deeply rooted in a historical analysis of the roots of American pol…
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"Albert Brooks: Defending My Life" with Rob Reiner
33:40
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Already famous as an actor, Rob Reiner made his directorial debut in 1984 with the landmark mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap”, which kicked off a new subgenre and inspired countless references to turning the knob “up to 11.” But, it has taken 40 years for the legendary creative hyphenate (director of “Stand by Me”, “When Harry Met Sally”, “A Few Go…
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Classic: "Dick Johnson is Dead" with Kirsten ("KJ") Johnson (from October 2021)
1:02:51
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While we gear up for Season 4 of "Top Doc", we're sharing some of our favorite episodes of the past few years. Today, we re-present a pod from October of 2021. Ken and Mike welcome Kirsten (KJ) Johnson, who recently won Best Director for her groundbreaking film, "Dick Johnson is Dead." This film is like no other film you’ll find in your Netflix que…
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Classic: "Summer of Soul" with Amir "Questlove" Thompson (from January 2022)
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While we gear up for Season 4, we are sharing some of our favorite shows from the past few years. Next up is "Summer of Soul", and our interview with director Amir "Questlove" Thompson. Since we first aired this show in January of 2022, the film went on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson joins us to ta…
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Classic: "Navalny" with Daniel Roher (from September 2022)
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While we gear up for Season 4, we thought we'd replay some of our favorite shows from the past few years. Today, we’re presenting again our interview from September of 2022 with Daniel Roher regarding his film, Navalny, which depicts the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Since then, the film won the Academy Award for best Documentary. Despi…
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To finish out Season 3, we're revisiting some telling moments from three of our most popular shows of the season: Laura McGann, "The Deepest Breath" Anna Hints, "Smoke Sauna Sisterhood" Fisher Stevens, "Beckham" The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.By michaellouismerrill
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"The Greatest Night in Pop" with Bao Nguyen
42:55
42:55
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“Check Your Ego at the Door”. Those words were scrawled on a piece of paper and taped to the door of A&M Studios on the night of January 28, 1985. The story behind that command is the subject of director Bao Nguyen’s (“Be Water”) thoroughly captivating new Netflix documentary “The Greatest Night in Pop” about the once-in-a-lifetime event that drew …
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"Girls State" with Amanda McBaine & Jesse Moss
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So much for campfire singalongs and Capture the Flag. Directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss once again plunge into the world of summer camp for young politicians-in-training with “Girls State”, a riveting and exhilarating follow up to their Emmy Award-winning 2020 documentary “Boys State.” The comparisons may be inevitable, but “Girls State” forg…
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"Anxious Nation" with Laura Morton & Vanessa Roth
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38:52
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Many of the issues that plagued the young people of America decades ago–binge drinking, drunken driving, teenage pregnancy, smoking, to name a few–have greatly declined in significance. But in their place we have witnessed a seemingly ever-deepening mental health crisis amongst our youth, one partly rooted, as our guests tell us, in a rise of anxie…
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How much do you really know about Reality Winner, the veteran and NSA contractor who shared a document regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election with “The Intercept”, and then subsequently served several years in Federal prison as a consequence? Sonia Kennebeck’s (Enemies of the State, National Bird) “Reality Winner” melds a host of timel…
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Oscar Nominees Special with Clayton Davis
34:23
34:23
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Joining us for the third year in a row, Variety’s Senior Awards Editor Clayton Davis breaks down this year’s Oscar races for Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary Short and offers his predictions for who will be victorious at the 96th Academy Awards on March 10th. With the feature doc category taking on a very international flavor this year…
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"Daughters" with Angela Patton & Natalie Rae
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We’ve saved the last of our live, in-person interviews at Sundance 2024 for the winners of the Sundance U.S. Documentary Competition Audience Award and overall Festival Favorite, the incredibly moving, tear-jerking, and, hopefully, policy-shifting documentary “Daughters”. Directors Angela Patton and Natalie Rae join Ken to discuss their world premi…
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When Ranjit and his family turn to the Indian legal system to seek justice for his daughter who had been raped by three local young men, they face not only daunting odds from the system but deep resistance from their village. Nisha Pahuja’s Academy Award-nominated film “To Kill a Tiger” traces the profound tension Ranjit experiences: on the one sid…
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"Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó (Grandma & Grandma)" with Sean Wang
13:52
13:52
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Continuing our coverage of Academy Award-nominated shorts, Mike speaks with Sean Wang about his loving tribute to his grandmothers. As he describes the film: “Nǎi Nai is my grandma. Wài Pó is my grandma. Together they are a grandma super team that dances, stretches, and farts their sorrows away.” Despite its seeming insularity, and its general mood…
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"The Last Repair Shop" with Kris Bowers & Ben Proudfoot
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Continuing our coverage of Academy Award-nominated shorts, Mike speaks with Kris Bowers (previously nominated for “A Concerto is a Conversation”) and Ben Proudfoot (an Academy-Award winner for “The Queen of Basketball”) , directors of “The Last Repair Shop”. The film sketches the stories–both representative of the Los Angeles workforce, as well as …
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“Island in Between” with S. Leo Chiang & Jean Tsien
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32:07
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The island of Kinmen is a small island with a potentially big problem. Situated just off the coast of China, but part of Taiwan, Kinmen would likely be the first line of defense should the Chinese government decide to invade Taiwan. Emmy-nominated director S. Leo Chiang, who was born in Taiwan, worked in China and also lived for years in the U.S., …
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"The Barber of Little Rock" with John Hoffman
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31:00
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The fact that Arlo Washington, featured as the main protagonist in John Hoffman and Christine Turner’s inspiring documentary “The Barber of Little Rock”, is, indeed, a barber is almost beside the point. From owning one and then multiple barber shops, to founding the Washington Barber College and starting People Trust Credit Union, the first minorit…
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"The ABCs of Book Banning" with Trish Adlesic
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A children’s book about Rosa Parks. A graphic adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank”. A Pulitzer Prize-winning book by a Nobel Laureate. These are but a few of the books that have been restricted, challenged, and banned in dozens of states across the U.S. In the new documentary “The ABCs of Book Banning” (directed by Sheila Nevins, produced and co…
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"Porcelain War" with Slava Leontyev & Brendan Bellomo
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Toward the end of this year’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning documentary “Porcelain War”, one of the directors and main subjects of the film, Slava Leontyev, says, “Ukraine is like porcelain. Easy to break but impossible to destroy.” Slava, along with his wife, Anya, create beautifully crafted “porcelain beasts” that used to be their main profes…
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Siouxsie and the Banshees. Ice-T. Nine Inch Nails. All were on the slated for the first Lollapalooza lineup in 1991. But as Michael John Warren, director of the new 3-part Paramount+ series “Lolla: The Story of Lollapalooza,” tells us in our live interview at Sundance, his account of the history of the festival–first intended as a goodbye tour for …
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"Union" with Brett Story, Stephen Maing & Chris Smalls
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In the second of our live, in-person interviews at Sundance 2024, award-winning directors Brett Story (“The Prison Landscape in Twelve Landscapes”) and Stephen Maing (“Crime + Punishment”), along with Amazon Labor Union (ALU) president Chris Smalls, the film’s main protagonist, join Ken to discuss the world premiere of “Union”. In this riveting, ve…
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"Sugarcane" with Julian Brave Noisecat & Emily Kassie
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Kicking off our on-the-ground coverage of Sundance 2024, Julian Brave Noisecat and Emily Kassie join Mike to discuss their new film, “Sugarcane”. In this film, they explore the legacy of the St. Joseph Mission, one of many segregated residential schools promulgated by the Canadian government and run by the Catholic Church. The stories they tell are…
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Mixing the traditional documentary form with elements of Brechtian theatre, director Kaouther Ben Hania’s (“The Man Who Sold His Skin, “Beauty and the Dogs”) Cannes-winning “Four Daughters” creates a highly intense and emotional experience — for both the audience and the principal characters. Joining Ken on the pod, Kaouther discusses the challenge…
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”Stamped from the Beginning” with Roger Ross Williams
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In his vivid, pulsating new documentary, Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams (“Music by Prudence”; “Life, Animated”) puts his own creative stamp on Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s best-selling book “Stamped from the Beginning” about the history of racist ideas in America. Joining Ken on the pod, Roger describes how the racial reckoning of 2020 inspired…
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Sundance 2024 Documentary Lineup Review with Basil Tsiokos
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The Sundance Film Festival marks its 40th edition on January 18 - 28. To help get us ready for the big event, Basil Tsiokos, Sundance Senior Programmer, Nonfiction, makes his third visit to “Top Docs” to preview this year’s sure-to-be-killer documentary lineup. As the first Sundance under new Festival Director Eugene Hernandez, what are the new wri…
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Not just a movie about sound, but an interactive feast for the senses, “32 Sounds” is the latest in filmmaker Sam Green’s (“The Weather Underground”, “A Thousand Thoughts”) unique “live” documentaries. Inspired by the great 1993 film “Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould”, the film delivers a heightened sensorial experience through an incredibl…
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Surrounded by a Bohemian cast of characters, she was conceived and grew up in an avant-garde theater in Paris; she aspired to be a painter. What could be more romantic than that? In “Apolonia, Apolonia”, director Lea Glob’s epic and fascinating portrait of Apolonia Sokol, romantic ideals intermingle with the hard realities of what it takes for a ta…
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”Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy” with Susan Margolin & Simon Kilmurry
40:06
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The only movie to win an Academy Award for Best Picture with an X rating, “Midnight Cowboy” is one of those movies that once you see it, you never forget it. It broke taboos and made American movies relevant again; it both reflected the changing times and was revolutionary. And it had Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman in the indelible roles of Joe Buck…
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This holiday season, discover another side to “The Painter of Light”! In our final installment of "Live from Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival", Miranda Yousef joins Mike to discuss her feature documentary, “Art for Everybody”. From an early age, Thomas Kinkade struggled with the impact of his impoverished youth, torn between emulating van Gogh…
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Oscar Shortlist 2024 Breakdown with Anne Thompson
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Welcome to the Anne-ual Top Docs Holiday Special featuring the one-and-only Anne Thompson, Editor-at-Large at IndieWire! Anne joins Mike and Ken to tackle this year’s Best Feature Documentary Oscar Shortlist, released on December 21st. One day following the release of the list, Anne is already fired up and ready to go. How competitive is this year’…
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Emmy Nominations Breakdown with Scott Feinberg
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It’s Emmy time. Yes, finally, after a long delay, the Emmys are almost here. “The Hollywood Reporter”’s Executive Editor of Awards Scott Feinberg joins Mike and Ken to break down the 2023 Emmy nominees in all the major documentary categories, including Outstanding Documentary Program; Outstanding Series; Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking;…
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”Little Richard: I am Everything” with Lisa Cortés
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Director Lisa Cortés’ (“The Remix: Hip Hop X Fashion”, “Invisible Beauty”) electrifying and groundbreaking documentary about Richard Penniman (aka “Little Richard”) proves the point that the stories passed down about the origins of rock and roll have been whitewashed. The so-called “Architect of rock and roll”, Little Richard was ripped off, copied…
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”American Symphony” with Matthew Heineman
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One is a beloved bandleader and soon-to-be Grammy nominee; the other, a “New York Times” bestselling author. But, as Matthew Heineman’s (“Retrograde”, “The First Wave”, “Cartel Land”) intimate and heartfelt new documentary “American Symphony” makes clear, life is not always so glittering for high-profile couple Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad. Batis…
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Building on the smoke sauna tradition of Southern Estonia (included by UNESCO on its “Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity”), filmmaker Anna Hints brings together a group of Estonian women to share the smoke sauna experience and to share some of their most personal stories. The result is Anna’s masterfully constructed…
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Both were born in 1945 in Germany during the last year of WWII. Both became giants of the modern German art movement: Anselm Kiefer as a painter and sculptor; Wim Wenders as a filmmaker whose landmark films include “Wings of Desire”, “Paris, Texas” and “The American Friend”. The two had met in 1991 and discussed the possibility of doing a film toge…
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”Between Life and Death: Terri Schiavo’s Story” with Amanda Spain & Alex Waterfield
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In 1990, at the age of 26, in the wake of a heart attack which, in the words of one expert, “liquified” the core of her brain, Terri Schiavo entered a “persistent vegetative state”. As “Between Life and Death: Terri Schiavo’s Story” shows, over the next 15 years her husband Michael and her immediate family would fight over her fate: in the press, i…
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Like a black hole, North Korea is a place where light cannot escape. Fed nothing but government propaganda, North Koreans can only access the outside world by slipping across the border to China, the first stop on a harrowing journey that, if successful, eventually leads to South Korea. Against this bleak backdrop, filmmaker Madeleine Gavin’s gripp…
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