Manufactured Landscapes

Underwater Dreams, narrated by Michael Peña, is an epic story of how the sons of undocumented Mexican immigrants learned how to build underwater robots. And go up against MIT in the process.

Livestreaming your life to a devoted audience is big business. What happens when the cameras are off?

In a country where bella figura is a national pastime, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is the maestro of media manipulation. Having risen to political primacy with the aid of his Mediaset empire, he now controls 90% of the bel paese’s television channels including the state-run RAI network. Quantity, it seems, does not equal quality. Fed on a diet of semi-naked dancing girls, inane competitions and rickety reality shows built around the most ridiculous of premises, is it any wonder that Italians are becoming a nation of fame-hungry wannabes?

McLibel is a documentary film directed by Franny Armstrong for Spanner Films about the McLibel case. The film was first completed, as a 52 minute television version, in 1997, after the conclusion of the original McLibel trial. It was then re-edited to 85 minute feature length in 2005, after the McLibel defendants took their case to the European Court of Human Rights.

When her mother remarries and her newly blended family moves to Canada, a 9-year-old Tunisia girl's life takes a profound turn as she struggles to find her place and maintain her Muslim identity in a new land.

This film is about the vast, invisible world of government secrecy. By focusing on classified secrets, the government's ability to put information out of sight if it would harm national security, Secrecy explores the tensions between our safety as a nation, and our ability to function as a democracy.

Set in New York City, the epicenter of a phenomenon cropping up in communities across the United States, "Nursery University" reveals the oddly competitive process of nursery school admissions. The film tells the story of five families attempting to place their toddlers in preschool classrooms that have limited space and high price tags.

Before the internet. Before social media. Before breaking news. The victims of Thalidomide had to rely on something even more extraordinary to fight their corner: Investigative journalism. This is the story of how Harold Evans fought and won the battle of his and many other lives.

An action-adventure documentary chronicling the most notorious and dangerous race in the world--the Tecate SCORE Baja 1000. Rivaling the Indy 500 and 25 Hours of Daytona, the race across Baja's peninsula is unpredictable, grueling and raw--just like the uncharted American West of yesteryear.

An inspiring documentary chronicling the rise, fall and resurrection of '80s metal band Quiet Riot. The career of Frankie Banali, the band's drummer, reached a serious crossroads when his best friend and bandmate died in 2007. Years later, Banali realizes he must forge ahead and make a new life for himself and his daughter and he goes on a quest to reunite the band and fill the immense void left by his bandmate.

This documentary profiles the life and career of Pat Summitt, the NCAA's winningest basketball coach, who resigned from her post at the University of Tennessee in 2012 due to early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

American Experience presents Summer of Love, a striking picture of San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district during the summer of 1967 -- from the utopian beginnings, when peace and love prevailed, to the chaos, unsanitary conditions, and widespread drug use that ultimately signaled the end. Academy Award-nominated filmmakers Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco (Daughter from Danang) examine the social and cultural forces that sparked the largest migration of young people in America's history.

Nicholas Vreeland walked away from a worldly life of privilege to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Grandson of legendary Vogue editor Diana Vreeland and apprentice of photographer Irving Penn, Nicholas' life changed drastically upon meeting one of the Dalai Lama's teachers. Soon thereafter, he gave up his glamorous life to live in a monastery in India, ultimately returning to his roots in photography to help his fellow monks rebuild their monastery.

Under the neon lights in a gay-friendly neighborhood of New York City, four young African-American lesbians are violently and sexually threatened by a man on the street. They defend themselves against him and are charged and convicted in the courts and in the media as a 'Gang of Killer Lesbians'.

Just one year ago, citizens joined together at Place de la République in Paris to demonstrate against labor reforms, the El Khomri law. This rapidly became an opportunity to invent another way of handling politics. It was the beginning of Nuit Debout. The film follows closely this social movement's inner core, a new kind of citizen's and democratic parliament, without representatives or leaders, which attempts to allow everyone the chance to speak. How do we speak in unison without speaking with a single voice?

The Beatles First US Visit uniquely chronicles the inside story of the two remarkable weeks when Beatlemania first ignited America. The pioneering Maysles Brothers who filmed at the shoulders of John, Paul, George and Ringo, innovated an intimate documentary style of film-making which set the benchmark for rock and roll cinematography that remains to this day.