The Chances of the World Changing

Director: Eric Daniel Metzgar
Year: 2006
Rated: unrated
Length: 99 minutes

An artist abandons his life's work to build an ark filled with hundreds of endangered animals. A story about time, death, art, love, and turtles.

Ten years ago, New York writer Richard Ogust abandoned his life's work and began to acquire endangered turtles, literally rescuing (by confiscation) hundreds of turtles bound for the food markets. By the time filming began, the fifty-year old writer was sharing his Manhattan penthouse with 1200 creatures. His collection comprised a substantial percentage of the world's endangered turtle species, but the weight of Richard's ark began to crush him. The Chances of the World Changing documents two years in the life of Richard Ogust, a writer whose life curved into strange territory, where he found himself struggling to save hundreds of lives, including his own.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston

Director: Jeff Feuerzeig
Year: 2005
Rated: PG-13
Length: 110 minutes

Daniel Johnston, manic-depressive genius singer/songwriter/artist is revealed in this portrait of madness, creativity and love.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston is a stunning portrait of a musical genius who nearly slipped away. Director Jeff Feuerzeig exquisitely depicts a perfect example of brilliance and madness going hand in hand. Because he is an artist suffering from manic depression with delusions of grandeur, Daniel Johnston's life is marked by wild fluctuations, numerous downward spirals, and periodic respites.. After running off and joining a carnival, Johnston landed in Austin, Texas, broke and alone. It was there he began to hone his musical career, managing to secure a brief spotlight on MTV with the help of a timely break. Just as he was beginning to make a local name for himself, however, Johnston's inner demons began to surface.

God and Gays

Director: Luane Beck
Year: 2005
Rated: unrated
Length: 110 minutes

God & Gays: Bridging the Gap is an open and honest reflection of what it's like to be gay and religious. We are challenged by stories of suicide, discrimination and interpretations of the Bible. Gays who are religious struggle to reconcile spirituality and sexuality. Fortunately, it's often Jesus that brings them out.

The Heart of the Game

Director: Ward Serrill
Year: 2005
Rated: PG
Length: 97 minutes

This film captures the passion and energy of a Seattle high school girls' basketball team, the eccentricity of their unorthodox coach, and the incredible true story of one player's fight to play the game she loves.

"Sink your teeth in their necks! Draw blood!" is the rallying cry of the Roosevelt Roughriders girls' basketball team. Imagining themselves as a pack of wolves, the girls tear into opposing teams and stand together as warriors both on and off the court.
When Seattle filmmaker Ward Serrill met Bill Resler, a college tax professor who moonlights as a girls' basketball coach, he didn't realize that he was about to embark on an incredible seven-year journey. Serrill, camera in hand, followed Resler - who looks more like Santa Claus in Birkenstocks than a whistle-blasting high school coach - into the Roosevelt High School gym and soon discovered a group of girls whose unbridled toughness, passion and energy he came to call THE HEART OF THE GAME.

An Inconvenient Truth

Director: Davis Guggenheim
Year: 2006
Rated: PG
Length: 100 minutes

A documentary on Al Gore's campaign to make the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide.

Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet's climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced- a catastrophe of our own making.

If that sounds like a recipe for serious gloom and doom -- think again. From director Davis Guggenheim comes the Sundance Film Festival hit, An Inconvenient Truth, which offers a passionate and inspirational look at one man's commitment to expose the myths and misconceptions that surround global warming and inspire actions to prevent it. That man is former Vice President Al Gore, who, in the wake of defeat in the 2000 election, re-set the course of his life to focus on an all-out effort to help save the planet from irrevocable change.

Jesus Camp

Director: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
Year: 2006
Rated: PG-13
Length: 87 minutes

A documentary on kids who attend a summer camp hoping to become the next Billy Graham.

The youngest foot soldiers for the Lord are shown in their native environment in this documentary. Becky Fisher is a children's pastor who runs "Kids on Fire," a summer camp for evangelical Christian children in North Dakota. Fisher believes in the political and moral importance of a Christian presence in America, and uses her camp to reinforce the religious training most of her charges are already receiving at home. Using video games, animated videos, and group activities to help put her message across, Fisher encourages the kids to pray for George W. Bush and his Supreme Court appointees while urging them to help "take back America for Christ." Along with Fisher and her cohorts, Jesus Camp features interviews with Ted Haggard, an evangelist and advisor to George W. Bush, and Mike Papantonio, a Christian talk show host who believes the right-wing slant of many Christian evangelists is taking the church into a dangerous direction.

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man

Director: Lian Lunson
Year: 2005
Rated: PG-13
Length: 105 minutes

A documentary on the legendary singer-songwriter, with performances by those musicians he has influenced.

Songwriter. Poet. Counter-culture icon. Consummate ladies' man. Since bursting onto the scene in 1967, Leonard Cohen has inspired generations with his unique personality and haunting music, becoming one of the most original and enduring artists to emerge from the 1960's. LEONARD COHEN I'M YOUR MAN is an intimate look at the songs, poetry and life of one of music's most celebrated and influential troubadours.

loudQuietloud: A Film About Pixies

Director: Steven Cantor and Matthew Galkin
Year: 2006
Rated: unrated
Length: 85 minutes

A documentary about the seminal alternative rock band from Boston who reunited in 2004 for a world tour after splitting 12 years prior, including footage of their first lives shows in over a decade and interviews.

The band that inspired some of the most innovative rock acts of the new millennium reunites to conquer the globe 12 years after calling it quits, and filmmaker Steven Cantor is there to capture all the low-lights and highlights of their tentative reunion in a probing documentary exploring the re-birth of Gen-X alternative giants the Pixies. Plagued by personal problems from the beginning but driven to create such classic albums as Surfer Rosa and Doolittle, Frank Black, Kim Deal, Joey Santiago, and David Lovering smashed convention to deliver a wailing wall of chaotic but catchy riffs that, when combined with Black's disjointed lyrics and volatile vocals, gave birth to an entirely new sound.

The Outsider

Director: Nicholas Jarecki
Year: 2005
Rated: unrated
Length: 85 minutes

Nicholas Jarecki follows director James Toback on the 12-day shoot of his thriller, When Will I Be Loved -- a movie made without a script or distribution deal.

The Outsider, a feature-length documentary from first-time writer/director Nicholas Jarecki, is a film about film, specifically, the power of film to create, to move, and to endure. It follows one of America's most obsessive and intriguing filmmakers, James Toback, writer/director of 11 movies including: "Two Girls and a Guy," "Black and White," "The Gambler," "Fingers," "Bugsy," and the upcoming "When Will I Be Loved," starring Neve Campbell.

Filmed over an 8-month period, The Outsider follows Toback through all phases of the making of his new film (shooting, editing, scoring, and release). The movie develops through frank conversations with him about his obsessions (gambling, drinking, drugs, and sexual exploration) and how they manifest themselves in his films by interweaving clips from all of his movies. The result is a surprising and highly entertaining examination of an industry that is changing and a man struggling against great odds to define a place within it.

This Film is Not Yet Rated

Director: Kirby Dick
Year: 2006
Rated: unrated
Length: 97 minutes

Kirby Dick's exposé about the American movie ratings board.

Passionate cinephiles can be found casting quizzical glances at the erratic and often conflicting decisions made by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) as they slap ratings onto movies. So in an attempt to make sense of their working methods--which, until now, have remained shrouded in mystery--one of those cinephiles, Kirby Dick (TWIST OF FAITH), has made this full-length motion picture about the inner workings of the MPAA.

The US vs. John Lennon

Director: David Leaf and John Scheinfeld
Year: 2006
Rated: PG-13
Length: 96 minutes

A documentary on the life of John Lennon, with a focus on the time in his life when he transformed from a musician into an antiwar activist.

Before Iraq, before the Bush Administration, before the Dixie Chicks, Bruce Springsteen, and Pearl Jam … there was John Lennon, the celebrated musical artist who used his fame and his fortune to protest the Vietnam War and advocate for world peace. This new documentary traces Lennon's metamorphosis from lovable "Moptop" to anti-war activist to inspirational icon as it reveals the true story of how and why the U.S. government tried to silence him.
Scrupulously researched and vividly illustrated, THE U.S. VS. JOHN LENNON illuminates a little-known chapter of modern history, when a president and his administration used the machinery of government to wage a covert war against the world's most popular musician. Exploring an era roiled by many of the same issues confronting us today, THE U.S. VS. JOHN LENNON delivers a tale that speaks powerfully to our own unsettled times.

When I Came Home

Director: Dan Lohaus
Year: 2006
Rated: unrated
Length: 70 minutes

Iraq War veteran Herold Noel suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and lives out of his car in Brooklyn.

When the boys came back from WWII they were greeted with the GI Bill and a host of other programs designed for returning vets. Today, 300,000 of the estimated 1.2 million homeless in the United States are veterans, and someday over 100,000 troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan will come home. In When I Came Home, Dan Lohaus turns his camera on several homeless Vietnam and Iraq veterans in New York City, and in the process he finds Herold Noel, a returning Iraq veteran with posttraumatic stress disorder. Noel and his family do not qualify for housing assistance because he has lost his Section 8 status, so Noel is forced to live in his car while his wife and child live only slightly better with his sister-in-law. As he navigates unresponsive Army and city offices in search of help, his frustration mounts. This empowering and unflinching documentary is a startling look at the men and women who return home after fighting our battles.

Who Killed the Electric Car?

Director: Chris Paine
Year: 2006
Rated: PG
Length: 92 minutes

A documentary that investigates the birth and death of the electric car, as well as the role of renewable energy and sustainable living in the future.

Fashioned as a tongue-in-cheek murder mystery, complete with funeral and celebrity victims, this disarmingly entertaining documentary looks at the optimistic rise and equally swift demise of the electric car in mid-90s California. Sleek, compact and fast enough to appeal to celebrity boy racers, the prototype EV-1 electric car was developed by General Motors to comply with California's 1990 Zero Emissions Mandate. For a brief moment it looked like the EV-1 was the vehicle the future had been waiting for. So why did it end up on the scrap heap? By the end of the decade, the sole remaining EV-1 was nothing more than a novelty item in the basement of a California motor museum. Whodunit is the question this documentary attempts to answer. As in all good murder conspiracies, the suspects - General Motors, oil companies, the US government and consumers - all end up with blood on their hands. A quick-witted documentary about a deadly serious subject, Who Killed the Electric Car? is a timely reminder that we have the technology to save the world, if only that were the aim of those in charge.

William Eggleston in the Real World

Director: Michael Almereyda
Year: 2005
Rated: unrated
Length: 86 minutes

In 1976, William Eggleston's hallucinatory, Faulknerian images were featured in the Museum of Modern Art's first one-man exhibition of color photographs. He has been called "the beginning of modern color photography" (John Szarkowski, MoMA) and "one of the most significant figures in contemporary photography" (Charles Hagen, NY Times). It is rare for an artist of such stature to allow himself to be shown as unguardedly as Eggleston does in Michael Almereyda's intimate portrait. The filmmaker tracks the photographer on trips to Kentucky, Los Angeles and New York, but gives particular attention to downtime in Memphis, Eggleston's home base. The film shows a deep connection between Eggleston's enigmatic personality and his groundbreaking work, and also reveals his parallel commitments as a musician, draftsman and videographer. A sphinx-like renegade, Eggleston at age 65 has become an icon and inspiration to artists worldwide.

Wordplay

Director: Patrick Creadon
Year: 2006
Rated: PG
Length: 94 minutes

An in-depth look at The New York Times' long-time crossword puzzle editor Will Shortz and his loyal fan base.

Wordplay is a journey into the world of Will Shortz, the crossword puzzle editor at The New York Times. Known to millions as National Public Radio's Puzzle Master, Shortz has spent his entire lifetime studying, creating and editing puzzles, and has built a huge following along the way. Meet Shortz's die-hard fans-including President Bill Clinton, Senator Bob Dole, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart, filmmaker Ken Burns, the Indigo Girls, and Yankee's ace pitcher Mike Mussina-and discover why over 50 million Americans do crosswords every week.
Explore the madness and the mirth, the comedy and the drama that is our national obsession with these puzzles. Whether you're a Monday-only solver (the easiest day of the week) or a Saturday "brain-busting" wizard, you're sure to enjoy your very own "A-ha!" moment when you experience Wordplay.