Places for the Soul

Urbanized

A documentary about the design of cities, which looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design and features some of the world's foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers.

Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski

Artists in LA discover the work of forgotten Polish sculptor Stanislav Szukalski, a mad genius whose true story unfolds chapter by astounding chapter.

Champs

A documentary about the sport of boxing, as seen through the eyes of champions Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield and Bernard Hopkins.

Avatar: Creating the World of Pandora

The Making-of James Cameron's Avatar. It shows interesting parts of the work on the set.

Ex Libris: The New York Public Library

A documentary about how a dominant cultural and demographic institution both sustains their traditional activities and adapts to the digital revolution.

Hawking

The extraordinary story of the planet’s most famous contemporary scientist, told in his own words and by those closest to him. Made with unique access to Hawking’s private life, this is an intimate and moving journey into Stephen's world, both past and present.

I Am Heath Ledger

The life and career of an actor, artist, and icon. His own journey through his own camera.

No Half Measures: Creating the Final Season of Breaking Bad

A documentary about the making of season five of the acclaimed AMC series Breaking Bad.

Harmontown

A comedic, brutally honest documentary following self-destructive TV writer Dan Harmon as he takes his live podcast on a national tour.

One Soldier's Story: The Journey of American Sniper

Join director Clint Eastwood and his creative team, along with Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller, as they overcome enormous creative and logistic obstacles to make a film that brings the truth of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle's story to the screen.

Gilbert

The life and career of one of comedy's most inimitable modern voices, Mr. Gilbert Gottfried.

Downloaded

A documentary that explores the downloading revolution; the kids that created it, the bands and the businesses that were affected by it, and its impact on the world at large.

Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin

Brilliant, long in-the-works story of the life and art of the world's greatest comedian and the cinema's first genius, Charlie Chaplin. Produced, written and directed by renowned film critic Richard Schickel.

Naqoyqatsi

A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.

Listen to Me Marlon

With exclusive access to his extraordinary unseen and unheard personal archive including hundreds of hours of audio recorded over the course of his life, this is the definitive Marlon Brando cinema documentary. Charting his exceptional career as an actor and his extraordinary life away from the stage and screen with Brando himself as your guide, the film will fully explore the complexities of the man by telling the story uniquely from Marlon's perspective, entirely in his own voice. No talking heads, no interviewees, just Brando on Brando and life.

Being James Bond

Daniel Craig candidly reflects on his 15 year adventure as James Bond. Including never-before-seen archival footage from Casino Royale to the upcoming 25th film No Time To Die, Craig shares his personal memories in conversation with 007 producers, Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli.

Generation Iron

Generation Iron - examines the professional sport of bodybuilding today and gives the audience front row access to the lives of the top 7 bodybuilders in the sport as they train to compete in the world's most premiere bodybuilding stage - Mr. Olympia.

Seduced and Abandoned

SEDUCED AND ABANDONED combines acting legend Alec Baldwin with director James Toback as they lead us on a troublesome and often hilarious journey of raising financing for their next feature film. Moving from director to financier to star actor, the two players provide us with a unique look behind the curtain at the world's biggest and most glamourous film festival, shining a light on the bitter-sweet relationship filmmakers have with Cannes and the film business. Featuring insights from directors Martin Scorsese, 'Bernando Bertolucci' and Roman Polanski; actors Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain and a host of film distribution luminaries.

Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country

Going beyond the occasional news clip from Burma, the acclaimed filmmaker, Anders Østergaard, brings us close to the video journalists who deliver the footage. Though risking torture and life in jail, courageous young citizens of Burma live the essence of journalism as they insist on keeping up the flow of news from their closed country.

For the Love of Spock

The life of Mr. Spock, as well as that of Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played him for almost fifty years, written and directed by his son: Adam.

Eero Saarinen: The Architect Who Saw the Future

Best known for designing National Historic Landmarks such as St. Louis’ iconic Gateway Arch and the General Motors Technical Center, Saarinen also designed New York’s TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport, Yale University’s Ingalls Rink and Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges, Virginia’s Dulles Airport, and modernist pedestal furniture like the Tulip chair.

Brasilia, Contradictions of a New City

In 1967, de Andrade was invited by the Italian company Olivetti to produce a documentary on the new Brazilian capital city of Brasília. Constructed during the latter half of the 1950s and founded in 1960, the city was part of an effort to populate Brazil’s vast interior region and was to be the embodiment of democratic urban planning, free from the class divisions and inequalities that characterize so many metropolises. Unsurprisingly, Brasília, Contradições de uma Cidade Nova (Brasília, Contradictions of a New City, 1968) revealed Brasília to be utopic only for the wealthy, replicating the same social problems present in every Brazilian city. (Senses of Cinema)

Jaime Lerner - Uma História de Sonhos

Crownsville Hospital: From Lunacy to Legacy

Crownsville Hospital: From Lunacy to Legacy is a feature-length documentary film highlighting the history of the Crownsville State Mental Hospital in Crownsville, MD.

Architect Athfield

Examines the practical philosophy, the achievements and frustrations of one of New Zealand's most lively and innovative architects, Ian Athfield. The film provides a portrait of the architect and his work both in New Zealand and his project to design housing for 140,000 squatters from the Tondo area of Manila in the Philippines, for which Athfield won an international competition in 1975.

La restanza

Castiglione d'Otranto, in the South of Italy. A group of thirty-year-olds no longer accept that the solution to the economic, ecological and political problems of the territory is always "to leave". They propose to the villagers who own pieces of uncultivated land, often felt as a burden, to put them in common. They decide to stay, to link their lives to the land and to invest in a value: being together. Castiglione becomes the village of restance. They cultivate ancient seeds and local biodiversity, they make decisions together, they develop a local economy. Accepting the shadows of the past, another potential of the place is rediscovered.

Memories of Origin: Hiroshi Sugimoto

This documentary follows 200 days in the life of contemporary artist Hiroshi Sugimoto— a leading presence in the world of modern art. He is the winner of many prestigious awards and his photographs are sold for millions of yen at overseas auctions. The film shows the sites of the Architecture series shot in southern France, the huge installation art work at 17th Biennale of Sydney, his new work Mathematics at Provence, his art studio while working on Lightning Fields, and more. It thoroughly pursues the question Sugimoto's works pose - "living in modern times, what are these works trying to tell us?" A thrilling look into the world of Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Architecture of Infinity

How can structures, which take up defined, rigid portions of space, make us feel transcendence? How can chapels turn into places of introspection? How can walls grant boundless freedom? Driven by intense childhood impressions, director Christoph Schaub visits extraordinary churches, both ancient and futuristic, and discovers works of art that take him up to the skies and all the way down to the bottom of the ocean. With the help of architects Peter Zumthor, Peter Märkli, and Álvaro Siza Vieira, artists James Turrell and Cristina Iglesias, and drummer Sergé “Jojo” Mayer, he tries to make sense of the world and decipher our spiritual experiences using the seemingly abstract concepts of light, time, rhythm, sound, and shape. The superb cinematography turns this contemplative search into a multi-sensory experience.

The Hermits

In the midst of the chaos of México City, a group of eight bachelor millennials who call themselves ´The Hermits´, open the doors to their tiny apartments in the historic Ermita Building, in the yet-to-be gentrified neighborhood of Tacubaya, and share their life experiences in a time when precarity changes the way in which we love, feel and relate to each other. As we explore the homes of these eight neighbors, we also witness their personalities intersect in a Whatsapp chat, a virtual space that functions as a supporting system that helps them face the adversities that living alone in this city brings.

Gaudi, Catalunya

In 1959 Hiroshi Teshigahara shot the following 16 mm footage of he and his father’s first trip to Barcelona and the outlying Catalonian countryside, including a visit to the home of Salvador Dali in Port Lligat. The footage was recorded without sound.

The Gateway Arch: A Reflection of America

The Gateway Arch: A Reflection of America chronicles for the first time the complete story of this great American symbol… from Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, and St. Louis’ role in westward expansion; to the eventual construction of the largest stainless steel structure in history.

The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream

Since World War II North Americans have invested much of their newfound wealth in suburbia. It has promised a sense of space, affordability, family life and upward mobility. As the population of suburban sprawl has exploded in the past 50 years Suburbia, and all it promises, has become the American Dream. But as we enter the 21st century, serious questions are beginning to emerge...

Valldaura: A Quarantine Cabin

A group of young architects, confined to a forest in Barcelona during the COVID crisis, explore the problems generated by the ambition of wanting to be completely self-sufficient.

The Plan

Prague faces the challenge of a new zoning plan. The city's development leads to conflicts between the private developer lobby, city residents, and elected officials. By following several years of town council meetings, the film paints an image of a public policy apparatus that ignores the role of the urban planner. Using a journalistic approach, the filmmaker attempts to depict all points of view, although in the end the dominant perspective is of those who believe in the city as an expression of culture and quality of life.

Moriyama-San

One week in the extraordinary-ordinary life of Mr. Moriyama, a Japanese art, architecture and music enlighted amateur who lives in one of the most famous contemporary Japanese architecture, the Moriyama house, built in Tokyo in 2005 by Pritzker-prize winner Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA). Introduced in the intimacy of this experimental microcosm which redefines completely the common sense of domestic life, Ila Bêka recounts in a very spontaneous and personal way the unique personality of the owner: a urban hermit living in a small archipelago of peace and contemplation in the heart of Tokyo. From noise music to experimental movies, the film let us enter into the ramification of the Mr. Moriyama's free spirit. Moriyama-San, the first film about noise music, acrobatic reading, silent movies, fireworks and Japanese architecture!

Paris, the Mystery of the Disappeared Palace

In the heart of Paris, an entire palace has disappeared. It was the very first residence of the kings of France. Long before Versailles, long before the Louvre, the Palais de la Cité stood on the most prestigious island in Paris, the historic cradle of France, facing Notre-Dame. So majestic in the Middle Ages, this palace has become a ghost of history. Over the centuries, this architectural masterpiece has almost completely disappeared. A trio of experts will resurrect it in 3D. Using science and unprecedented excavations, they will track down the pieces of the puzzle to reconstruct it at its peak in the 14th century, and bring back to life those who inhabited it. From the Romans to the Vikings, from Saint Louis to the cursed kings, all have left clues of this 'Versailles of the Middle Ages'.

Radiant City

Since the end of World War II, one of kind of urban residential development has dominate how cities in North America have grown, the suburbs. In these artificial neighborhoods, there is a sense of careless sprawl in an car dominated culture that ineffectually tries to create the more organically grown older communities. Interspersed with the comments of various experts about the nature of suburbia

In Between Mountains and Oceans

Finding their place between the forest and the sea, the Japanese have always felt awe and gratitude toward Nature. Since ancient times, they have negotiated their own unique relationship with their natural surroundings. Acclaimed photographer Masa-aki Miyazawa discovered the essence of that ancient way of living in Ise Jingu, Japan’s holiest Shinto shrine. Inspired by the idea of sending a message to the future in the same way this ancient shrine keeps alive the traditions of the past, Miyazawa used an ultra-high resolution 4K camera to create a breathtaking visual journey linking the Ise forest with other forests throughout Japan.

Googie

Googie architecture was one of the most visually exuberant and culturally formative design movements of the mid-20th century, yet it remains widely misunderstood. Defined by bold angles, sweeping rooflines, neon signage, and a sense of space-age optimism, Googie transformed everyday buildings into roadside spectacle. Coffee shops, bowling alleys, car washes, banks, and churches were designed not just for function, but to captivate motorists cruising by. Rooted in Los Angeles, the movement drew inspiration from visionary architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and John Lautner, while firms like Armet & Davis brought futuristic flair to the commercial landscape. Though many original structures have been lost, preservationists now champion Googie as a serious architectural expression—one that captured the aspirations of postwar America and reshaped the visual identity of the modern city.

Unity Temple: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Modern Masterpiece

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Modern Masterpiece, Unity Temple is an homage to America’s most renowned architect. The film pulls back the curtain on Wright’s first public commission in the early 1900’s to the painstaking efforts to restore the 100 year old building back to its original beauty. The dedicated team of historians, craftspeople, members of the Unitarian congregation and Unity Temple Restoration Foundation reveal the history of one of Wright’s most innovative buildings that merged his love of architecture with his own spiritual values. The film intersperses the architect’s philosophies with quotes narrated by Brad Pitt.