Raphaël Nadjari’s extraordinary two-part documentary weaves together clips from more than 70 years of Israeli film with commentary from filmmakers, scholars and critics — including Amos Gitai, Joseph Cedar, Avi Mograbi, Yehuda Ne’eman, Menachem Golan, Moshe Ivgy, Ronit Elkabetz and Zeev Revach. Crafted for both insiders and outsiders, the film traces the evolution of the country’s cinema alongside political and social history: part one spans the years 1933 to 1978, covering the overlap between the Zionist struggle to form a state and the propagandistic qualities of revolutionary cinema; part two, the shift to reality-based filmmaking in the late 70s, and the transition from the political films of the 80s to the more personal cinema of today. The most comprehensive and compelling record of the subject ever attempted, Nadjari’s film reveals a cinematic national identity that is inextricably linked to the ever-changing emotional reality of the country.
 
 

© Alive Mind Education 2010
Set: DVD Only
Total Running Time: 210 minutes

Educational Prices: (includes Public Performance Rights)
 
Educational with Public Performance Rights: $289.00

 
Educational without Public Performance Rights: $149.00

 
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A vibrant chronicle of one of today’s most notorious and revered live bands, Gogol Bordello Non-Stop follows Eugene Hütz’s gypsy-punk brigade around the world as they spread their liberating libertine musical gospel. Filmmaker Margarita Jimeno tracks their raucous gigs from 2001 to 2006, from NYC to Italy, as the band rises from dingy basements to festival main-stages. The cast is a rotating circus of polyglot personalities from Israel, Russia and America, who dish on their music, their heritage, and their favored vices. Hütz, a sardonic mustachioed Ukrainian immigrant and the group ringleader, fuses his gypsy heritage with a love of punk rock and burlesque. Part carnival barker, social organizer, and poet, he’s a mesmerizing presence on-stage and off.

Gogol Bordello: Non Stop is an artful documentary that mixes flamboyant costumes, intricate dance choreography, a relentless beat and an explosive energy not seen since the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll.
 
 
 

A universal experience whether or not we can admit it, death is the sole counterpart to life. From the moment we take our first breath, death is our only guaranteed experience. This is something Stephen Jenkinson not only understands but something he loves. And he wants you to feel the same way. Griefwalker, a feature length documentary by Tim Wilson, sets its lens on Jenkinson in an unforgettable exploration of death phobia as a culture.

Stephen Jenkinson, a Harvard educated theologian, is one of Canada’s leading palliative care educators. Also considered a philosopher, woodsman, boatsman, and bard, Jenkinson travels throughout Canada providing grief counseling. He rejects the notion of acceptance, deeming it too neutral a disposition. He insists the one true answer is an embrace of death. In order to love life, we need to love death.

Filmmaker and friend Tim Wilson presents Jenkinson with an unclouded eye. Appearing onscreen together, their relationship is complex and occasionally combative. Reverent and respectful but clearly obsessed with death, Jenkinson is an enigmatic figure who can easily shift from talkative to terse. Captured with a cinematic eye, this lyrical, haunting documentary exhibits an unparalleled understanding of mortality.
 
 

Educational without Public Performance Rights: $129.00
 
 
 

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Video Librarian Review May/June 2010
Rating: 3 out of 4 Stars - Recommended!

Stephen Jenkinson, the subject of Griefwalker, is a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School, but as a counselor to the terminally ill and their families at a Toronto hospital, he eschews taking a religious approach to preparing for death, except in the broadest sense. Noting that most patients are anxious over the prospect of dying and that treatment aimed at merely reducing pain doesn’t deal with the reality of what’s to come, Jenkinson embraces the cultural ideas of Canadian Indians—encouraging those he counsels to see their imminent demise not as something to be resisted and feared, but rather as a natural and necessary part of life that should be accepted. Director Tim Wilson, who became acquainted with Jenkinson when he was diagnosed with a serious condition himself, gives Jenkinson ample opportunity to offer his message in direct conversation and in voiceover passages set against beautiful rustic visuals. Griefwalker also follows Jenkinson as he visits patients, including a woman with cancer concerned about leaving her husband behind, and a couple whose young daughter is close to death. Griefwalker sometimes moves at a stately pace and occasionally strains for the poetic, but its critique of the modern Western way of looking at death is persuasive, and the alternative Jenkinson offers seems both profound and—judging from the reactions of those he helps—often very effective. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)

Holes In My Shoes profiles the ultimate New Yorker, Jack Beers, and demonstrates the power and promise of the American Dream through the artfully-told, inspirational story of his life. The stuff that urban legend is made of, Beers represents everything good about New York – and America itself. His story reminds us that time and time again, American society has been resurrected from times of hardship through the sheer will of individuals who uplifted the nation through their common fight for survival – and prosperity.

Born to immigrant parents in a cold water tenement on the lower east side, Beers ascended from crushing poverty to the upper crust of society through determination, innovation and hard work. As a kid, Beers was known as “New York City’s Strongest Boy,” and flaunted his Herculean gifts in strong man acts in Coney Island and around the city in the 1920’s. After suffering an injury to his hand that prohibited him from performing, Beers became a cracker-jack steel worker and engineer and helped to build Radio City Music Hall, erected the Empire State Building spire and personally shortened World War II through his work on the Manhattan Project. Reinventing himself once again at middle age, Beers became a successful character actor and has appeared in over 200 feature films, including Tootsie and Plaza Suite. Throughout his long life, he beat terminal illness and shepherded his family through famine and feast, and at 94-years-old still rode his stationery bike three miles per day, cut down trees and mowed his five-acre-lawn on a tractor. Just before his passing early this year, Jack was acknowledged by Mayor Bloomberg for his indelible lifetime achievements and contributions to New York. This lovingly crafted documentary by David Wachs spans Beers’ life with incredible original and archival footage, photographs and penetrating interviews that chronicle the potential of the American dream and share one man’s abundant humanity with the world.

A truly motivational and richly entertaining story, Holes In My Shoes is a timely film about how people can pick themselves up by their bootstraps and soar to success – even in the most desperate economic times.
 
 
Holes In My Shoes Product Information
 
Grade Level: Grades 10-12, College and University
Subjects: Anthropology and Society, Culture
Copyright: © 2006 Holes In My Shoes Productions and Hot Wachs Productions. All rights reserved.
Set: DVD Only
Total Running Time: 90 minutes
UPC Number: 705105269511
Catalog Number: ALV-DV-43
Educational Prices: (includes Public Performance Rights)
 

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• College / University: $249.00

• Library / High School: $129.00

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Additional Information
• Production Photos - Coming Soon!
• Full Reviews - Coming Soon!
• Credits - Coming Soon!

 

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“Jack Beers is as legendary a New York landmark as the Empire State Building”
-CBS Radio
 
“…a beautiful love poem to New York and all her indefatigable energy.”
-The Scotsman

In late 2005 Harold Pinter videotaped a lecture on the occasion of the award to him of one of the most distinguished of honours, the Nobel Prize for Literature. His speech, delivered directly to camera, is a complex reflection on his own writing and an excoriating attack on the foreign policy of a “brutal, ruthless and scornful” United States.

Harold Pinter reflects on the genesis of his plays “The Homecoming” and “Old Times”; on the problems of political theatre; on the tragedy of American actions in Nicaragua; on the invasion of Iraq and on other crimes by the United States in the past half century.

“Art, Truth & Politics” is a speech that made headlines around the world. It is an urgent and compelling appeal for us all as citizens to seek out and honour truth.

Harold Pinter: Art, Truth & Politics Product Information

Grade Level: College and University
Subjects: Literature, Drama
Set: DVD Only
Copyright: © 2006 Illuminations. All rights reserved.
Total Running Time: 46 minutes
Educational Prices: (includes Public Performance Rights)

• College / University: $189.00
• Available Soon!
• Library / High School: $89.00
• Available Soon!
• PAL Version: $89.00
  
  

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Reviews

“[A] passionate and astonishing speech, which mixed moral vigour with forensic detail… This was a man delivering an attack on American foreign policy, and Britain’s subscription to it, with a controlled anger and a deadly irony. And, paradoxically, it reminded us why Pinter is such a formidable dramatist. He used every weapon in his theatrical technique to reinforce his message. And, by the end, it was as if Pinter himself had been physically recharged by the moral duty to express his innermost feelings.”
- Michael Billington, The Guardian, December 2005

“Pinter’s plays speak volumes between the lines - but bluntly stating his position as he does here, he speaks even more loudly with them. His speech is not just a major contribution to revealing the lies we’re living under, but also an important new part towards understanding the man.”
- The Stage Online, December 2005

On the occasion of his acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, playwright Harold Pinter recorded this speech, and the video was shown at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. In this riveting talk, Pinter describes his commitment to truth in his writing, and he contrasts this with the suppression of truth in contemporary politics. He is especially critical of U.S. foreign policy and the invasion of Iraq, and he examines the lies and media manipulation that have led to U.S. atrocities around the world. Of special interest to students of theatre and creative writing is Pinter’s discussion of the impetus for some of his greatest works (The Homecoming and Old Times) and the playwright’s relation to his characters.
- Educational Media Reviews Online

Albert Maysles and his brother David (who died in 1987), who are best known for such films as Salesman, Grey Gardens, Gimme Shelter, began filming THE GATES in 1979, when internationally acclaimed artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude began actively pushing their installation project forward with the New York City government. The Maysles captured the emerging controversy at community board hearings that pitted neighbor against neighbor over the appropriate use of Central Park. While Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s artistic vision sought to unite all of New York City, the public reaction was accusations of publicly financed defacement of a masterpiece, akin to putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa at tax payers’ expense. The proposal was denied. Twenty-four years later, after 9/11 and the election of art patron Michael Bloomberg as mayor, the project was approved in January, 2003. The subsequent film, brought to fruition by Antonio Ferrera and co-directed with Albert Maysles, chronicles the evolution of The Gates from concept to installation, ultimately overcoming public disapproval and transforming Central Park into a visual symphony of color, light, joy and beauty at an eventual cost to Christo and Jeanne-Claude of $21 million. The event, which brought over 4 million visitors from around the world to Central Park in mid-winter, is lovingly captured in this masterful film which ultimately asks the question: What is the role of art today?

Alive Mind Education is very proud to announce that The Gates
was listed as one of Video Librarian’s Best Documentaries of 2009!

THE GATES Product Information

Year: 2008
Grade Level: Grades 10-12, college and university
Subjects: Arts, Architectural Studies
Set: DVD Only
Total Running Time: 98 minutes
ISBN-10: 0-9820814-6-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-9820814-6-4
Educational Prices:

Educational with Public Performance Rights: $249.00
 
 
 

Educational without Public Performance Rights: $129.00
 
 
 

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Additional Information
 

• Filmmaker Biographies
• Featured Reviews
• Photo Gallery
• Credits

Reviews

“I can’t imagine a better choice for the closing-night film of the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival…
a stunning, beautiful, deeply moving documentary about the art project by installation artists
Christo and Jeanne-Claude.”
- MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher, May 2007
 

“Ferrara and Maysles orchestrate the construction, installation and deployment of the gates as a
three-part symphony, ending with a two-week improvisational interlude, as hundreds of thousands
of New Yorkers flock to the park in February. As the mega-artwork is transformed by snow, sunsets
and streams of people, the brightly colored 23 miles of pathways transform the wintry landscape
into a fantastical garden of dancing cloth.”
- Ronnie Scheib, Daily Variety, May 2007

Jean-Luc Godard was a founding member of the French New Wave and one of the most influential directors of the 20th century. Two of his most overtly political films from the 60s, La Chinoise and Le Gai Savoir, examine the relationship between art and revolution, language and power. La Chinoise focuses on a group of students and engages with the ideas coming out of the student activist groups in pre 1968 France. Le Gai Savoir was rejected by French national television and subsequently banned by the French government for its subversive content.

La Chinoise

Paris, 1967. Disillusioned by their suburban lifestyles, a group of middle-class students, led by Guillaume (Jean-Pierre Leaud) and Veronique (Anne Wiazemsky), forma small Maoist cell and plan to change the world by any means necessary. After studying the growth of communism in China, the students decide they must use terrorism and violence to ignite their own revolution.

Le Gai Savoir

While alone in an abandoned television studio, two militants, Emile Rousseau (Jean-Pierre Leaud) and Patricia Lumumba (Juliet Berto), have a discourse on language. Regerring to spoken word as “the enemy” - the weapon used by the establishment to confuse liberation movements - the two deconstruct the meanings of sounds and images in an attempt to ‘return to zero’ and truly experience the joy of learning.