The 94-year-old Robert Frank’s unique recordings of his fellow artists Harry Smith and Allen Ginsberg, which he had salvaged from his own archive for Harry Smith at the Breslin Hotel.
Harry Smith
as Self
Allen Ginsberg
as Self (archive footage)
Mary Bauermeister is considered the mother of the Fluxus movement. In an attic on Cologne's Lintgasse, she made art history in the early 1960s alongside personalities such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Nam June Paik. Today, at the age of 85, she has no intention of stopping. From morning till night, this extraordinary artist works in her studio near Cologne: a magical place.
François Delisle draws an intimate portrait of his mother in a nursing home. A chronicle of the daily life and medical care of a woman approaching the end, treated with love, respect and dignity.
Every single day of 2022 represented by one single uncut, unedited shot. The result: the year in moments.
Fernando is an actor and theater teacher who, at the age of 74, is impelled to be the protagonist of himself in an experience that blurs the boundaries between the documentary and the fictional. Faced with a delicate problem in his heart, he follows a life full of love for art, where education emerges as a powerful transforming element of reality.
Contrary to the public stereotype of a youthful homosexual community, gay men and women do grow old. Silent Pioneers presents an upbeat focus on the lives of these people today, showing them living full and diverse lives and sharing concerns on ageing, health and housing, with other senior citizens. It also considers how support networks within the gay and lesbian community have enriched and strengthened their individual lives.
In a nursing home, a young man visits his grandmother. As she constantly repeats that she wants to go home, his grandson visits her now empty apartment, seeking to capture memories of a fading past.
For over 80 years, Merle Hayden has crusaded to recruit members to the utopian movement Lawsonomy. Founded by aircraft pioneer Alfred Lawson, Lawsonomy advocates for economic reform and clean, communal living that transforms followers into a "New Species" that will benefit the human race either in this life or the next. Merle joined Lawson as a teenager and never looked back. His high school sweetheart Betty Kasch, however, is tired of Lawson coming between them. Reunited after over 60 years apart, non-believer Betty wants Merle to join her in Florida. Merle's commitment to preserving Lawson's legacy, artifacts currently rotting in a barn alongside a Wisconsin highway, has Betty worried Merle may leave her for Lawson once again.
Set in Oulton, Leeds - some of the last remaining post-war prefabricated houses in the UK are still standing. Residents of this ex coal mining village now at threat of eviction share their stories of community and family as they look to their future. ‘Hanging On’ is a docu-drama that combines artistic visuals of residents suspended in mid air, literally hanging onto their homes and audio interviews about the strength of what happens when people come together. It reminds us about the struggles of people who are slipping through the cracks of society and what it means to have a home.
Defying modernity, 90-year-old Agatha forges a solitary existence on her ancestral farm preserving heirloom seeds.
Who Wants to Live Forever, the Wisdom of Aging is a one hour documentary film about the myths, facts and contradictions in the never-ending battle for both longevity and healthy aging.
Shot over the course of 18 months in New York City's Lower East Side, METHADONIA sheds light on the inherent flaws of legal methadone treatments for heroin addiction by profiling eight addicts, in various stages of recovery and relapse, who attend the New York Center for Addiction Treatment Services (NYCATS).
Filmed in their home in Norway, this intimate documentary follows conversations between trans physician and queer-rights advocate Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad and their partner Elsa Almås. As Esben Esther lives with cancer, they reflect on queer aging, love and mortality, and what it means to face an uncertain future together.
A poetic and contemplative journey of harmony between different forms of life that coexist on the earth. This film is a meditation on the effect of time, movement of the human spirit, and passage to new forms of life, through the eyes, ears, and bodies of three elderly land workers living in a small community in the outskirts of Bauta, Cuba.
A documentary in which retired industrial workers reflect on the promises and anxieties of retirement. Beginning with the Budd Company’s “Retirement Ceremony” in Philadelphia, the film explores how leaving work can mean the loss of routine, identity, and a sense of accomplishment, even as it marks a long-anticipated milestone.
A new documentary that follows master Haida weaver Delores Churchill on a journey to replicate a spruce root hat discovered with the Long Ago Person Found. The 300-year-old traveler was discovered in British Columbia and DNA testing discovered living descendants in Canada and Alaska. Her search crosses cultures and borders, and involves artists, scholars and scientists. The project raises questions about understanding and interpreting ownership, knowledge and connection.
In the tradition of the 20th century classic novel 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance', Growing Old Disgracefully is a biker documentary about a son's struggle to understand his father five years after a family break-up. Riding with his dad and the Ulysses club, we trace a motorcycle adventure across the southern Australian landscape, and the emotional terrain of family relationships.
What happens after death? Lila Ribi's 100-year-old grandmother Greti always has the same answer: There is nothing after death. The filmmaker sees things differently.