In the summer of 2004, the Mayor of Lewiston, Maine announced a plan to develop a four-lane boulevard across downtown's low-income neighborhood. This project was called "The Heritage Initiative." Contrary to its name, this plan was going to eliminate the downtown's heritage by displacing 850 people from their homes as well as destroy playgrounds, vegetable gardens, and historic buildings. Moving residents out of the city and improving traffic flow was at the heart of this proposal... It was 1960's Urban Renewal all over again. As tragic as the circumstances were, the threat of a road destroying the neighborhood required residents to rise to the challenge of becoming *community organizers. This movie documents 5 years of development and community organizing in Lewiston. It's an exceptional story about the people of Lewiston, but it's also a universal story about the challenges faced by many urban neighborhoods across the United States.
An intimate portrait of Christopher Alexander, a critic of modern architecture on a lifelong quest to build harmonious, livable places in today’s world.
Alanis Obomsawin’s documentary The People of the Kattawapiskak River exposes the housing crisis faced by 1,700 Cree in Northern Ontario, a situation that led Attawapiskat’s band chief, Theresa Spence, to ask the Canadian Red Cross for help.
Man-pulled rickshaw, which have served Kolkata for over eight decades face virtual extinction as a result of legislation introduced by the State Government in 1981.
'Don't build prisons, they cost too much!' In this era of Great Recession, the conservative and tough-on-crime State of Texas takes an unprecedented path by becoming a social justice leader with programs that rehabilitate offenders.
One night in 1983, the life of the Yangali family changed completely. The four brothers from the town of Churcampa in Ayacucho were attacked and separated by state terrorism.
In the midst of conservative politics in the city of Goiânia, an anti-prohibitionist collective mobilizes for the legalization of marijuana against government repression.
Buenos Aires is a complex, chaotic city. It has European style and a Latin American heart. It has oscillated between dictatorship and democracy for over a century, and its citizens have faced brutal oppression and economic disaster.
While gun violence was on the decline in most major US cities, why did it continue to increase in Chicago's segregated communities? What is known about the systems that created the problem, the laws that isolated it, and the policies that abandoned it? Using dramatic footage, including interviews with residents on the front lines over the last 15 years, this documentary opens a rare historical window into the systematic creation of poverty stricken communities plagued by gun violence.
An organic farmer in Maine sets out to transform the prison food system. Seeds of Change captures the intersecting stories of life-long farmer Mark McBrine and several incarcerated men as they harvest their own meals from a five-acre prison garden unlike any other.
Nikki Blue is a dancer at a strip club hidden along a back road in rural New England. Further down the road, Alice, a burnt-out, neurotic college grad with no particular ambitions, spends her days working at a roadside fossil and rock shop.
In the 22nd century, a paraplegic Marine is dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission, but becomes torn between following orders and protecting an alien civilization.
