First-Run Features (Firm)

Documents an entire school year with Wilma Stephenson and those students committed enough to surrender themselves to her enlightened despotism. By the end of the year, thirteen of her students will have made it through the gauntlet. At a school where over 40% of students don't even make it to their senior year, Wilma shows her kids how to achieve the American Dream: You choose a realistic goal. You work hard. You work the system. You get out of Northeast...

Upon moving his family's Southern plantation, Godfrey Cheshire discovers an unknown African American branch of the family. Cheshire examines the Southern plantation in American history and how the racial legacy from the past continues into the present.

This eye-opening film goes deep into the heart of the Muslim world to explore the history and current state of Islam. It also delves into the personal lives of its subjects, who range from ayatollahs and grand imams to simple farmers and women living in veiled seclusion. Their relationship with this holy book reveals a complex, beautiful, and often contradictory guide for humanity.

A thrilling journey to one of the world's most perilous environments. This follows a team of world-class scientists as the explore the West Antarctic Peninsula. In the wake of devastating events like Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Katrina, oceanagrapher Oscar Schofield teams up with a group of researchers in a race to understand the climate change in the fastest warming place on earth.

It places the spotlight on one of filmmaking's unsung heroes, casting director Marion Dougherty, and takes viewers on a journey through 50 years of Hollywood history from an entirely new perspective. Relying on her exquisite taste and gut instincts, Dougherty helped usher in the 'New Hollywood' with movies like Midnight Cowboy, The Graduate, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and Bonnie and Clyde.

After three decades turning his lens on New York City, taxi driver turned street photographer Matt Weber has seen it all. It not only chronicles the life and times of Weber, but becomes a vibrant conversation about the photographic medium, artistic expression, and New York City. There is no telling how many stories Weber has attempted to capture since he first started taking pictures out of the window of the cab he used to drive.

A spell-binding cinematic experience from visionary filmmaker Peter Mettler that explores our perception of time. Working at the limits of what can easily be expressed Mettler finds miraculous unity in seemingly random things and dares to dream the movie of the future.

In his lifetime, Thomas Merton was hailed as a prophet and censured for his outspoken social criticism. For nearly 27 years he was a monk of the austere Trappist order, where he became an eloquent spiritual writer and mystic as well as an anti-war advocate and witness to peace...Merton: A Film Biography provides the first comprehensive look at this remarkable 20th century religious philosopher who wrote, in addition to his immensely popular autobiography...

McElwee pursues murder, mayhem and catastrophe the same way he pursued southern women in Sherman's March. Made after McElwee becomes a father and finds himself at home watching a lot more TV, he becomes obsessed with the nightly tales of calamity reported on by the local news. This fascination soon turns into another cross country journey to unearth the full stories of those affected. As McElwee pursues this project he also finds himself in Hollywood...

How does a mentally ill person drown himself in a few feet of water on a crowded Memorial Day beach? ..A tall, middle-aged, fully dressed man walks up to his shoulders into the cold shallow waters of San Francisco Bay; and he waits. Police and Fire units respond in droves; and they wait. A good-sized crowd watches and waits as the sand in the man's hourglass runs out. Succumbing to the cold and rising tide, the man loses consciousness within the hour....