INVISIBLE MAN, CELEBRATED WRITER. RALPH ELLISON was an African-American writer and essayist, who's only novel INVISIBLE MAN (1953) gained a wide critical success. Ellison's ambitious journey from a childhood of hardship and poverty to celebrated African American writer is chronicled in this inspiring program through exclusive interviews and personal recollection. Invisible Man (1952) addresses issues pertinent to Black society and identity in the...

Winner of the Ripping Reality Award at the Hot Docs Film Festival, this Southern tale transcends literal interpretations of images in order to open up rich, loamy textures of humor and drama.. Working within the tradition of creative non-fiction, Invisible Girlfriend follows Charles as he rides his big red bicycle 400 miles through rural Louisiana to find his invisible girlfriend, Joan of Arc, in a New Orleans bar. Along the way, he encounters a farmer,...

"ECHOES OF THE INVISIBLE" interweaves a mosaic of profound quests. A blind man runs alone through Death Valley as journalist Paul Salopek walks 21,000 miles across the world to retrace our ancestors' migration. Photographer Rachel Sussman struggles to capture the oldest living organisms on the planet while astronomers and physicists attempt to penetrate the furthest depths of time. These ambitious explorers, alongside monks journeying to the earth's...

After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, one man’s quest to heal from PTSD reveals a deeper, invisible trauma he must face. Masterfully crafted, this vivid film tells a story that is as engaging as it is accessible and, ultimately, helpful.

What does it mean to be young, black, male and dare to step out of invisibility? Finding the Gold Within follows six Black men from Akron, Ohio, through their first years of college. Despite their high levels of confidence and critical thinking, the stark reality of being away from their families and communities brings a series of crises. A sister dies in a car accident; a home gets broken into, a brush with the law, racial jokes and provocations...

09 STAGING: Scene staging is an element of film form pointing clearly to cinema’s origin – theatre. Kinuyo Tanaka in The Moon Has Risen uses staging to shape the scene’s invisible geometry, accentuating the tension between characters. Maren Ade in Toni Erdmann stages the scene through depth, facilitating the tragicomic punchline. And in Maria Schrader’s Stefan Zweig: A Farewell to Europe, the criss-crossing complex staging in the final scene...

The eastern Indonesian island of Sumba is the last island in the Malay archipelago where the majority of the people still follow their ancestral religion, called marapu. This film, shot in 1986, focuses on a challenge to the authority of the spirits and ancestors in a village ritual to restore fertility after a fire and famine. Narrated by the priests who communicate with the spirits in prayers and sacrifices, it documents a week of offerings, dancing...

The fable of an old African king and his wayward daughter is updated to present day Brussels to make provocative points about racism, tradition, class struggle, cultural identity and corruption. More than a decade ago Mweze Ngangura delighted the cinema world with one of the most accessible and entertaining African films ever made, La vie est belle, the rags to riches story of a Congolese musician played by soukous super star Papa Wemba. Now he returns...