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  Steve Jobs: Billion Dollar Hippy

  July 23, 2012 / People

  Broadly considered a brand that inspires fervor and defines cool consumerism, Apple has become one of the biggest corporations in the world, fueled by game-changing products that tap into modern desires. Its leader, Steve Jobs, was a long-haired college dropout with infinite ambition, and an inspirational perfectionist with a bully’s temper. A man of contradictions, he fused a Californian counterculture attitude and a mastery of the art of hype with explosive advances in computer technology. Insiders including Apple co-founder Steve [...]

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  Johnny Cash: The Last Great American

  July 13, 2012 / People

  Documentary profiling the life of legendary country music star Johnny Cash, who died in 2003 shortly after completing the retrospective Unearthed, a five-CD set of the acoustic performances with which he resurrected his career in the last decade of his life, and after losing his wife, June Carter Cash. This first major retrospective of Cash’s life, times and music features contributions from his daughter Rosanne Cash and son John Carter Cash, his longtime manager Lou Robin and fellow musicians including [...]

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  Syria: Songs of Defiance

  July 9, 2012 / People

  Journalist who was forced to remain anonymous for security reasons offers an unusual but compelling first-person account of a country in turmoil and a revolution in progress. With cameras banned inside Syria, it was too difficult and dangerous to openly use a video camera, but he was able to use his mobile phone. With its tiny camera, filming secretly on street corners, through car windows and behind closed doors, he was able to gather images that reveal ordinary people showing [...]

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  Living in the End Times (According to Slavoj Zizek)

  February 24, 2012 / People

  Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, akaThe Elvis of cultural theory, is given the floor to show of his polemic style and whirlwind-like performance. The Giant of Ljubljana is bombarded with clips of popular media images and quotes by modern-day thinkers revolving around four major issues: the economical crisis, environment, Afghanistan and the end of democracy. Zizek grabs the opportunity to ruthlessly criticize modern capitalism and to give his view on our common future. We communists are back! is the closing remark [...]

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  Hunting Pablo Escobar

  February 20, 2012 / People

  In 1989 Forbes magazine estimated Escobar to be the seventh-richest man in the world with a personal wealth of close to $25 billion, while his Medellín cartel controlled 80% of the global cocaine market. While seen as an enemy of the United States and Colombian governments, Escobar was a hero to many in Medellín (especially the poor people); he was a natural at public relations and he worked to create goodwill among the poor people of Colombia. A lifelong sports [...]

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  Kurt Cobain: About a Son

  January 12, 2012 / People

  Following in the deeply idiosyncratic footsteps of Last Days, About a Son plays more like autobiography than documentary. Gus Van Sant’s feature extrapolates moments from the life of Kurt Cobain (with Michael Pitt as a musician named Blake), while A.J. Schnack’s non-fiction film adheres closer to the facts, but advances a more radicalKoyaanisqatsi-like approach. First off, Cobain supplies the narration, but the filmmaker avoids pictures of the alternative icon until the end. (He culled the voice-over from interviews conducted by author Michael [...]

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  People and Power: The Toxic Truth

  January 10, 2012 / Nature, People

  Hashi Omar Hassan was sentenced to 26 years in prison for killing Ilaria Alpi, an Italian journalist, in Mogadishu in 1994. His lawyer claims Hassan was convicted to stop further investigations into the motives behind Alpi’s killing. Ilaria Alpi was reporting on arms trafficking and the illegal disposal of toxic waste off the coast of Somalia; trafficking featuring Somali and Italian businessmen, offshore companies and secret service agents – trades that continue to this very day, and which are of [...]

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  Exploring Einstein: Life of a Genius

  December 15, 2011 / People

  One hundred years ago, Albert Einstein changed the world with four papers that led directly to the development of atomic weapons, space travel, satellite technology and a profound understanding of the universe. But, wracked with guilt over the real – world applications of his science – specifically, how the use of atomic weapons clashed with his religious beliefs – Einstein spent the last half of his life desperately trying to disprove the implications of so much of his work. Learn [...]

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  Mark Zuckerberg: Inside Facebook

  December 9, 2011 / People, Religion & Society

  In just seven years, Mark Zuckerberg has gone from his Harvard college dorm to running a business with 800 million users, and a possible value of $100 billion. His idea to make the world more open and connected has sparked a revolution in communication, and now looks set to have a huge impact on business too. Emily Maitlis reports on life inside Facebook. Featuring a rare interview with Zuckerberg himself, the film tells the story of Facebook’s creation, looks at [...]

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  N is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdös

  December 8, 2011 / People

  In an age when genius is a mere commodity, it is useful to look at a person who led a rich life without the traditional trappings of success. A man with no home and no job, Paul Erdös was the most prolific mathematician who ever lived. Born in Hungary in 1913, Erdös wrote and co-authored over 1,500 papers and pioneered several fields in theoretical mathematics. At the age of 83 he still spent most of his time on the road, [...]

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  How Bruce Lee Changed the World

  December 7, 2011 / People

  The History Channel’s How Bruce Lee Changed the World explores the amazing multitude of ways that Bruce Lee – the first international Asian superstar–has influenced pop culture. Calling Lee the biggest movie star in history is a bit of a stretch (though every shot of this hypnotically charismatic performer argues that he might have been, had he not died abruptly before the release of his fourth and most successful movie, Enter the Dragon). A wealth of interviewees, ranging from filmmakers [...]

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  The Chessboard Killer

  December 4, 2011 / People

  A Russian serial killer who invited his victims to drink vodka with him before bludgeoning them to death with a hammer has been convicted of 48 counts of murder after a trial that shocked and entranced a nation. Alexander Pichushkin, a supermarket porter better known in the Russian press as the chessboard killer, sat in silence as a jury foreman read out 48 successive and unanimous guilty verdicts. Dressed in a grey V-necked jumper, the 33-year-old showed no emotion and [...]

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