Animals: Behind the Scenes

In times of economic and environmental uncertainty, the American Dream is quickly fading into the background and being replaced by a world of wage slaves with a glib future. People who feel trapped inside a cubicle are asking themselves: '30 years from now, will I regret how I lived my life?' In The Graceful Descent, American journalist, Katie Young's, answer was, 'yes.' After leaving her job, Katie starts a search for a more fulfilling and promising future by traveling to New Zealand to learn about Permaculture. Watch Katie navigate through a foreign country while conflicting with her ideals and American standard of living, trying to combine modern convenience with sustainability. The Graceful Descent shows Permaculture defines the broadly used term, sustainability, without sacrificing creature comforts.

Poet Khadija Anderson's reflections on the Occupy Wall Street movement, it's great potential and the great threats that face it from government repression and citizen apathy, are combined with dramatic images of the 2011 Occupation of Los Angeles City Hall and the subsequent raid by the LAPD, CIA and the Department of Homeland Security.

You are what you throw away.

This feature length documentary, Mzungu, is our story about personal change, sacrifice, adventure, and ultimately the power of love and community. You will embark on a journey into the great joys and perils of Africa through the eyes of four-young-naive and unassuming Americans. As we join Scott, Eric, Dan, and Adam on their crusade to 'save the world', you too may just fall in-love with Uganda and Rwanda, meet some new friends, and change your life for the better. These young men aren't on a vacation, they have gone to work hard, to 'help', doing what they know best. They will visit Internally Displaced People camps and witness the short and long term effects of genocide and tribal wars. They gain a new understanding of the immense devastation HIV/AIDS is creating across the continent of Africa.. But in the course of making life- long friends, as well as, facing the loss of life, the viewer is on this journey as well. We hope you will also laugh, cry, sing, dance, and in the end leave Africa completely different people. In a time when social entrepreneurs and global issues rule the media, this documentary is a truly raw and real look into a once-in-a-lifetime journey that turns into an entire world of friends working together. The power of this film lies in the questions it forces us to ask ourselves. Are we doing enough, what if it's too hard to help people, what does it mean to love people we've never met? Yet, in the end, you too will may start to believe the world can be a better place and that it is up to you to change it!

Following the path of the Phoenician hero Cadmus, to whom mythology attributes the introduction of the alphabet into Greece, Nicola, a thirtysomething who is uncertain about the future, and his 10-year-old brother Elia, undertake a journey through Italy in search of a new language, to give back to things their proper names and restore meaning to words. In their wanderings, taking in faces and places, painful realities and historic memories, the road becomes a path of learning and, at the same time, an exploration of the imaginary. On the border between documentary and fiction, the film describes the hopes of the country that will be.

Of the 30,000 humanitarian organizations operating in Nepal, there is one that stands above the rest. From award-winning humanitarian journalist Debi Lang comes Hearts In The Himalayas, a documentary about the extraordinary efforts of Himalayan HealthCare. Only the most dedicated volunteers endure treacherous conditions and rugged terrain that take them into the Ganesh Himal region of the Himalayan mountain range in order to bring much needed care to the remote villages this Nepalese non-governmental agency serves. Co-founder Anil Parajuli leads an international medical team on an Everest-size expedition through the stunning beauty of the foothills of the Himalayas which mask the harsh reality of daily life for the villagers. It is a humanitarian adventure you soon won't forget.