Eames: The Architect and the Painter
2011
82 Minutes

From Amazon.com
The husband-and-wife team of Charles and Ray Eames are widely regarded as America’s most important designers. Perhaps best remembered for their mid-century plywood and fiberglass furniture, the Eames Office also created a mindbending variety of other products, from splints for wounded military during World War II, to photography, interiors, multi-media exhibits, graphics, games, films and toys. But their personal lives and influence on significant events in American life – from the development of modernism, to the rise of the computer age – has been less widely understood. Narrated by James Franco, Eames: The Architect and the Painter is the first film dedicated to these creative geniuses and their work.

Gasland
2010
107 Minutes

From Amazon.com
Little did director Josh Fox know that he’d find himself trailing the history and future of natural gas mining for this documentary, Gasland, or so he claims in this moving and evocative political exposé. Thankfully unpretentious and lacking in the didacticism that plagues many political documentaries, Gasland is edifying in the most entertaining and palatable way. Fox’s open-ended questions presented during his narration are answered by interviewees found as he travels cross-country to source out water pollution happening as a result of hydraulic fracturing. The tension begins when Fox researches a letter he receives in the mail at his rural Pennsylvania farmhouse, inviting him to sell his land for $100,000 and permission to mine natural gas. He comes to discover how the Delaware River watershed’s imminently endangered status will threaten New York City’s main water source, and towards the end of the film focuses on New York City, as respected politicians like John Gennaro and Congressman Maurice Hinchey speak on behalf of this issue. But before filming congressional hearings, Fox charts his personal dilemma and how it quickly spirals outward, as first his neighbors tell him horror stories about water contamination due to this process. And as he tours Colorado, Wyoming, and Texas, where hydraulic fracturing has already contaminated myriad underground wells, Fox actually films many families’ water faucets catching fire as people hold a match to their running tap water. Fox’s continuing investigation ties this unchecked chemical process to Dick Cheney’s Halliburton activity and bills covertly passed during the Bush administration. Gasland does not have a conspiratorial feel; it takes an honest, even-keeled investigative approach and relies on information relayed to Fox from renowned activists like Dr. Theo Colborn and Environmental Protection Agency staffer Weston Wilson. This documentary sheds light on what has been a practice that many American citizens have assumed mysterious and possibly benign. It is easy to understand why Gasland has garnered so many film festival awards, since it presents vital information that will necessitate action once it reaches enough of the population. This is grassroots documentary filmmaking at its finest. –Trinie Dalton

 The Finland Phenomenon
 2011
 60 Minutes

 From 2MMinutes.com
Finland’s education system has consistently ranked among the best in the world for more than a decade. The puzzle is, why Finland?

Documentary filmmaker, Bob Compton, along with Harvard researcher, Dr. Tony Wagner, decided to find out. The result of their research is captured in a new film, “The Finland Phenomenon: Inside the World’s Most Surprising School System”.

In the 60-minute film, Dr. Wagner guides the viewer through an inside look at the world’s finest secondary education system. A life-long educator and author of the best-selling book “The Global Achievement Gap,” Dr. Wagner is uniquely qualified to explore and explain Finland’s success. From within classrooms and through interviews with students, teachers, parents, administrators and government officials, Dr. Wagner reveals the surprising factors accounting for Finland’s rank as the #1 education system in the world.

Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird
2011
82 Minutes

From Amazon.com
After more than half a century, To Kill a Mockingbird remains a beloved bestseller and quite possibly the most influential American novel of the 20th Century. Nearly one million copies are sold each year and the novel has been translated into more than forty languages. The film version, starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, won a trio of Academy Awards.

Behind it all was a young Southern girl named Nelle Harper Lee, who once said that all she wanted to be is the Jane Austen of South Alabama. Hey, Boo explores Lee’s life and unravels some of the mysteries surrounding her, including why she never published again.

Containing never-before-seen photos and letters and a rare interview with Lee’s sister, Alice Finch Lee, the film also brings to light the context and history of the novel’s setting in the Deep South and the social changes it inspired.

Tom Brokaw, Rosanne Cash, Wally Lamb, Anna Quindlen, Richard Russo, Scott Turow, Oprah Winfrey, Andrew Young and others reflect on the novel’s power, influence, and popularity, and the many ways it has shaped their lives.