This film explores various ways Seattleites have been actively engaged in their community during the 21st century, a period of rapid change.
A short documentary about two childhood friends, now stand-up comedians, exploring their trauma together.
From Award Winning director Matthew Wagner comes When Hope Breaks Through, the inspiring story of Mike Shoreman, a disabled paddleboarder who attempts to become the first person with disabilities to cross all five Great Lakes. In 2018 Mike was diagnosed with a neurological condition that left him paralyzed, with vertigo, hearing and vision loss, ultimately leading to depression and a mental health breakdown. This riveting documentary explores the current state of the mental health crisis in Canada and our relationships with our own mental health. The film immerses the audience in Mike's epic five crossings, encompassing over 300 kilometers of open water paddling with his dedicated crossings team. Together these strangers come together and form an inseparable bond as they face and conquer obstacles from boats breaking down, medical emergencies to hallucinations and everything in between.
In a profession that few ever see, and even fewer understand, a crisis is brewing amongst today’s first responders. Over 37% meet clinical diagnosis for PTSD, and most go untreated and even unrecognized. In a culture where showing vulnerability means showing weakness, this ground-breaking documentary attempts to break down these barriers and smash the stigma of mental health in the fire service. Follow the journeys of 4 Tacoma Firefighters as they share their stories of pain, sacrifice, and resiliency in the midst of an unprecedented call volume increase. The film provides an intimate glimpse into lives of those who put it all on the line everyday, in an effort to prove once and for all that NO ONE FIGHTS ALONE…
An intimate look into the astonishing bond, joyful spirits, and genetically-matched musical mastery of the Canote Twins.
Believe: The True Story of Real Bearded Santas chronicles a year in the life of real bearded Santas from across the country, exploring the lives of men who not only still believe in Santa Claus…they think they are Santa Claus.
Following the issuance of Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, there was a brief window of time when Japanese Americans could “voluntarily” evacuate away from the West Coast. Approximately 5,000 men, women and children avoided incarceration by self-evacuating, but faced their own unique challenges as they attempted to resettle in often remote landscapes and battled poverty, hostility and racial violence. Before They Take Us Away is the first documentary to chronicle this largely unknown chapter in the Japanese American experience.
Mary Beth was paralyzed under a tidal wave of grief and depression after the untimely death of her best friend, Allison. But when Mary Beth and another close friend, Alia, discover Allison’s very real, yet heartbreaking, diary footage of her breast cancer journey, it leads them, with 25 of Allison’s devoted friends, to Ireland to scatter her ashes at the Cliffs of Moher. Upon returning home, they realize their grief had not subsided, not one bit. Together, Mary Beth and Alia embark on an odyssey back to Ireland with a death midwife/psychologist, Dr. Staci, and unwittingly begin unraveling answers to the complexities of their sorrow to find a sense of hope.
Founded in Gary, Indiana in 1967, the Sin City Deciples Motorcycle Club had to fight their way through the violent and prejudiced world of outlaw motorcycle clubs, and survive the racial profiling and bias of law enforcement in the 1960's and 70's Sin City Deciples are a unique group of men who have created their own society, their own culture, and their own history.
Friends, professional musicians, and self-proclaimed running nerds Kyle Whalum, Brad Sample, and Caleb Gilbreath set out to train for, and complete the Pinhoti 100 ultramarathon on top of their already hectic lives as they struggle to balance family life with the chaos of the music industry.
A globe-trotting cameraman sends letters, postcards and videos from his more than 38 years of travel to his former colleague and lover. She shares them with us in an intimate voice-over, as he reflects on his experiences and reframes them for a present in which democratic instability, climate catastrophe, runaway technology and a global pandemic threaten the future of the planet. Despite a sense of hopelessness, everywhere he “sees images for a film I can make.” His restless need to document humanity is his own personal form of resistance.
Honor Thy Mother is the untold story of over 35 Aboriginal women from Canada and Native women from tribes in Washington and Alaska who migrated to Bainbridge Island, the traditional territory of the Suquamish people, in the early 1940s. They came, some still in their teens, to pick berries for Japanese American farmers. Many, just released from the Indian Residential Schools, fell in love in the berry fields and married Filipino immigrants. Despite having left their homeland and possible disenfranchisement from their tribes, they settled on the Island to raise their mixed heritage (Indipino) children. The voices of the Indipinos, now elders, are integral in the storytelling of their mother’s experiences marrying Asian men and settling in a foreign land. They share their confusion of growing up with no sense of belonging in either culture, growing up in poverty as the children of berry farmers, some with no running water, electricity or indoor plumbing, growing up in a post-World War II racist society and educational system. Many grew up in homes burdened with their father and mother’s memory of the 227 Bainbridge Island Japanese Americans forcibly removed from their homes after President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19th, 1942. Brought to light, in the oral history interviews of the adult Indipinos, is the effect that historical trauma has on children, more specifically children whose mothers grew up in Indian Residential Schools.
In 1536, Captain Alcaraza of New Spain met a naked Spaniard who identified himself as Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. He had been missing for 7 years and was presumed dead, but according to La Relacion, his own written account of events first published in Spain in 1542, something else entirely had occurred.
Scholars agree that he had survived the shipwreck of the 1527 Narvaez Expedition, washing up near what today is Galveston,Texas and had spent 7 years living with the Capoque and Chorruco branches of the Karankawa tribe before traveling all the way from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.
Now, because he survived and wrote a lot, and because he saw himself as an ally of Native Americans, Cabeza de Vaca entered the annals of colonial history as A Savior among Savages: A great explorer who led and taught the natives.
But what if that’s not how the story really went?
This 49 minute documentary examines Cabeza de Vaca's time with indigenous North American peoples through the lens of gender.
November 7, 1940. Spectators from across Washington State gathered to watch the Tacoma Narrows Bridge's crumbling collapse. This is the feature film story of the famed Galloping Gertie: those who witnessed her build and ultimate collapse, those who have explored her wreckage, lured by adventure and a giant octopus; and those who have studied her history. "700 Feet Down" is a deep dive exploration into how history influences the present, and the lessons we can learn along the way.
