Alison Ellwood

Alison Ellwood’s spirited documentary Let the Canary Sing takes the audience on a nostalgic exploration of the life and career of legendary pop icon Cyndi Lauper, with a boisterous narrative anchored by the inimitable Lauper herself. The film traverses her upbringing in a lower-class Queens neighborhood through her rebellious youth pushing back against intolerance, all the way to her meteoric rise in the music scene crafting classic songs that are vibrant and catchy as well as socially resonant. Ellwood presents a revealing and honest Lauper alongside lively archival footage of her cheeky personality and many absorbing performances through the years. The result is a film that captures Lauper’s body of work as an outspoken feminist artist who has been a stalwart advocate and champion for others.

Alison Ellwood’s spirited documentary Let the Canary Sing takes the audience on a nostalgic exploration of the life and career of legendary pop icon Cyndi Lauper, with a boisterous narrative anchored by the inimitable Lauper herself. The film traverses her upbringing in a lower-class Queens neighborhood through her rebellious youth pushing back against intolerance, all the way to her meteoric rise in the music scene crafting classic songs that are vibrant and catchy as well as socially resonant. Ellwood presents a revealing and honest Lauper alongside lively archival footage of her cheeky personality and many absorbing performances through the years. The result is a film that captures Lauper’s body of work as an outspoken feminist artist who has been a stalwart advocate and champion for others.

This documentary puts a spotlight on the White House’s failed response to the global pandemic and how it could have been prevented. Featuring damning testimony from public health officials and hard investigative reporting, director Alex Gibney reveals a system-wide collapse caused by a profound dereliction of presidential leadership.

Women of Troy is an HBO Sports documentary exploring the transcendent career of the Cheryl Miller-led USC Trojans and their impact on women’s basketball.

As the first all-female band to play their instruments, write their songs and have a No. 1 album, The Go-Go’s made history. Underpinned by candid testimonies, this film chronicles the meteoric rise to fame of a band born in the LA punk scene who became a pop phenomenon.

As a young girl Victoria Arlen truly had the world ahead of her. But at the age of 11, she began to suffer from an illness that baffled her doctors and kept Victoria locked in her own body.

Documentary probe into the phenomenon of home-grown Jihadism, analyzing the strategic outreach and tactics employed by terrorists in order to reach susceptible members of society and what can be done to prevent it. Featuring intimate stories from former Jihadists radicalized to commit violent acts of terrorism and their families and communities caught in the crosshairs.

Documentary charting the raucous history of the infamous spring vacation revelries in Daytona, which started in the early 60s, and by the 1980s led to the arrival of tens of thousands of college students, lured by lust, booze, fun in the sun and eventually, the hope to make it onto MTV.

Suffering from scoliosis as a teenager, Audrey Mestre found freedom in the ocean. Years later, she discovered another reason to love the water: the elusive, often raucous free diver Pipin Ferreras. As Mestre follows Ferreras's almost spiritual quest to push his limits underwater, she moves from supporter to ardent free diver to world-class competitor. Then a challenge from a rival pushes the couple to the brink of what is possible, both above and below the surface.

The life and times of the super successful American soft-rock band, Eagles.

A freewheeling portrait of Ken Kesey and the Merry Prankster’s fabled road trip across America in the legendary Magic Bus. In 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” set off on a legendary, LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip to the New York World’s Fair. He was joined by “The Merry Band of Pranksters,” a renegade group of counterculture truth-seekers, including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and the driver and painter of the psychedelic Magic Bus.

A freewheeling portrait of Ken Kesey and the Merry Prankster’s fabled road trip across America in the legendary Magic Bus. In 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” set off on a legendary, LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip to the New York World’s Fair. He was joined by “The Merry Band of Pranksters,” a renegade group of counterculture truth-seekers, including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and the driver and painter of the psychedelic Magic Bus.

A freewheeling portrait of Ken Kesey and the Merry Prankster’s fabled road trip across America in the legendary Magic Bus. In 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” set off on a legendary, LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip to the New York World’s Fair. He was joined by “The Merry Band of Pranksters,” a renegade group of counterculture truth-seekers, including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and the driver and painter of the psychedelic Magic Bus.

A probing investigation into the lies, greed and corruption surrounding D.C. super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his cronies.

Journalist Lawrence Wright brings his multilayered one-man play to the screen as he discusses how a reporter remains objective while covering highly charged issues such as 9/11, Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's past and the history of Islam. Wright examines the Muslim religion, Al-Qaeda's rise to power and bin Laden's complicated relationship with the rulers of Saudi Arabia in this riveting documentary from Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney.

Fueled by a raging libido, Wild Turkey, and superhuman doses of drugs, Thompson was a true "free lance, " goring sacred cows with impunity, hilarity, and a steel-eyed conviction for writing wrongs. Focusing on the good doctor's heyday, 1965 to 1975, the film includes clips of never-before-seen (nor heard) home movies, audiotapes, and passages from unpublished manuscripts.

Fueled by a raging libido, Wild Turkey, and superhuman doses of drugs, Thompson was a true "free lance, " goring sacred cows with impunity, hilarity, and a steel-eyed conviction for writing wrongs. Focusing on the good doctor's heyday, 1965 to 1975, the film includes clips of never-before-seen (nor heard) home movies, audiotapes, and passages from unpublished manuscripts.

Showtime's "In the 20th Century" is a millennium-related strand of feature-length documentaries in which famous directors take on major subjects of their choosing. In the first of the six films, "In Search of the Happy Ending," filmmaker Garry Marshall delves into the institution of marriage as it has evolved in America throughout the past 100 years.

Influenza 1918 is the story of the worst epidemic the United States has ever known. Before it was over, the flu would kill more than 600,000 Americans - more than all the combat deaths of this century combined.

From its beginning during the Reagan years through current times, the War on Drugs has left many victims stranded in the prison system. PRISONERS OF THE WAR ON DRUGS reveals life behind bars in the nation’s prisons. Each prisoner has his or her own story, but for most, the story is predictably similar; they have been criminalized for drugs or drug related offenses, locked up with easy access to substances, and given little opportunity for rehabilitation. This film provides an inside look at the prison system, its prisoners and a war on drugs we do not seem to be winning.

The Dominoes Movie is an audio-visual album of the sixties. Not the chronological 1960s, but the electric, turbulent decade of rock, revolution, and the Vietnam War. The Dominoes Movie focuses on a succession of thirteen evolutionary tableaus, conveying the director’s view that one thing leads to another, as in the domino effect where one change or event causes a similar one, which then causes an additional one, and so on in a linear sequence. A portrait of the Vietnam War decade without narration and presented entirely via news footage and a soundtrack featuring BB King, Marvin Gaye, The Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Santana, Neil Young, CSN&Y, Van Morrison, The Incredible String Band, Canned Heat and David Peel.