Łódź Kaliska: Classic Artists of the Absurd

An intimate portrait of Suzan-Lori Parks, featuring actors Don Cheadle and Jeffrey Wright. The film shows the playwright’s process and how a play gets produced in behind-the-scenes footage of Topdog/Underdog in rehearsal and performance. It captures the play’s triumphant Broadway debut and traces Parks’ opportunities, challenges, and personal milestones during the production of her 2002 Pulitzer Prize winner.

Lisa Herdahl, a Mississippi mother of six, is forced to sue her public school district in order to have The Bible removed from her childrens' classrooms.

Actor/director Sidney Poitier discusses his life and career. He tells of his upbringing in Jamaica; the difficulties he encountered in New York City at the start of his career; his involvement in the US civil-rights movement; and efforts to end apartheid in South Africa. Friends and acquaintances, as well as other performers, give their insights about what makes him so special.

The film tells the story of a member of the Polish underground who acted as a courier during World War II and whose most prominent mission was to inform the Allied powers of Nazi crimes against the Jews of Europe in an effort to prevent the Holocaust.

Interviews with students of the post-war Jewish I.L. Perec school in Łódź, Poland, who were mostly scattered around the world after anti-Semitic purges in 1968.

Trans-Action tells the story of an extraordinary woman. Anna Grodzka who in 2011 became the first transgender person in the Polish government, and the third transgender member of government in world history, was born in the male body and decided to finally begin her life as a woman only in her 50s. The film documents the most important chapters in this intimate process of transformation. We observe Anna in her daily activities in Warsaw, we witness her intimate conversations with her son and closest friends.

Five transgender women share their prison experiences. Interviews with attorneys, doctors, and other experts are also included.

Rare look into the lives of gays and lesbians in contemporary Poland. It explores the issue of gay and lesbian rights in a conservative society, which is undergoing a very dynamic transformation, allowing for successful liberal changes.

When five Howard University students sat on a segregated Maryland carousel in 1960, the arrests made headlines. When the largely Jewish community near Glen Echo Amusement Park joined the Black students in picketing, the first organized interracial civil rights protest in US history was born.

Tells the dramatic story of Stanislav Petrov, the Russian officer who, in 1983, saved the world from atomic war.

Shot in Poland, Ukraine and Israel, this film tells the story of Shimon Redlich, a Holocaust survivor who returns to places from his childhood as well as different hiding places in his struggle to survive.

Regular people, many of whom witnessed the World Trade Center attacks in New York City, describe where they were, what they felt and the actions they took on that day.

Although the Nazis seized and killed millions of Jews during World War II, they failed to capture an estimated 25,000 who escaped into the forests of Eastern Europe. Instead of simply hiding, these young men and women - many of them teenagers -- banded together to fight back, carrying out deadly acts of sabotage, staging ambushes, and waging clandestine warfare against the Nazis and their collaborators. The Jewish Partisans tells the inspiring story of how these innocent young adults transformed into guerrilla soldiers, surviving - and ultimately triumphing - against extraordinary odds. —Anonymous

A large still-life painting hung on the wall above Lilka Elbaum's childhood bed in Lodz, Poland. It was the first thing she saw when she woke up, and the last thing she saw before she fell asleep.

Kaya Mirecka-Ploss was closely associated with Jan Karski. She helped over a hundred children from Poland get education in the USA. She gave home to three of them, funded her studies in the US, and help them in the transition into adulthood.

This film tells a shocking and brutal story that has been kept a secret in Poland for over 60 years. It tells the story of a pogrom in 1941 in Jedwabne, Poland and explores the implications of the past for present constructions and negotiations of personal, national and religious identity.