First Run Features (Firm)

Shane Black (Lethal Weapon), John Carpenter (Halloween), Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption), William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver), and dozens of other Hollywood screenwriters share penetrating insights and hilarious anecdotes in Peter Hanson's Tales from the Script, the most comprehensive documentary ever made about screenwriting. By analyzing their triumphs and recalling their failures, the participants...

In this film by Academy Award winner Cynthia Scott, seven old women become stranded at a deserted farmhouse miles from civilization. They don't have much food, or a decent place to sleep. Or much in common. But these surprising, remarkable women turn a crisis into a magical time of humor and spirit.

The Professor: Tai Chi's Journey West is a feature documentary about Tai Chi and one of its greatest masters, Cheng Man-Ching, a man who brought Tai Chi and Chinese culture to the West during the swinging, turbulent 60's. Though Cheng is an important transformational figure, his teachings have been overlooked. This documentary film tells the story of his remarkable life and features Tai Chi as a martial art and a spiritual practice..

How does a mentally ill person drown himself in a few feet of water on a crowded Memorial Day beach? ..A tall, middle-aged, fully dressed man walks up to his shoulders into the cold shallow waters of San Francisco Bay; and he waits. Police and Fire units respond in droves; and they wait. A good-sized crowd watches and waits as the sand in the man's hourglass runs out. Succumbing to the cold and rising tide, the man loses consciousness within the hour....

In 2012, Atsushi Funahashi presentedNuclear Nation, his film about the consequences of the March 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima Daiichi. 1400 people from nearby Futaba were evacuated to a school building in a Tokyo suburb. Funahashi documented people's desperation with true empathy and showed the full extent of the destruction. This year, he presents the sequel.. We learn that the former mayor - previously a fervent advocate of nuclear energy...

Largely unchanged for more than a century, the projection of photochemical film faces an uncertain future in the digital age. The practice of handing and projecting film is in danger of being lost; and the role of film projectionist is nearing extinction.. THE DYING OF THE LIGHT explores at the history and craft of motion picture presentation through the lives and stories of the last generation of career projectionists. By turns humorous and melancholic,...

For the 19th century, the world beneath the sea played much the same role that outer space played for the 20th. The ocean depths were both the ultimate scientific frontier and the home of imagination and the fantastic...Twenty years in the making and based on images of 19th century painters, photographers and scientific illustrators, Proteus brings these undersea worlds to life in a wonderfully unique film...The central figure of PROTEUS is biologist...

The Nation, America's oldest weekly magazine, founded in 1865 and now in its 150th year, has long been considered one of America's definitive journalistic voices. Hot Type, the new film by Barbara Kopple, a two-time Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature, tells the riveting and surprising story of The Nation.. The film captures daily life at the magazine, introduces staff writers and editors past and present, and follows members of The...

First-class pool shark and all-around hustler Jaeckie Zucker is up to his ears in debt, again. He faces jail, divorce and general ruin. When word comes that his mother has died, leaving an inheritance, it's a stroke of luck. But according to his mother's will, before he can cash in Zucker must first reconcile with his long-estranged, Orthodox brother Samuel, who is arriving the next day, family in tow, expecting to sit shiva for seven days. Can Zucker,...

From a Butoh-inspired portrait of a demented aristocrat, to a sensual bedroom metamorphosis, to an intimate moment interrupted by a burst water pipe, this latest collection of award-winning dance films from around the world will "bewitch, bedazzle and bewilder." (Deirdre Towers, Dance on Camera Festival Director) For over five decades now international dancers and filmmakers have been creating these short experimental films, which generally have only...