Library Services: Kanopy

Too Late

Told in non-linear fashion, TOO LATE explores the tangled relationship between a troubled private investigator and the missing woman he's hired to find. After watching the film, delve into the ambitious endeavor of shooting TOO LATE on 35mm with behind the scenes footage.

Woman on the Run

A lost gem rediscovered! Thanks to the efforts of the Film Noir Foundation, this terrific 1950 film noir, the only American print of which was burned in a 2008 fire, has been rescued and restored to its original luster. Join the wild chase around San Francisco as a man goes into hiding after witnessing a gangland execution. Police bird-dog his wife Eleanor (Ann Sheridan), certain she’ll lead them to her husband, whose testimony against the killer could bring down a crime kingpin. But Eleanor and her hubbie are Splitsville—she never wants to see him again.

When roguish newspaperman Danny Leggett (Dennis O’Keefe) charms Eleanor into helping him track down the hidden husband—there are unexpected, stunning, and poignant results. This nervy, shot-on-location thriller is a witty and wise look at the travails of romance and marriage, and perhaps the best cinematic depiction ever of mid-20th century San Francisco.

Sudden Fear

In this rediscovered masterpiece of film noir, Joan Crawford plays a successful playwright who marries a mediocre actor (Jack Palance). She soon discovers that he not only married her for money but that he plans to murder her with the help of his lover (Gloria Grahame).

The Hitch-Hiker

Beyond its obvious cultural significance as the only classic film noir directed by a woman (actress Ida Lupino), THE HITCH-HIKER is perhaps better remembered as simply one of the most nightmarish motion pictures of the 1950s. Inspired by the true-life murder spree of Billy Cook, THE HITCH-HIKER is the tension-laden saga of two men on a camping trip (Edmond O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy) who are held captive by a homicidal drifter (William Talman). He forces them, at gunpoint, to embark on a grim joyride across the Mexican desert.

Fear City

Matt runs a topless dancer talent agency in New York. When two of his dancers are brutally murdered, he suspects that Carmine, a mob-controlled competitor, is behind it. The killer takes a third victim and the newspaper headline scream out about a serial murderer. Matt and his partner Nicky attack Carmine and his gang in a terrible gunfight but they apparently have the wrong target.

Children of the Arctic

A year-in-the-life portrait of Native Alaskan teenagers coming of age in Barrow, Alaska - the northern-most community of the United States.

For these teenagers, growing up has become a little more complicated than it was for their ancestors. They are the twenty-first century descendants of a culture that has endured for millennia on this isolated, but rapidly changing tundra. The harvest of the agvik (bowhead whale) remains the heart of their culture - in the fall, motor boats and modern methods are used, whereas, in the spring, whaling crews use the umiaq (a seal-skin boat made by hand) and ancient traditional methods.

Winner of Best Documentary Feature at the Guam International Film Festival, Oxford Film Festival, Phoenix Film Festival, and Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Gather

GATHER follows the stories of natives on the frontlines of a growing movement to reconnect with spiritual and cultural identities that were devastated by genocide.

An indigenous chef embarks on a ambitious project to reclaim ancient food ways on the Apache reservation; in South Dakota a gifted Lakota high school student, raised on a buffalo ranch, is proving her tribes native wisdom through her passion for science; and a group of young men of the Yurok tribe in Northern California are struggling to keep their culture alive and rehabilitate the habitat of their sacred salmon.

All these stories combine to show how the reclaiming and recovery of ancient food ways is a way forward for native Americans to bring back health and vitality to their people.

Rumble

This revelatory documentary brings to light the profound and overlooked influence of Indigenous people on popular music in North America. Focusing on music icons like Link Wray, Jimi Hendrix, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Taboo (The Black Eyed Peas), Charley Patton, Mildred Bailey, Jesse Ed Davis, Robbie Robertson, and Randy Castillo, RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World shows how these pioneering Native American musicians helped shape the soundtracks of our lives.

Winner of a Special Jury Award for Masterful Storytelling at the Sundance Film Festival and Best Documentary at Hot Docs.

Te Ata

TE ATA (TAY' AH-TAH) is based on the inspiring true story of Mary Thompson Fisher, a woman who traversed cultural barriers to become one of the greatest Native American performers of all time. Born in Indian Territory, and raise on the songs and stories of her Chickasaw culture, Te Ata's journey to find her true calling led her through isolation, discovery, love and a stage career that culminated in performances for a United States president, European royalty and audiences across the world. Yet of all the stories she shared, none are more inspiring than her own.

What Was Ours

An Eastern Shoshone elder and two Northern Arapaho youth living on the Wind River Indian Reservation attempt to learn why thousands of ancestral artifacts are in the darkness of underground archives of museums and churches, boxed away and forgotten. Like millions of indigenous people in many parts of the world, they do not control their own material culture. It is being preserved, locked away, by ‘outsiders’ who themselves do not know what they have. These beautiful ancestral objects — drums, pipes, eagle wing fans, medicine bags, weapons, and ceremonial attire — are far from home, their meaning slowly being lost to time. Should tribes attempt to bring them back? Many want to, including our three main characters. But why do they want them back? What answers do they seek from these artifacts? How can they take control of their own past? Is recovering what’s lost even possible anymore?