Zeitgeist Films (Firm)

In 1994 the Zapatista National Liberation Army, made up of impoverished Maya Indians, took over five towns and 500 ranches in southern Mexico. Fighting for indigenous Mexicans to regain control over their lives and the land, the Zapatista Army, led by Subcommandante Marcos, started sending their message to the world via the Internet. The result was what the New York Times called "the world's first post-modern revolution." Here the filmmaker, who traveled...

Margaret Atwood’s visionary work *Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth* is the basis for this riveting and poetic documentary on “debt” in its various forms—societal, personal, environmental, spiritual, criminal, and of course, economic. Filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal (*Manufactured Landscapes*) strikingly interweaves these debtor/creditor relationships: two families in a years-long Albanian blood feud; the BP oil spill vs. the Earth;...

One of Himalayan Buddhism’s most revered lamas, Khyentse weaves parallel fable-like tales about two men who seek to escape their mundane lives in TRAVELERS & MAGICIANS. Young government official Dondup dreams of escaping to America while stuck in a ravishingly beautiful but isolated village. Along the way, a perceptive yet mischievous monk tells Dondup a story of another young man who sought a land far away: a tale of lust, jealousy and murder that...

Yvonne Rainer's sixth feature is a genuinely subversive movie about menopause. Out of a subject that has been virtually invisible on film, Rainer has fashioned a witty, risky work about sexual identity and the unequal economies of race, gender and class. Winner of the Filmmakers Trophy in the Dramatic Category at the **Sundance Film Festival.**

A tour de force journey through the China's most tumultuous period. First televised on PBS, this award-winning documentary series presents an astonishingly candid view of a once-secret nation with rare archival footage, insightful historical commentary and stunning eyewitness accounts from citizens who struggled through China’s most decisive century. Monumental in scope, CHINA: A CENTURY IN REVOLUTION is critical viewing for anyone interested in...

Astonishingly gripping, LET THE FIRE BURN is a found-footage film that unfurls with the tension of a thriller. On May 13, 1985, a longtime feud between the city of Philadelphia and controversial radical urban group MOVE came to a deadly climax. By order of local authorities, police dropped military-grade explosives onto a MOVE-occupied rowhouse. TV cameras captured the conflagration that quickly escalated—and resulted in the tragic deaths of eleven...

1,200 feature films were made in Germany’s Third Reich. According to experts, some 100 of these were blatant Nazi propaganda. Nearly seventy years after the end of the Nazi regime, more than 40 of these films remain under lock and key. Director Felix Moeller interviews German film historians, archivists and film-goers in an investigation of the power and potential danger of cinema when used for ideological purposes. Utilizing clips from the films...

China in Revolution charts the country’s most violent era where decades of civil war and foreign invasions led to the bloody battle for power between Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek.

Eight times a week, from 1960 to 2002, the Sullivan Street Playhouse in New York City’s Greenwich Village played midwife to a musical theater ritual that attracted theater-goers from across the globe. That show was the legendary and beloved Fantasticks, and for 42 years and 17,162 performances, a legion of performers—including future luminaries such as F. Murray Abraham, Ricardo Montalban, Elliott Gould, Liza Minnelli, Glenn Close, Richard Chamberlain...

A film portrait of the creative community of women writers, artists, photographers and editors (including Colette, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas) who flocked to the Left Bank of Paris in the early decades of the 20th century. Utilizing groundbreaking research and newly discovered home movies, PARIS WAS A WOMAN re-creates the mood and flavor of this female artistic community in Paris during its most magical era. Winner of the Siegessäule...