Sam Green
2021Utopia in Four Movements
David Cerf, Sam Green
Throughout human history, people have had giddy dreams and fantastic notions about what the future would bring. Today the future has become more of a threat than a promise-a knot of intractable problems looming menacingly on the horizon. With a powerful sense of poetry, Utopia in Four Movements uses the collective experience of cinema to explore the battered state of the utopian impulse at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
Utopia in Four Movements
A Thousand Thoughts
Joe Bini, Sam Green
Filmmaker Sam Green, in collaboration with writer and editor Joe Bini, takes the stage with the legendary classical-music group Kronos Quartet to create a "live documentary" that chronologically unfolds the quartet's groundbreaking, continent-spanning, multi-decade career. Wildly creative and experimental in form, A Thousand Thoughts is a meditation on music itself-the act of listening closely to music, the experience of feeling music deeply, and the power that music has to change the world. Green narrates the piece live onstage while the Kronos Quartet performs the score, and a rich blend of archival footage, photos, and interviews with members of the Kronos Quartet – as well as longtime collaborators like Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Terry Riley, Tanya Tagaq, and Steve Reich – unspools on screen.
A Thousand Thoughts
The Measure of All Things
Sam Green
Documentarian Sam Green interprets our collective fascination with the Guinness Book of World Records as a profound need to try and make some sense of who we are by calibrating human experience and marveling at its outer contours. Green himself travels to various reaches of the Earth to collect original footage of record-holding people, places, and things-the tallest man, the woman with the longest name, the oldest living thing on the planet. He weaves into these original portraits a rich assembly of archival footage, his own live narration, and an evocative live soundtrack from the chamber group yMusic to create an indelible rumination on fate, human endeavor, and the nature of our existence on Earth.
The Measure of All Things
The Universal Language
Sam Green
The Universal Language is a new documentary from Academy Award-nominated director Sam Green (The Weather Underground). This 30-minute film traces the history of Esperanto, an artificial language that was created in the late 1800s by a Polish eye doctor who believed that if everyone in the world spoke a common tongue, humanity could overcome racism and war. Fittingly, the word “Esperanto” means “one who hopes.” During the early 20th century, hundreds of thousands of people around the world spoke Esperanto and believed in its ideals. Today, surprisingly, a vibrant Esperanto movement still exists. In this first-ever documentary about Esperanto, Green creates a portrait of the language and those who speak it today that is at once humorous, poignant, stirring, and ultimately hopeful.
The Universal Language
The Rainbow Man/John 3:16
Sam Green
Rollen Frederick Stewart
Millions of Americans have seen Rollen Frederick Stewart, a.k.a. "Rainbow Man", who achieved notoriety during the late 70's by appearing in the crowd at thousands of televised sporting events wearing his trademark rainbow-colored afro wig. Later—after he became a born-again Christian—he added a sign reading "John 3:16". Over the years, grabbing the attention of the media became an obsession for Stewart. He abandoned his home and marriage to roam the country living out of his car, studying TV Guide each week in a never-ending quest to stay televised...with tragic consequences.
The Rainbow Man/John 3:16
Annea Lockwood / A Film about Listening
Sam Green
Annea Lockwood
Sam Green's intimate portrait of Annea Lockwood shares with us a glimpse into the enthralling world of sound that she has been exploring and creating for many years. It is a touching and personal story of imagination and love.
Annea Lockwood: A Film About Listening
