Directing
In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shooting, Oscar winner Barbara Kopple takes an in depth look at the issue of gun rights and gun control. She interviews both gun and anti-gun advocates in an effort to shed some light on this not-quite black-and-white issue.
The Umbrella Movement of 2014, also known as the Occupy Movement, paved the way for Hong Kong’s current upheavals, but unfolded in significantly different ways. This creative documentary focuses on the intellectual, political, and discursive underpinnings of the social and political actions of 2014, before fast-forwarding to 2019. A range of thoughtful and engaged intellectuals, students, scholars, activists, and artists including Benny Tai, Chan Kin-man, Ray Wong, and Agnes Chow (many of whom are facing imprisonment for their democratic activism) articulate a range of philosophies, viewpoints and emotions, set against Hong Kong’s spectacular urban background of skyscrapers, night lights, and street-occupying mass movements.
Mary Jane Irwin O'Donovan Rossa of Clonakilty, West Cork, was an Irish nationalist and activist. She was the wife of Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, the famous Fenian prisoner and agitator whose funeral in 1915 sparked the Easter Uprising that led to the establishment of the Republic of Ireland. But Mary Jane had more to do with the revolutionary Fenian movement, Rossa's release from prison and making the historic funeral a reality than has been acknowledged. While Rossa's funeral was a huge and widely reported event, Mary Jane's death in the summer of 1916 was hardly noticed. While Rossa is buried in the Republican Plot at Glasnevin National Cemetery in Dublin, Mary Jane's grave in Staten Island, NY is largely forgotten. Directed by Williams Rossa Cole, Mary Jane's great-grandson as a companion work to his 2016 documentary "Rebel Rossa".
What makes a rebel? This 78 minute documentary probes the psyche of bad-boy publisher and free speech warrior Barney Rosset, whose mid-century legal and cultural battles smashed sexual and political taboos in the United States — unleashing the counter-culture of the 1960s and introducing millions of young intellectuals to the most radical currents in literature, film, theater and politics. In his late eighties, coming to terms with his life, Barney Rosset began to obsessively sculpt an autobiographical 15′ x 22′ surreal wall mural, embedded with jewel-like vignettes crafted out of found objects, each a clue to the conflicts and obsessions that drove Barney’s lifetime rebellion against authority. A cast of artists, a neurologist, and a shaman connect the clues and piece together Barney’s life.
Two Black and Latinx civil rights champions join forces to fight structural racism amid a troubling resurgence of white supremacy.
A documentary on the life and work of Poet Laureate, two-time Pulitzer winner, and environmental activist W.S. Merwin.
REBEL ROSSA is a personal investigation into the life and legacy of the famous - and infamous - Irish rebel Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa by his American great-grandsons told within the context of the controversies leading up to the 100-year anniversary of the Easter Rising in Ireland.
The life of John Allen Muhammad. The D.C. Sniper, as told by his ex-wife Mildred.
