When Borat Came to Town

42nd Street Forever, Volume 5: Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

October 2009 •English

WELCOME TO THE ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE CINEMA, the most awesome post-modern hot spot for exploitation movie revival, deep in the heart of Texas! Home to world-famous events such as The Quentin Tarantino Film Fest, Fantastic Fest and Butt-Numb-A-Thon, the Alamo is one of the last places on earth where you can still see grindhouse classics such as THE DEVIL WITHIN HER and MAD MONKEY KUNG FU. Now, the Alamo has opened their vaults for a peek at some of the most outrageous cinematic gems from several golden ages of sleaze cinema. Digitally re-mastered in high-definition from the actual reels that show every week at the Alamo, this exciting edition of the 42ND STREET FOREVER series is the most bizarre, the most terrifying and the most hilarious one yet!

Children in Crisis: The Story of CHIP

January 2024 •English

In the midst of a catastrophic steel industry collapse, a remarkable grassroots community effort leads to a national healthcare program that helps more than 200 million children...and counting.

The Dead Nation

August 2017 •Romanian

A documentary-essay which shows Costică Axinte's stunning collection of pictures depicting a Romanian small town in the thirties and forties. The narration, composed mostly from excerpts taken from the diary of a Jewish doctor from the same era, tells the rising of the antisemitism and eventually a harrowing depiction of the Romanian Holocaust.

The Salt Mines

October 1990 •English

Explores the lives of Sara, Gigi and Giovanna, three Latino transvestites who for years have lived on the streets of Manhattan supporting their drug addictions through prostitution. They made their temporary home inside broken garbage trucks that the Sanitation Department keeps next to the salt deposits used in the winter to melt the snow. The three friends share the place known as "The Salt Mines".

Likhaya

November 2009 •English

A look at the rampant HIV epidemic rate in Swaziland.

The Certainty of Probabilities

June 2021 •Romanian

1968, The Socialist Republic of Romania. Women catch up on the latest tendencies in beachwear, the young hippies of Hamburg are harshly criticized by Romanian students, while Nicolae Ceaușescu reads the famous defiance speech against the intervention of the Warsaw Pact troops in Czechoslovakia. Floating solemnly over all this is The Internationale, sung on a stadium by a crowd of pioneers dressed in white shirts and red ties. A certainty for each probability: the documentary is at the same time a history lesson and an ideological warning sign, the director’s endeavour permanently draws our attention to the functions of the propaganda film, yet without tarnishing the fascination that dwells in the core of the images, that of the figures that wave at us from a past buried in commonplaces and political parti pris.

We Feed the World

September 2005 •German

A documentary that exposes the shocking truths behind industrial food production and food wastage, focusing on fishing, livestock and crop farming. A must-see for anyone interested in the true cost of the food on their plate.

Requiem for Auschwitz - the film

August 2022 •Dutch

13 years ago, director Bob Entrop made the film A piece of blue in the sky, the first film in the Netherlands that depicted the murder of almost 1 million Sinti and Roma during the Second World War. There is a taboo on what happened during the war, you don't talk about it with anyone and certainly not in front of a camera. Requiem for Auschwitz is a sequel, with the most valuable moments from the first film, supplemented with the grandchildren and the creation and performance of the 'Requiem for Auschwitz' by Sinti composer Roger Moreno Rathgeb by the Sinti and Roma Philharmonic from Frankfurt and a Jewish choir in the Berliner Dom in Berlin, during Holocaust Memorial Day. During his visit to Auschwitz in 2020 with four musicians from the Dutch Accompaniment Orchestra, Roger shows them the places that inspired him.

Roma WWF Superstar to Teacher: A Mini Documentary

November 2024 •English

Watch the inspiring story of Paul Roma, a former WWF wrestler turned teacher, as he shares not only wrestling techniques but also valuable life lessons with his students…

Women of Today

January 1958 •Romanian

Made on the occasion of March 8, it presents a series of brief portraits of women, from various professional fields, of different ages and even of different ethnicities, pointing out the benefits that the communist organization had brought to their daily lives. A special emphasis is placed on their status as mothers and on the role of nurseries and socialist kindergartens not only in making their lives easier, but also in giving them the time they need to build a career. Another concern of the filmmaker, starting from the concrete case of one of the protagonists, is to highlight the differences between the happy present and the not-too-distant past in which someone with her social status should have dedicated herself exclusively to raising children, in hygienic and extremely difficult lives.

Land Without Bread

December 1933 •Spanish

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time.

Megacities

August 1998 •English

Megacities is a documentary about the slums of five different metropolitan cities.

Let All Children Smile

January 1957 •Romanian

The film's protagonists are the orphaned children taken into custody by the state and institutionalized at Children's House no. 6 from Bucharest. For Mészáros, the concern for the situation of children left orphaned during the Second World War is autobiographical: the director directly experienced the absence of parents in her own childhood.

Imba Means Sing

December 2015 •English

A character-driven heartfelt story of resilience and the impact of education. The film follows Angel, Moses and Nina from the slums of Kampala, Uganda through a world tour with the Grammy-nominated African Children's Choir; stunningly shot and told through Angel, Moses and Nina's perspectives on their one shot journey from poverty to education.

O čo ide Idě

October 2016 •Czech

De caballos y guitarras

March 2024 •Spanish

A musical, and also a reflection on watching, on trying to escape an anthropocentric gaze and also on watching itself in cinema. Featuring mares and horses: Triana, Víctor K, Bambi Sailor, San Special Solano, Buck Red Skin, Onkaia, Cool Boy, the donkey Agostino, the mule Guapa. And also Alfredo Lagos, Raül Refree, María Marín, Pepe Habichuela, Virgina García del Pino, María García Ruiz, Pilar Monsell, María Pérez Sanz.

The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films

October 2014 •French

Cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus relive the creation, rise and fall of their independent film company, Cannon Films. This documentary recounts their many successes and discusses their eventual downfall.

This Wonderful Dirty World

April 1971 •English

The effects of pollution on the inhabitants of a Japanese fishing village; group psychotherapy methods used in the United States; animal testing for the effects of drugs; assisted fertilization in a Swedish clinic; a gay dance in London; heart surgery by American surgeon De Bakey; a dog fight in Japan; sex education for blind children in Sweden; military training for young Palestinians in Lebanon; contraceptive techniques taught in Sweden; state-managed abortion combined with female infertility treatment; a female priest celebrating Mass; a school for children with phocomelia: these are some of the themes explored in this mondo documentary.

Hell

October 2019 •Spanish

Chennu committed his first crime when he was 15 years old: being a street kid. And he entered hell: Pademba Road. The adult prison in Freetown. In hell, Mr. Sillah is in charge, and there is no hope. Chennu got out after four years. Now he wants to go back.

Land

May 2010 •English

American resort developers bear down on the wild west coast of Nicaragua, hoping to build the next tourist paradise. With lax labour and environmental regulations, some of the developers take full advantage of the situation, and the local fishermen start accusing them of exploitation and land thievery. Unexpectedly, in the midst of this conflict, firebrand Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas sweep back into government, boldly empowering the local fishermen. The tables turn viciously on the American developers, who get much more than they bargained for. But when the local fishermen, corrupted by new found power, begin acting in the same manner as the American developers, questions are posed about human nature, morality, and ethics on a much larger scale.