Dave Eggers

Sean Bradley

Jill Westbrook

Nicole Larrabee

Natalie Slack

A 30-minute documentary on book banning and censorship that follows author Dave Eggers as he investigates why a Rapid City, SD school board wanted to ban his book.

The story of the sexual memoirs of a Victorian gentleman who revealed himself as Walter. He documented his liaisons in a frank series of journals which ran to eleven volumes and 1.5 million words, titled 'My Secret Life'. Within the journals he documented details of his liaisons, the names of the women, their social standing, and their conversation. For a century, this material was considered obscene, its publication illegal. Today, however, it's seen as a unique insight into Victorian social and sexual mores, providing valuable information on class, gender, marriage, fidelity and morality. This film looks at the dark life of 'Walter', and examines the way his journals have shaped contemporary understanding of Victorian society. The film also examines the mystery that has surrounded this story - who exactly was 'Walter'? The film asks whether he could have been Henry Ashbee, a wealthy London gentleman who was obsessed with sex and attained a pornographic library of over 15,000 volumes.

In "Diana: The Mourning After" Christopher Hitchens sets out to examine the bogusness of "a nation's grief", tries to uncover the few voices of sanity that cut against the grain of contrived hysteria. His findings suggested that the collective hordes of emotive Dianaphiles sobbing in the streets were not only encouraged but emulated by the media. In the aftermath of Diana's death a three-line whip was enforced on newspapers and on TV, selling the sainthood line wholesale. The suspicion was that journalists, like the public, greeted the death as a chance to wax emotional in print, as a change from the customary knowing cynicism, to wheel out all those portentous phrases they'd been saving up for the big occasion. Sadly, they just seemed to be showboating; the eulogies, laments and tear-soaked platitudes ringing risibly hollow.

One of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century, Arthur Miller created such celebrated works as Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, which continue to move audiences around the world today. He also made headlines for being targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee at the height of the McCarthy Era and entering into a tumultuous marriage with Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe. Told from the unique perspective of his daughter, filmmaker Rebecca Miller, Arthur Miller: Writer is an illuminating portrait that combines interviews spanning decades and a wealth of personal archival material, and provides new insights into Miller’s life as an artist and exploring his character in all its complexity.

In Maija Blåfield’s documentary, eight former North Koreans talk about what it was like to watch illegal films in a closed society. In addition to the 'waste videos', South Korean films were also smuggled into the country via China.

OBAIDA, a short film by Matthew Cassel, explores a Palestinian child’s experience of Israeli military arrest. Each year, some 700 Palestinian children undergo military detention in a system where ill-treatment is widespread and institutionalized.  For these young detainees, few rights are guaranteed, even on paper. After release, the experience of detention continues to shape and mark former child prisoners’ path forward.

Between 1933 and 1945 roughly 1200 films were made in Germany, of which 300 were banned by the Allied forces. Today, around 40 films, called "Vorbehaltsfilme", are locked away from the public with an uncertain future. Should they be re-released, destroyed, or continue to be neglected? Verbotene Filme takes a closer look at some of these forbidden films.

Released in 1796 posthumously, The Nun, a novel that Diderot did not dream of publishing during his lifetime, as he knew it to be revolutionary, caused the same explosion in the 19th century France as in that of the 1960s, when Jacques Rivette decided to adapt it, with Anna Karina in the title role. “This film is banned and it will remain so!” said the General de Gaulle. Exploration of an indictment of incredible modernity which, through the tragedy of the young Suzanne, locked up in the convent against her will, denounces the inequity of a society denying women all moral, political and sexual freedom.