Top New Films

The Hartley Film Foundation is pleased to bring you the following new critically acclaimed films. For additional titles, please visit our complete catalogue of world religion documentaries.

Bronx Princess

A film by Yoni Brook and Musa Syeed

Bronx Princess follows headstrong Rocky's journey as she leaves behind her mother in New York to reunite with her royal father in Ghana, West Africa. Brook and Syeed highlight Rocky's confrontations with her immigrant parents and their ideas of adulthood and faith and Rocky's efforts to reconcile her African heritage and way of life with her dream of independence.

Daughters of Wisdom

A film by Bari Pearlman

For centuries, the women of rural Tibet have been relegated to subservient roles. Regarded as capable of little more than churning butter, bearing children and saying prayers, they have lived servile lives without access to education or the time to practice Buddhism to the same degree as men. In Daughters of Wisdom, the filmmaker creates a vivid, intimate portrait of the lives of these women, and witnesses their culture, a culture on the verge of positive social change realized through education and religious cultivation.

Price: $25.00

Defamation

A film by Yoav Shamir and Sandy Itkoff

A personal and global search by award-winning Israeli director Yoav Shamir for a better understanding of anti-Semitism is the focus of Defamation. Shamir seeks reactions from the man in the street to opinons about anti-Semitism posed by experts. And the filmmaker seeks answers to basic questions as well: "When we are talking about anti-Semitism, what do we mean? What is anti-Semitism in a daily sense? Does it take different forms in different places? How serious is it? Is there a 'new anti-Semitism?' Is being an Israeli detachable from being a Jew?"

Price: $24.95

For the Next Seven Generations: The Grandmothers Speak

A film by Carole Hart

The "Grandmothers" come from around the world - Africa, Asia, the Arctic Circle, and North, South and Central America. They are shamans, medicine women, prayer people, and the respected elders of their tribes. Together they share years of sacred wisdom handed down to them over generations going back thousands of years. The Grandmothers gathered together for the first time in October 2004 to form the Global Women's Gathering, a group with a mission to explore renewable resources, education for all children, preservation of cultures and species, integration of traditional and Western medicine, and environmental protection.

Four Seasons Lodge

A film by Andrew Jacobs, Matt Lavine, Kelly Sheehan and Albert Maysles

Four Seasons Lodge is a counterintuitive and spiritually uplifting film about 100 Polish, Russian and Hungarian Jews who survived the Holocaust and, in 1979, bought 44 acres of land in the Catskills. They created a refuge, a bungalow colony with communal buildings called Four Seasons Lodge. They cooked, swam, raised children, prayed together and safely swapped stories about the war years. Their inspirational dedication to living righteous and full lives was, as they saw it, the best revenge. As one member put it: "To live this long, to live this well, is a victory."

Price: $24.95

God's Next Army

A film by Jed Rothstein and Tom Hurwitz

God's Next Army takes you inside Patrick Henry College for an intimate look at a conservative Evangelical Christian liberal arts institution that is dedicated to home-schooled kids. Award-winning filmmakers Jed Rothstein and Tom Hurwitz follow members of the incoming freshman class through their training, which emphasizes debating skills, their conformity to college rules, and their frequent day trips to Congress, where they hone their expertise as lobbyists dedicated to molding the world into a Christian Republic.

Price: $20.00

Hard Road Home

A film by Macky Alston

Hard Road Home tells the story of Julio Medina and the Exodus Transitional Community (ETC), the center he created to help ex-offenders navigate the transition from prison to life on the outside. ETC is situated above a storefront church in the East Harlem section of New York City.

Price: $19.99

Hiding & Seeking

A film by Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky

Made by the award-winning filmmakers of the art house favorite Life Apart: Hasidism in America, which received an Emmy nomination, Hiding and Seeking follows Menachem Daum's quest to fight his sons' growing religious intolerance. The film follows Daum and his family from New York to Jerusalem to Poland, where Daum introduces his sons to the Catholic family that risked their lives to save his father-in-law during the Holocaust. Hiding and Seeking bears powerful witness to the difficulty and increasing necessity of compassion beyond the borders of one's own religious community.

Price: $29.95

A Jihad for Love

A film by Parvez Sharma produced by Sandi DuBowski

The plight of lesbian and gay Muslims worldwide is explored in this new feature-length documentary that opens up a universe of pain and important spiritual expression to the world at large. With unprecedented access and depth, A Jihad for Love brings to light the hidden lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Muslims and goes where the silence has been loudest, to countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt and Bangladesh, as well as to Turkey, France, India, South Africa, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Price: $24.95

Leap of Faith

A film by Steve Friedman and Tony Benjamin

Leap of Faith follows the lives of six individuals of different backgrounds who are pursuing parallel paths in their search for personal meaning. The feature-length documentary is the first cinema verité look at the journey of conversion from gentile to Orthodox Jew. In Leap of Faith, individuals forsake the religion of their parents, abandon childhood traditions and enter into a wholly new and radically different system of belief and practice of worship.

New Muslim Cool

A film by Jennifer Maytorena Taylor

Puerto Rican American rapper Hamza Perez ended his life as a drug dealer 12 years ago, and started down a new path as a young Muslim. Now he's moved to Pittsburgh's tough North Side to start a new religious community, rebuild his shattered family, and take his message of faith to other young people through his uncompromising music as part of hip-hop group. But when the FBI raids his mosque, Hamza must confront the realities of the post-9/11 world, and challenge himself.

Price: $20.00

Outside the Box

A film by Lacey Schwartz, Becca Bender and Phil Bertelson

Outside the Box explores the universal theme of dual identity, and the story is rooted in Lacey Schwartz's Jewish family experience. The narrative follows her upbringing in a white, Jewish family and her discovery, at the age of 18, that her biological father is African-American. Lacey is a Harvard-educated lawyer who continued to believe throughout her childhood that her "Jewishness" accounted for her "otherness," until she attended college at Georgetown and decided to ask for the truth from her family.

Praying with Lior

A film by Ilana Trachtman

Praying with Lior is a documentary by veteran filmmaker Ilana Trachtman that challenges our beliefs about who and how one speaks to God. The film follows Lior Liebling, a thirteen-year-old Philadelphia boy with Down Syndrome nicknamed "the little rebbe," for the four months that lead up to his Bar Mitzvah. The filmmaker brings to life a stirring story of how a community grapples with the particular gifts and handicaps of a special needs child, and how that child views meaning from his particular social location, Praying with Lior is as inspiring as it is educational.
Price: $24.95

Project Kashmir

A film by Geeta Patel and Senain Kheshgi

Two Americans, a Hindu and a Muslim, sneak into the war zone of Kashmir to uncover the truth of what is happening in what is considered to be one of the most dangerous places on earth. Project Kashmir follows these two friends as they begin to grapple with their personal identities both in religious and political terms.

Questioning Faith

A film by Macky Alston

At stake here is not only whether seminary student Macky Alston can maintain his faith after the untimely death of a close friend and fellow seminary student, but also how human beings navigate their way through the darkest hours of seemingly senseless loss. Alston's search takes the form of a feature documentary, for Macky Alston is also an award-winning filmmaker. This seminarian, while completing a graduate degree in theology and working as a hospital chaplain, tackles the big questions. Why do some find religion and others lose it? How can anyone believe in a loving and powerful God in the face of so much suffering?

Price: $26.95

A Son's Sacrifice

A film by Yoni Brook, Musa Syeed and Marco Williams

Imran, a young American Muslim, struggles to take over his father's neighborhood slaughterhouse in New York City. The son of an immigrant, Imran must confront his mixed heritage and gain acceptance from his father's conservative community. On one of Islam's holiest days, Imran must lead a sacrifice that will define him as a Muslim, as an American and as a son.

Price: $24.99

Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai

A film by Alan Dater and Lisa Merton

Taking Root pays homage to Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. Maathai is a spiritual leader and passionate advocate for women's rights, democracy and the environment in Kenya. Imprisoned and beaten repeatedly for her courageous stands on these issues, Wangari Maathai has brought hope and economic gain to thousands of Kenyans. Emmy-award winner Alan Dater and his wife, artist and educator Lisa Merton, will bring to light formative events in Wangari's life in Kenya and trace the turbulent history of the Green Belt Movement founded by Maathai, which became the vehicle for Kenya's women's rights and the pro-democracy movement.

Price: $29.95
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Top New Films

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