City of Children

This short film examines the origins of several superstitions including crossing your fingers, knocking on wood, rabbit's feet, and breaking champagne bottles to christen ships, plus the role of superstitions in the Flying Dutchman tale.

A look at how the weather bureau tries to warn farmers and businessmen about approaching large storms. Although some precautions can be taken to lessen their impact, storms have to run their course, and there is really not much we can do about them.

Eighteen months in the life of 89 years old Viola Dees as she tries of persuade Los Angeles authorities that she can care for her grandson, 9-year-old Walter.

This short film focuses on the mysterious and legendary Seri Indians who live in a utopian colony off the west coast of Mexico.

This dramatized short film describes the historical mystery of France's "man in the iron mask". King Louis XIV imprisoned a man who was never identified, but who was forced to wear an iron mask for the length of his captivity, which ended only in his death. Several candidates for the identity of the man are investigated.

In Uganda, AIDS-infected mothers have begun writing what they call Memory Books for their children. Aware of the illness, it is a way for the family to come to terms with the inevitable death that it faces. Hopelessness and desperation are confronted through the collaborative effort of remembering and recording, a process that inspires unexpected strength and even solace in the face of death.

This short shows how two objects led to important discoveries. Children playing with a seesaw inspire French physician Rene Laennec to invent the stethoscope, and a pair of shoes made of caoutchouc lead Charles Goodyear to discover the process for vulcanizing rubber.

In this powerful tale about the rise of Korea’s global adoption program, four adult adoptees return to their country of birth and reconnect with their roots, mapping the geographies of kinship that bind them to a homeland they never knew.

In China more people are on death row than the rest of the world combined. The children of the convicts are often left alone, stigmatized and living in the streets. Grandma Zhang, as the kids call her, is a former prison guard who has founded an orphanage in Nanzhao.

The life and times of the mexican pianist Julieta García Rello, as told by her granddaughter.

A talented group of orphaned children in Swaziland create a fictional heroine and send her on a dangerous quest.