Movies: Jon Else

Oakland, California. Young Afro-American Oscar Grant crosses paths with family members, friends, enemies and strangers before facing his fate on the platform at Fruitvale Station, in the early morning hours of New Year's Day 2009....

Explore how one man's relentless drive and invention of the atomic bomb changed the nature of war forever, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and unleashed mass hysteria....

Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world....

Documentary on water usage, money, politics, the transformation of nature, and the growth of the American west, shown on PBS as a four-part miniseries....

Charley Tate is an old windbag, often a braggart, but somehow always lovable. Married over fifty years to his ever-patient wife Lucy, the two of them are on their Golden Honeymoon in Florida. Everything goes perfectly... until Lucy meets her former f...

An epic meditation on psychoanalysis, the Baader-Meinhof, feminism, and pre-revolutionary Russia....

Directorial debut of Rick King...

Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids? is a 1977 documentary film about Dorothy and Bob DeBolt, an American couple who adopted 14 children [12 at the start of filming], some of whom are severely disabled war orphans -- in addition...

This essential, Academy Award–nominated documentary offers an urgent warning from history about the dangers of nuclear warfare via the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the enigmatic physicist and all-around Renaissance man who led the Manhattan Projec...

“Shellmound” is the story of how one location was transformed from a sacred center of pre-historic cultures to a commercial mecca for modern people. What began as a Native American burial ground three thousand years ago, was transformed first into an...

Tells the story of the American civil rights movement through its powerful music - the freedom songs protesters sang on picket lines, in mass meetings, and in jail cells as they fought for justice and equality. Features new performances of the freedo...

Just before the advent of the Great Depression, Henry Ford controlled the most important company in the most important industry in the booming American economy. His offer of high wages in exchange for hard work attracted workers to Detroit, but it be...

An update on the DeBolt family, originally featured in Who Are the DeBolts? and Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids? (1977)....

An overview on the actions, hunt and capture of Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber....

The "Missing Heart Murders" are plaguing San Francisco - dead bodies that turn up with their hears surgically removed! So a weak-stomached homicide cop looks into the possibilities of a black market for human organs, while across town a man must make...

With its four operas, seventeen-hour running time and months of rehearsal, Wagner's "Ring Cycle" is a daunting undertaking for any opera company. Jon Else goes backstage to show this rare event entirely from the point of view of union stagehands at t...

Traveling from town to town during the summer of 1919, young Andy (Ron Howard) has left his Ohio home in search of adventure and romance as a horse trainer on the country fair racing circuit. Ashamed of his occupation, Andy leads Lucy to believe he's...

Follows the globe-trotting journey of President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, the lowest-lying country in the world, who, after bringing democracy to his country, takes up the fight to keep it from disappearing under the sea....

California history unfolds along with the making of an opera in Jon Else‘s entrancing documentary. Returning to the work of composer John Adams and librettist/director Peter Sellars, the subjects of his film Wonders Are Many, Else peeks behind the c...

A documentary about Yosemite National Park....