Milwaukee filmmaker Chris James Thompson's documentary Jeff explores the unsettling effect that Jeffrey Dahmer had on those around him. The medical examiner and a detective involved in the case, as well as one of Dahmer's neighbors...

For most people, gender identity is not a question. We have the parts that fit. But what does it mean to have a penis or a vagina? Ashley Altadonna, a Milwaukee transsexual filmmaker, has been exploring gender identity through films like Whatever Suits You, which has screened at LGBT film festivals such as San...

Religion and nature have permeated each other since the dawn of humanity. And yet as environmental problems mounted during the Industrial Age, many religious leaders failed to perceive the obligation in their beliefs to care for the earth. Especially within those strains of Western Christianity where God was radically separated from man and the world, religious leaders were even hostile to envir...

Along with Philip Glass, John Adams is the most popular composer to emerge from the minimalism of the 1960s and �70s. Adams has often turned to opera, where he mined recent events such as Nixon�s visit to China and Palestinian hijackers. In 2005 he debuted his depiction of the birth of the atomic age, Doctor Atom, at the San Francisco Opera. The documentary Wonders Are Many (out now on DV...

Released late last year, Defiance was the fictionalized movie version of the Bielskis, three Jewish brothers who organized resistance against the Nazis after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The History Channel documentary �The Bielski Brothers: Jerusalem in the Woods� tells the true story. It�s out now on DVD. Remarkably the gap between fact and fiction is narrow, a matte...

In American history black was often synonymous with poverty. But there have been always been exceptional individuals and a documentary for CNBC shows that more African Americans are getting rich, spurred in some cases by black wealth fostering more black wealth. In �Newbos: The Rise of America�s New Black Overclass,� Wall Street Journal reporter Lee Hawkins explores the role and growth of wealth...

Most of the men who established the United States were intelligent and well read, hard working and hard drinking, according to the History Channel mini-series �Founding Fathers.� The documentary occupies two discs of a mammoth 14-DVD set, �The Founding of America,� comprised of 13 documentaries and historical recreations on the formation of the republic produced for the History Channel. �...

As a nation America is five billion pounds overweight by one estimate. Aside from aesthetic issues concerning the proliferation of unsightly waistlines, obesity is on its way to becoming the top health issue in the U.S., a major cause of heart and kidney disease and spiraling rates of diabetes and high blood pressure. The documentary Killer at Large includes some graphic� make that disgus...

With his wild halo of hair and sad penetrating eyes, Albert Einstein became an instantly recognizable star in the 1920s. His face shone as brightly as anyone in Hollywood and unlike most movie stars, his light hasn�t faded. When he visited America for the first time, a crowd of 15,000 greeted him on the Manhattan pier. After laboring for years in obscurity, Einstein�s fame resulted from intense ...

Last summer a Biography Channel documentary simply titled �Barack Obama� was released on DVD. Just in time for Inauguration Day, a new edition has been issued, prefaced by jubilant scenes in Chicago from Nov. 4 and additional interviews and footage putting Election Day in perspective. Last summer all bets were off. Now we know he made it. Clocking in at under an hour, �Barack Obama� large...