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Diamonds and Pearls is a documentary film which tells the story of Eminem’s extraordinary life and incredible musical career, via the use of the rarest footage, interviews with his closest friends, associates and loved ones and contributions from the finest music writers and journalists around.

This documentary also features extensive news reports, location shoots, rare photographs and numerous other features to make for the finest film about Eminem so far.

Follow the amazing career of Grammy- and Oscar-winning superstar Eminem – whose hit records “The Slim Shady LP,” “The Marshall Mathers LP” and “The Eminem Show” are hip-hop touchstones – from a rough childhood to worldwide acclaim.

Interviews with friends, colleagues, writers, journalists and others combine with news footage, backstage clips and vintage photographs to create an indelible portrait of the rap icon.

This Oscar®-winning short documentary is an impressionistic record of a flamenco dance class given to senior students of the National Ballet School of Canada by two great teachers from Spain, Susana and Antonio Robledo.

For a few weeks each year, in the depths of winter, senior students at the National Ballet School of Canada are treated to a style of dance that is unlike any other – flamenco. Susana – dancer, teacher and choreographer – comes from Spain with her husband, Antonio Robledo, to introduce the students to the rhythms of another culture; the secrets of an ancient art that speaks of the passion of itinerant gypsies, the songs of Spanish Jews, the ways of the Moors.

Beautifully illuminated, with a dynamic visual style that emulates the staccato rhythms of the dance, Flamenco at 5:15 is a thrilling introduction to the most visceral art form. It is a wonderful opportunity for dancers and non-dancers alike to learn what is at the heart of the passionate discipline that is, in Susana’s words, “earth and sky and always the contradiction.”

Yet it’s mesmerizing once you get into it. What Susana and Antonio do is magical. These types of teachers go beyond just teaching dance moves – they passionately teach you about life and a bit of what it has to offer. Why shouldn’t learning be fun?

With archive film clips and interviews, this brief look at a frequently overlooked historical period of filmmaking acts as an introduction rather than a complete record. Features interviews with some of the genre’s biggest stars, like Fred Williamson, Pam Grier, and Richard Roundtree.

Director Melvin Van Peebles discusses the historical importance of his landmark film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. For a contemporary perspective, the excitable Quentin Tarantino offers his spirited commentary and author-critic bell hooks provides some scholarly social analysis.

The music of Blaxploitation films is rightfully discussed, focusing on Curtis Mayfield’s Super Fly and Isaac Hayes’ Shaft. Also features interviews with writer-director Larry Cohen and film historian Armond White. BaadAsssss Cinema was originally shown on the Independent Film Channel in August 2002 as part of a week-long Blaxploitation film festival.

Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey is a 2005 documentary directed by Sam Dunn with Scot McFadyen and Jessica Wise. The film follows 31-year-old Sam Dunn, a Canadian anthropologist, who has been a heavy metal fan since the age of 12.

He sets out across the world to uncover the various opinions on heavy metal music, including its origins, culture, controversy, and reasons it is loved by so many people. The film made its debut at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival, and was released as a two-disc special edition DVD in the US on September 19, 2006.

The film discusses the traits and originators of some of metal’s many subgenres, including the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, power metal, Nu metal, glam metal, thrash metal, black metal, and death metal. Dunn uses a family-tree-type flowchart to document some of the most popular metal subgenres.

The film also explores various aspects of heavy metal culture. Notable segments include Dunn taking a trip to the Wacken Open Air festival, an interview with Dee Snider providing an analysis of the PMRC attack on heavy metal music, and an interview with several Norwegian black metal bands, many of whom are Satanists.

The superb documentary War/Dance reveals the redemptive power of music, even in the most horrific places. Focusing on three children in their early teens in war-torn Uganda–stoic Nancy, driven Dominic, and soft-spoken Rose–War/Dance tracks the efforts of the school of a refugee camp called Patongo to compete in Uganda’s countrywide music competition.

The contrasts are staggering; in interviews, the children describe their parents being killed by rebel soldiers, then footage of rehearsal shows them joyfully singing and dancing with their classmates.

Some of the sequences are harrowing (a scene where Nancy grieves for her murdered father is painful to watch), but without them, we wouldn’t understand how hard-won are the feelings of pride and accomplishment as their school performs for the competition’s judges.

The built-in structure of the competition gives this documentary a clear and engrossing storyline, much like Spellbound or Mad Hot Ballroom, but the heartbreaking circumstances and the emotional openness of the three teenagers makes War/Dance even more compelling.

As the American phenomenon of the children’s beauty pageant hits the UK, this documentary uncovers a surreal new world where nine-year-olds get fake tans and seven-year-olds wear contact lenses.

With the grand final of the first ever Mini Miss UK beauty contest taking place at a leisure centre in Milton Keynes, it soon becomes clear that tantrums and tiaras may prevail over perfect poses and pouts. The mastermind behind the pageant is a middle-aged ex-beauty queen, who plans the entire event from her stairwell in Colchester.

The film follows three girls and their mothers in the lead up to the big event, and as they prepare to dazzle the judges the real reasons why they are all desperate to be crowned Mini Miss UK become apparent.

From the evangelical Christians who are convinced that God will help them win the pageant to the disadvantaged kid for whom the contest holds the key to a better life, the film portrays an eccentric, and at times disturbing, snapshot of modern Britain.

On August 7th 1974, a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire illegally rigged between New York’s twin towers, then the worlds tallest buildings. After nearly an hour dancing on the wire, he was arrested, taken for psychological evaluation, and brought to jail before he was finally released.

Following six and a half years of dreaming of the towers, Petit spent eight months in New York City planning the execution of the coup. Aided by a team of friends and accomplices, Petit was faced with numerous extraordinary challenges: he had to find a way to bypass the WTCs security; smuggle the heavy steel cable and rigging equipment into the towers; pass the wire between the two rooftops; anchor the wire and tension it to withstand the winds and the swaying of the buildings.

The rigging was done by night in complete secrecy. At 7:15 AM, Philippe took his first step on the high wire 1,350 feet above the sidewalks of Manhattan James Marshs documentary brings Petits extraordinary adventure to life through the testimony of Philippe himself, and some of the co-conspirators who helped him create the unique and magnificent spectacle that became known as the artistic crime of the century.

It’s not the expected thing for a documentary on Turkish music to open with a quote from Confucius, but that is not the only fascinating surprise that “Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul” has to offer. The latest film by Fatih Akin, who directed the exceptional “Head-On,” turns out to be a Bosporus-based Buena Vista Social Club with cultural commentary thrown into the mix. When Confucius said that to understand a people’s culture you have to understand its music, he might have had a film like this in mind.

Crossing the Bridge does more than offer a wide variety of entertaining and intoxicating Turkish music. It also uses music to paint a portrait of a vibrant, cosmopolitan city and provide a window into a rich and varied national culture. Born in Hamburg to Turkish parents, Akin has taken Istanbul to his heart like a native. The title of his film refers to the fact that the city, placed at the point where Asia and Europe meet, has always been as open to the East as it is to the West.

It is that inevitable cross-pollinization that characterizes the music that Crossing the Bridge presents. “Your ears are open to everything, even when you don’t want them to be,” is how one local DJ puts it in the film. Based on the sounds the film exposes us to, the city’s musicians have achieved a remarkable synthesis, creating music that has both kept it Turkish and kept it real.

Scratch is a feature-length film/ DVD that explores the world of the hip-hop DJ. From the birth of hip-hop, when pioneering DJ’s began extending breaks on their party records (which helped inspire break dancing and rap), to the invention of scratching and “beat-juggling” vinyl, to its recent explosion as a musical movement called “turntablism”, it’s a story of unknown underdogs and serious virtuosos who are radically changing the way we hear, play and create music.

The film features some of the world’s best DJ’s, whether they’re famous for solo scratching, competing in international DJ battles, playing for rap artists, or just rocking parties with the most insane records ever dug up.

Check out dynamic performances and interviews with DJ’s Q-bert, Mix Master Mike (of the Beastie Boys) Rob Swift and the X-ecutioners, Cut Chemist & NuMark (of Jurassic 5), DJ Craze, The Bullet Proof Space Travelers, Babu (of Dilated Peoples), DJ Krush, DJ Premier (Gang Starr), and others, along with “old-school” innovators like Afrika Bambaataa and GrandWizard Theodore (who is widely acknowledged as having invented the idea of scratching vinyl in the first place).

Ever since MTV arrived in our living rooms, there has been an inordinate amount of emphasis on beauty and youth and appearance – none of which enters our consciousness through our ears. Never have so few companies controlled so much of the music played on the radio and for sale at retail stores. At the same time, there are more bands and more ways to discover their music than ever. Music seems to have split in two – the homogeneous corporate product that is spooned to consumers and the diverse independent music that finds devoted fans online and at clubs across the country.

Before the Music Dies tells the story of American music at this precarious moment. Filmmakers Andrew Shapter and Joel Rasmussen traveled the country, hoping to understand why mainstream music seems so packaged and repetitive, and whether corporations really had the power to silence musical innovation. The answers they found on this journey–ultimately, the promise that the future holds–are what makes Before the Music Dies both riveting and exhilarating.

At the heart of Before the Music Dies are interviews with musicians, industry insiders, music critics, and fans that reveal how music has reached this moment of truth. Featured performances from a truly diverse group of artists, ranging from The Dave Matthews Band and Erykah Badu to Seattle street performers and Mississippi gospel singers show us that great music is always out there… as long as you know where to look. Before the Music Dies will renew your passion for great music, and inspire you to play an active part in its future.