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The Legend of Cool Disco Dan

Jan 1, 2012

1h 26m

★ 8.0

Overview

"The Legend of Cool 'Disco' Dan" is the story of black Washington DC told from the perspective of Cool "Disco" Dan starting with his birth during the civil rights era and follows his life parallel with the rise of Go-Go music through the 1980s (which is the unheard but yet dominant urban music of DC) and also local DC politics with Marion Barry's rise and fall. Despite ending up homeless Cool "Disco" Dan used graffiti to escape the social problems D.C. had in the 1980s when things turned violent and became known as the Murder Capital of the United States. Cool "Disco" Dan ends up as a cult character of DC and his name becomes a symbol of survival during DC's most trying years.

Genres

Documentary

The Legend of Cool Disco Dan Trailers

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Cast

Himself

Cool 'Disco' Dan

Narrator

Henry Rollins

Himself

Marion Barry

Himself

Chuck Brown

Himself

Gregory 'Sugar Bear' Elliott

Himself

Big Tony Fisher

Himself

Paul Hendrickson

Himself

Andre 'Whiteboy' Johnson

Himself

Seth Hurwitz

Himself

DC Scorpio

Himself

Frank Ski

Herself

Alona Wartofsky

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8.0

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5.5

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9.0

Margaret Kilgallen: Heroines

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"I especially hope to inspire young women, because I often feel like so much emphasis is put on how beautiful you are, and how thin you are, and not a lot of emphasis is put on what you can do and how smart you are. I'd like to change the emphasis of what's important when looking at a woman." Filmed in San Francisco in 2000, Margaret Kilgallen (1967-2001) discusses the female figures she incorporated into many of her paintings and graffiti tags. Loosely based on women she discovered while listening to folk records, watching buck dance videos, or reading about the history of swimming, Kilgallen painted her heroines to inspire others and to change how society looks at women. Three of Kilgallen's heroines—Matokie Slaughter, Algia Mae Hinton, and Fanny Durack—are shown and heard through archival recordings. Kilgallen is shown tagging train cars with her husband, artist Barry McGee, in a Bay Area rail yard and painting in her studio at UC Berkeley (source: Art21).

10.0

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10.0

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7.3

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6.5

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0.0

Sinfonías de ciudad nº 3. Amor.

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6.0

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7.5

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Documentary written and presented by scientist Richard Dawkins, in which he seeks to expose "those areas of belief that exist without scientific proof, yet manage to hold the nation under their spell", including mediumship, psychokinesis, acupuncture, and other forms of alternative medicine.

9.0

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0.0

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A mother and her homeless son’s last line of communication–cement walls, electrical cabinets and dusty windows.

6.8

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7.5

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0.0

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Cocaine has always gotten a bad rap, and for a reason. It is a drug used by the rich and the poor legally and illegally, Mexican cartels fought over it with Colombia once associated with the brutal cocaine wars, and a source of tension between the American and Mexican borders on the people who are illicitly bringing in cocaine from one side of the border to another and will do anything to do it. So it can be surprising at times to the viewer throughout the course of the documentary special, that it was never always like this.

0.0

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6.9

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7.0

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