Visit the program websiteCheck local listings Premiering Monday, December 23, 2013 on Independent Lens. Check your local listings. Jiro Dreams of Sushi is the story of 85 year-old Jiro Ono, considered by many to be the world’s greatest sushi chef. Despite its humble appearances, it is the first restaurant of its kind to be awarded a prestigious 3 star Michelin review, and sushi lovers from around the globe make repeated pilgrimage, calling months in advance and shelling out top dollar for a coveted seat at Jiro’s sushi bar. For most of his life, Jiro has been mastering the art of making sushi, but even at his age he sees himself still striving for perfection, working from sunrise to beyond sunset to taste every piece of fish, meticulously training his employees, and carefully molding and finessing the impeccable presentation of each sushi creation. At the heart of this story is Jiro’s relationship with his eldest son Yoshikazu, the worthy heir to Jiro’s legacy, who is unable to live up to his full potential in his father’s shadow.

The feature film debut of director David Gelb, Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a thoughtful and elegant meditation on work, family, and the art of perfection, chronicling Jiro’s life as both an unparalleled success in the culinary world, and a loving yet complicated father. Meet Four California Sushi Masters Originally from New York City, David Gelb currently works and lives in Los Angeles. sushi conveyor belt long beachAfter graduating from USC's film production program, David worked on various music videos, short films, and documentaries. food delivery 24h londonMost notably, he directed A Vision of Blindness, an extensive behind the scenes look at Fernando Meirelles's film Blindness, which enjoyed a run on the Sundance Channel. sushi new york anthony bourdain

David has been a sushi aficionado since his childhood. Jiro Dreams of Sushi is his first full-length feature film. Explore the elements in Jiro's world to learn more about sushi and the art of the shokunin, the Japanese master sushi chef. From the different types of tuna to the importance of perfect rice, let Jiro be your guide in this interactive, illustrated feature.how to cook sushi rice nigella How sushi-savvy are you? what to order at sushi of gariDo you know your sashimi from your nori? sushi grade tuna steakTest your knowledge of the art of the shokunin in this challenging quiz inspired by documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi.how to eat sushi imgur

Chef Jiro's Secrets of Success Challenges with Shrimp and OctopusSteve Jobs: The Lost Interview Starring Steve Jobs - Available on DVD "A remarkable rediscovery - a candid look at the tech world's most successful leader." In this candid, in-depth interview with the late visionary filmed in 1995, Steve Jobs discusses at length his early days, career battles, and vision for the future. Small portions of the piece were used for a television series at the time, but the vast majority was shelved and for 17 years thought to be lost. Resurfacing, it is being presented in its entirety, providing a fascinating look at Jobs at a particularly interesting moment in his career, two years before he would go on to retake control of Apple. Cast:Steve Jobs Robert X. Cringely Writer & Presenter:Robert X. Cringely Produced by:Paul SenStephen SegallerJohn Gau Like Us For Exclusive Screenings, Contests and ContentSometimes you take a look at your Netflix queue and think there's nothing decent on the service.

That's not entirely true! Netflix has certainly lost its library of mainstream Hollywood films over the past few years. But for the designer in search of inspiration—or anyone with a love of visual culture—Netflix is still loaded with some superb films and documentaries. Here are 22 to get you started. Call it two thirds of director Gary Hustwit's Design Trilogy. Objectified fetishizes the obsession behind industrial design. And Urbanized tours the world of urban planning. (Helvetica, arguably his most renowned film, is currently not available on Netflix Instant). Hustwit has a particular talent for digging into the granular thought processes of modern day designers without ever dumbing down their soundbites. [Watch here and here] Vignelli Associates is considered one of the greatest cross-disciplinary design firms in history—best known for producing the iconic, once-polarizing Vignelli NYC Subway Map. Lella and Massimo Vignelli were the husband and wife team behind it.

Design Is One profiles their creative relationship, which spanned decades, before Vignelli's death in 2014. We all know the Gucci brand, but this film takes us right inside Italy’s famed fashion label, following ex-creative director Frida Giannini for 18 months. The film will come to Netflix February 1, even though Giannini was just canned. If you boiled down every western you’ve ever seen into one archetype of gunslinging—then you put that story into the hands of one of the greatest cinematographers in history (Tonino Delli Colli, The Good, The Bad, The Ugly and Life Is Beautiful)—you’d get Once Upon a Time In The West, a rare gem in Netflix’s ever-dwindling options for truly excellent streamable films. Some documentaries feature a lot of talking heads. Others, a tightly scripted story. Leviathan has no desire for narration. It puts you inside the bowels of a commercial fishing boat, drowning the camera in a dramatic abyss where Moby Dick meets Fight Club, with blood, chains, and horrific storms.

The decidedly non-linear structure and use of portable cameras attached to people, animals, and objects offer up visual perspectives that few other documentaries have been able to achieve. What’s it like to make a hit video game with a staff of one or two people, taking meetings with Microsoft execs before going back to 12 hours of pixel painting? This very watchable documentary profiles two teams of designers while they created Super Meat Boy and Fez, a couple of the biggest critical and financial indie hits of the past decade, in a high-stakes race to make both deadlines and ends meet. "It’s one snap, two snaps, or he ignores you, which is death." That’s Vogue editor Anna Wintour describing the on-the-street fashion photographer Bill Cunningham, who has been contributing to the New York Times Style section for decades. This documentary explores his work, and life, with some irresistible soundbites from celebrities he has photographed. Ushio Shinohara is a neo-Dada artist who paints by punching his pigments.

Noriko is his wife. This documentary—which won Zachary Heinzerling the 2013 Sundance Film Festival award for best director— explores the quirks and sacrifices of their 40-year marriage. Not the easiest documentary to watch, Detropia is a portrait of Detroit's decay, seen through the eyes of three of its residents and told without narration. Ai Weiwei is China’s most prominent artist-activist, known for openly challenging the Chinese government (and even being imprisoned for it). The documentary takes you inside his studio, work, and philosophies. Kung fu is the most beautiful of the martial arts, and The Grandmaster, by acclaimed Hong Kong action auteur Wong Kar-wai, captures it with a poetically noir brutality—even if critics have panned the story itself. If you haven’t heard about this "documentary" about graffiti artist Banksy, we’d rather not spill the beans by getting too much into it. Come for the street art. Stay (or leave) for the conspiracy theories.

The state of healthcare is a complicated mess, especially for the uninsured. The Waiting Room takes you behind the doors of an ER in Oakland, California, following the patients and doctors who attempt to balance their resources and mitigate tragedies within the bureaucratic structure that could greatly benefit from an industry-wide redesign. Yes it was filmed in 1927. Yes that means it’s silent. But Metropolis is still an amazing piece of architectural sci-fi, set in a dystopian future in which just about everything has gone to crap except for the unbelievable set budgets. It’s hard to believe that the film was made before the advent of computer-generated imagery. Director Fritz Lang relied on tricks like mirrors and miniatures to pull off the film's special effects. If you can’t take the pace of the movie’s narrative, we won’t judge. Just load it up in the background for a bit of visual splendor. Chances are, you have seen this documentary, or been told by everyone you know to see it.

It’s a portrait that honors, not just of one of the greatest sushi chefs alive, but the whole idea of mastering a craft itself. Is there a side effect to urbanism beyond crime or air quality? What if the shining lights of our cities—so-called "light pollution"—were true danger unto itself? The City Dark argues that it is, and that civilization, alongside most terrestrial life on our planet, has relied on the night sky full of stars for billions of years—a night sky that we have since washed out in manmade light. What does psychosis look like? Danish director Lars von Trier explores the inner mind of a young bride in the film Melancholia, through cinematography of a galactic scope. Lightning shoots from fingertips, and worlds literally collide. The end of the world has never felt so dramatic. They’ve never been better explored or more gorgeously shot than in Pina, a profile of Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal dance company filmed shortly before she died. Back to the Future.