Shane Smith
VICE founder Shane Smith hosts a series of chats with experts, thought leaders and political figures.
An irreverent comedy about the misadventures of Moondog, a rebellious stoner and lovable rogue who lives large.
Minsk, Belarus, 1996. Velya, an aspiring DJ, wants to move to Chicago to make her dreams come true, but bureaucracy, a phone line and the human condition will put obstacles in her way that will be difficult to avoid.
Offbeat documentarian Chris Smith provides a behind-the-scenes look at how Jim Carrey adopted the persona of idiosyncratic comedian Andy Kaufman on the set of Man on the Moon.
The global economy is in crisis. Our biosphere's inability to absorb human activity, combined with the exhaustion of natural resources, declining productivity, slow growth, rising unemployment, and steep inequality, forces us to rethink our economic models. Where do we go from here? In this compelling feature-length documentary, social and economic theorist Jeremy Rifkin lays out a road map to usher in a new era of sustainable development. A Third Industrial Revolution will unfold when three technologies emerge and converge: new communication, new sources of energy, and new modes of mobility. But, in the context of climate change, it needs to happen fast. Change of this magnitude requires political will and a profound ideological shift.
At the Covenant House, located on the outskirts of the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana, the doors never close, and there is always room for one more. On any given day, a constant stream of young people carrying everything they own in plastic garbage bags fills the courtyard. The prospective residents are just teenagers, but have already been labeled drug addicts, schizophrenics, criminals and outcasts. As one staff member puts it, “the most damaged population of youth that exists in society today”. Filming over the course of a full year, brothers Brent and Craig Renaud tell the raw and emotional stories of the incredible kids who seek shelter at the Covenant House, and the staff struggling to work miracles everyday on their behalf.
In a desert wasteland in Texas, a muscled cannibal breaks one important rule: don’t play with your food.
Legendary music photographer Mick Rock is best known for his iconic photographs of David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Queen, and countless others. In a documentary as rock-n-roll as its subject, Mick Rock guides us through his psychedelic, shambolic first-hand experiences as the visual record-keeper of these myths and legends.
President Obama speaks to 'VICE' about the post-election political climate and the fierce partisan fighting that dominated his Presidency.
Meet Jon Gallagher, a LARPer with Asperger's syndrome, and see how LARPing helps him make friends, learn social skills, get a job, and in many ways, saves his life.
Along with the trip to an Oklahoma federal prison with Obama, Fixing the System takes an in-depth look at all the interlocking pieces of the complicated criminal justice system, from prisoners and their families to the judiciary and community reformers.
Alex Honnold is the most accomplished free climber in the world. Angola is a southwest African country that recently emerged from 27 years of bloody civil war. What brings together these strange bedfellows you ask? Some of the most epic unclimbed rocks in the world, and a community needing help to diffuse the hidden land mines leftover from the conflict. (Plus a shadowy local hotel magnate, but we'll get into that later). This is Alex Honnold in Angola, for one of the most unique adventures of his storied climbing career this far.
A seven-part series examining the people and the culture that helped foster bands like Down, Eyehategod, Crowbar, Acid Bath, Goatwhore and many others. The documentary features in-depth interviews discussing the bands, catastrophe, drugs, suicide, murder, and records that helped shape the New Orleans sound known the world over.
In Somalia, principled, young husband and father Abdi turns to piracy to support his family. While his wife and child wait for him in Yemen, an outdated and fragile satellite phone is his only connection to all he truly values. Abdi and his fellow pirates hit the high seas and capture a French oil tanker, demanding a hefty ransom. During the long, tedious wait for the cash to arrive, Abdi forges a tentative friendship with one of the hostages. When some of the pirates resort to violence, Abdi must make dramatic choices to determine his course.
In February, Just Jam's event at The Barbican was cancelled at the last minute. It was an event that seemed to be yet another victim of the London authorities now notorious risk assessment procedure, Form 696.
Called “the most famous cat on the Internet,” the wide-eyed perma-kitten Lil Bub is the adorable embodiment of the Web’s fascination with all things cats. Join Lil Bub and her owner on wild cross-country romp as they meet the Internet’s most famous cat-lebrities. Chock full of adorable kitties, hilarious videos and the dedicated cat enthusiasts who love them, Lil Bub & Friendz is a fun and hip peek behind the memes we know and love. Includes Mike "The Dude" Bridavsky, Ben Lashes, Grumpy Cat, Nyan Cat, Keyboard Cat.
With NBA great Dennis Rodman and a trio of Harlem Globetrotters in tow, VICE traveled to the capital of Pyongyang for a tour of the city, a basketball clinic, and an exhibition game.
Founder of VICE Shane Smith spends an eternity on a train and hops out at the end of the line in Siberia to investigate logging camps that use North Korean slave labor.
In the Issyk-Kul region of Kyrgyzstan, tradition is king. Polo's still played with a freshly killed goat and the men still marry their women the old-fashioned way: by abducting them off the street and forcing them to be their wife. Bride kidnapping is a supposedly ancient custom that's made a major comeback since the fall of Communism and now accounts for nearly half of all marriages in some parts.
Unprecedented access to the New York Times newsroom yields a complex view of the transformation of a media landscape fraught with both peril and opportunity.
Back in June, we invited South African rave-rap crew Die Antwoord to play their first show in New York City. They are one of our favorite bands and their performance that day was one of the most hectic, intense and amazing shows we had seen in a long time. While we were hanging out with them here, Ninja and Yo-Landi kept talking about a little monster called Tokoloshe, the most feared of all African demons. Ninja told us about how when he was growing up, his nanny would use a stack of bricks to raise her bed up, just to keep the Tokoloshe away at night. It turns out this is a fairly common practice among women in South Africa since this hairy, pot-bellied dwarf, unlike your typical Western boogiemonsters, is believed to have a penis the size of a horse’s and a penchant for sneaking into people’s bedrooms and raping them.
Deep in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia, where every man owns a gun and a moonshine still, abides living legend Jesco White, "the dancing outlaw". As a boy Jesco was in and out of reform school and the insane asylum. To keep him out of trouble, his daddy D-Ray taught him the art of mountain dancing, a frenzied version of tap dancing to wild country banjo music. After his father's death, crazy Jesco dons his father's tap shoes and takes his show on the road.
Hamilton Morris heads to the heart of the Brazilian Amazon to investigate a traditional drug extracted from the screen secretions of a jungle frog.
Vice travels to West Africa to rummage through the messy remains of a country ravaged by 14 years of civil war. Despite the United Nation’s eventual intervention, most of Liberia’s young people continue to live in abject poverty, surrounded by filth, drug addiction, and teenage prostitution. The former child soldiers who were forced into war have been left to fend for themselves, the murderous warlords who once led them in cannibalistic rampages have taken up as so-called community leaders, and new militias are lying in wait for the opportunity to reclaim their country from a government they rightly mistrust. America’s one and only foray into African colonialism is keeping a very uneasy peace indeed.
Getting into North Korea was one of the hardest and weirdest processes VBS has ever dealt with. They finally said, “OK, OK, you can come. But only as tourists.” At the airport, the North Korean consulate brought us to a restaurant and these women came out and started singing North Korean nationalist songs. We were thinking, “Look, we were just on a plane for 20 hours. Can we just go to bed?” but this guy with our group who was from the LA Times told us, “Everyone in here besides us is secret police. If you don’t act excited then you’re not going to get your visa. So we got drunk and jumped up onstage and sang songs with the girls. The next day we got our visas. A lot of people we had gone with didn’t get theirs. That was our first hint at just what a freaky, freaky trip we were embarking on…
The story of Iraq's only heavy metal band and their fight to play music
Brooklyn-by-way-of-Texas indie rockers Parquet Courts are blowing up in a big way, and we couldn't be more thrilled for the guys—even though bassist Sean Yeaton gave up his gig as editor of Motherboard to become a superstar (tough call, we know). We tagged along on their recent tour to document midnight desert peyote sessions and foreign language festival love. Here's a statement from director Andy Capper: "When Sean Yeaton (bassist) quit his job to leave behind the safety of his desk for the wild life of a performing minstrel I decided to get a camera and follow him on the first three weeks of his new life. We went from Mexico to Texas and London in a very short period of time. I love Sean and his band — Austin, Andrew and Max — and I hope that this is reflected in this short film that we made together."
A trip to North Korea to play hoops and meet with supreme leader Kim Jong-un. With NBA great Dennis Rodman and a trio of Harlem Globetrotters in tow, VICE sent Ryan Duffy to the capital of Pyongyang for a tour of the city, a basketball clinic, an exhibition game, and a first-ever meeting between the leader and an American delegation.
