WIDE AWAKE (2006): From HBO and Lorber Films comes a film that balances the precision of a Swiss watch with the messiness of a restless mind, Wide Awake is Alan Berliner"s uniquely personal tour through his life-long obsession with insomnia. Berliner uses both metaphor and candid first-person observations to illuminate how an obsessive mind that won"t shut down at night leaves him feeling jet lagged in his own time zone. By focusing on the effects of insomnia on Berliner s creative process, Wide Awake also becomes a film about the art of filmmaking. We see footage documenting the process of the film being made, a raucously caffeinated tour of his studio, and revelations about Berliner s secret life as a night owl. With the birth of his son Eli, Berliner becomes torn between his love of the night and the emotional pulls of love and responsibility that he feels for his family. A sophisticated blend of the hilarious and the deeply personal, Wide Awake is a cinematically innovative film that pushes at the borders of documentary storytelling; a heartfelt portrait of the artist as insomniac. (BONUS FEATURES: KQED Interview w/ Director, Director Featurette DVD-Rom features). THE SWEETEST SOUND (2001): Alan Berliner is a lawyer in Columbus. Alan Berliner is a social worker in Seattle. Alan Berliner is a celebrity photographer in Los Angeles. Tired of being mistaken for these people and anyone else who might share his name, Alan Berliner, the filmmaker from New York -- not to be confused with Belgian filmmaker Alain Berliner -- decides to rid himself of the dreaded Same Name Syndrome. His solution: invite all the Alan Berliners in the world over to his house for dinner. A film guaranteed to make you think twice about the who, the why and the where contained in every name, The Sweetest Sound has Berliner s inimitable filmmaking signature written all over it. (BONUS FEATURES: Interview w/ Director, Bonus Short Film: "Natural History", DVD-Rom features). NOBODY"S BUSINESS (1996): Alan Berliner takes on his reclusive father as the reluctant subject of this poignant and graceful study of family history and memory. What emerges is a dramatically engaging biography that finds both humor and pathos in the swirl of conflicts and affections that bind father and son. This inventive and touching essay has become a classic film about the nature of family relationships. (BONUS FEATURES: Interview w/ Director, Bonus Short Film: "Everywhere at Once", DVD-Rom features) INTIMATE STRANGER (1991): Alan Berliner"s maternal grandfather -- a Palestinian Jew who lived in Egypt and was a cotton buyer for the Japanese prior to World War II. With Hitler s armies just miles away from Alexandria, Cassuto s family is split in half. They reunite in New York after the war but Cassuto decides to move to Japan, virtually abandoning his wife and children in the U.S. while he pursues his business interests and a life-long love affair with Japanese culture. Seventeen years after his death, Berliner has constructed a poetic and emotional jigsaw puzzle out of the voluminous memorabilia of his grandfather s life story. (BONUS FEATURES: Interview w/ Director, Bonus Short Film "Myth in the Electric Age", DVD-Rom features). THE FAMILY ALBUM (1986): The Family Album is an experimental documentary collage film utilizing a vast collection of rare, anonymous 16mm home movies from the 1920s through the 1950s. These home movies are authentic documents of American folk history and culture, taken from the personal vantage point of the amateur photographic eye. It is a universal yet intimate portrait of the American family, not scripted, not rehearsed, not immune to the conflicts and contradictions underlying family life and its rituals. (BONUS FEATURES: Interview w/ Director, Bonus Short Film: "City Edition", DVD-Rom features).