Documentary Movies

When workers at the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota are asked to take a substantial pay cut in a highly profitable year, the local labor union decides to go…

Documentary about the life and work of film director Preston Sturges.

A look at what it’s like to be gay and black in America.

George Carlin brings his comedy back to New Jersey and this time talks about Offensive Language, Euphemisms, They’re Only Words, Dogs, Things you never hear, see or wanna hear, Some…

Tells the story of a group of Chilean children who discover a larger reality and a different world through the cinema. Each Saturday, Alicia Vega transforms the chapel of Lo…

This intimate portrait of Andy Warhol pulls together a unique library of material shot by New York film legend Jonas Mekas. Spanning from 1963 to 1990, the film features a…

A documentary about militant student political activity at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s.

Marlon Riggs, with assistance from other gay Black men, especially poet Essex Hemphill, celebrates Black men loving Black men as a revolutionary act. The film intercuts footage of Hemphill reciting…

Songs for Drella is a concept album by Lou Reed and John Cale, both formerly of The Velvet Underground, and is dedicated to the memory of Andy Warhol, their mentor,…

“From waterfalls to water-sports, crystal-clear pools to tropical island lagoons, Playboy’s famous playmates get ‘wet and wild’ in an all-new series of exciting escapades and provocative nude scenes.”

Sam Kinison live at the Felt Forum, 2/14/89. Also has opening act Carl Labove plus Sam’s 3 MTV videos.

The story of a black lesbian’s relationship with a white, upper middle class high school girl.

The most explosive barehanded combat sequences ever filmed. An electrifying video of martial arts mastery and mayhem. This program takes a behind-the-scenes look at the weapons, the mystical eastern philosophy,…

Documentary about a small town in Austria.

From the unique vantage point of 200 miles above Earth’s surface, we see how natural forces – volcanoes, earthquakes and hurricanes – affect our world, and how a powerful new…

On the eve of 1987’s Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, surviving families and friends of people who have died of AIDS prepare panels to be…

Their job is stealing, their lives a cruel dead end. Director Jon Alpert takes his cameras undercover for this hard-hitting look at men who live by theft and suffer addiction….

A documentary about Forbidden City, a San Francisco Chinese-American nightclub open from the 1930s to the 1960s.

A testament to NASA’s Apollo program of the 1960s and ’70s. Composed of actual NASA footage of the missions and astronaut interviews, the documentary offers the viewpoint of the individuals…

From an official perspective, marginal youth culture did not exist in East Germany. The topic of subcultures was taboo in the GDR, and groups such as goths, skinheads, anti-skins, punks…

Portrait of a private coal company in East Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district in 1988/89. The feisty woman boss runs the business with humour and understanding. Her seven male employees respect…

Thomas Hart Benton’s paintings were energetic and uncompromising. Today his works are in museums, but Benton hung them in saloons for ordinary people to appreciate.

A film about the Medical Intensive Care Unit at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital. The film is concerned with how people face death. More specifically the film presents the complex interrelationships…

Celebrities and creatives — including musician David Byrne, performance artist Spalding Gray, comedian Sandra Bernhard, radical activist Abbie Hoffman, and poet Allen Ginsberg– recall their earliest sexual experiences.

A documentary about the closure of General Motors’ plant at Flint, Michigan, which resulted in the loss of 30,000 jobs. Details the attempts of filmmaker Michael Moore to get an…

A camera crew follows Helmut Newton, the fashion and ad photographer whose images of tall, blond, big-breasted women are part of the iconography of twentieth-century erotic fantasy. He’s on the…

A survey of the artistic history of the comic book medium and some of the major talents associated with it.

A fascinating documentary focusing on backstage realities of art and business during the British synthesizer band’s 1988 American tour.

Water-themed vignettes.

Filmmaker Morley Markson shows Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, and other ’60s rebels, then and now in a follow up to his 1971 film “Breathing Together: Revolution…

The film evolves around questions of identity, popular memory and culture. While focusing on aspects of Vietnamese reality as seen through the lives and history of women resistance in Vietnam…

The updated autobiography of Britain’s most controversial film director, the maker of Women in Love, The Devils, The Music Lovers, Tommy and The Rainbow, is as unconventional and brilliant as…

A locomotive journey traversing the North to the South of the German Democratic Republic on the eve of its dissolution. Labourers, punks, mothers, intellectuals, young and old are implored to…

Young male students at a local Iranian school are asked about their feelings on homework.

A Grandfather recounts his life under communist rule, from apprentice miner to prisoner to pensioner.

A concert movie on an unprecedented scale, Rattle And Hum captures U2 – on and off the stage – during their triumphant Joshua Tree tour. From the giant technicolour stadium…

A documentary film about the life of pianist and jazz great Thelonious Monk. Features live performances by Monk and his band, and interviews with friends and family about the offbeat…

This special is hosted by Patrick Stewart and traced the history of Star Trek from its inception with “The Cage” through to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and the…

The biography of former Beatle, John Lennon—narrated by Lennon himself—with extensive material from Yoko Ono’s personal collection, previously unseen footage from Lennon’s private archives, and interviews with David Bowie, his…

This documentary offers a rare glimpse of the legendary Soviet filmmaker, Andrei Tarkosvky, at work. Tarkovsky made only seven films in his brief, but brilliant, career; Michal Leszczylowski’s respectful movie…