Documentary Movies

A group of Miskito Indians use Nicaraguan child soldiers in their resistance against the Sandinistas.

They called themselves the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, but because of their ecstatic dancing, the world called them Shakers. Ken Burns creates a moving portrait of…

A non-stop roller coaster ride through the scariest moments of the greatest terror films of all time.

Shot during Maiden’s historic tour of Poland and other parts of the Eastern Bloc in 1984, featuring interviews, live and offstage footage, capturing the atmosphere of this remarkable journey behind…

Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to…

The Making of Fanny and Alexander is a fascinating look at the creation of a masterpiece. Directed by Ingmar Bergman himself, this feature-length documentary chronicles the methods of one of…

New York City’s Stonewall Inn is regarded by many as the site of gay and lesbian liberation since it was at this bar that drag queens fought back against police…

Memoirs of the Italian Opera by the singers and musicians of the Casa Verdi, Milan, the world’s first nursing home for retired opera singers, founded by composer Giuseppe Verdi in…

Alchemy is a double live album originally released in 1984 with an accompanying VHS, now released on DVD and Blu-ray for the first time. Recorded on 23rd July 1983 at…

Catalan architect Antonio Gaudí (1852-1926) designed some of the world’s most astonishing buildings, interiors, and parks; Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara constructed some of the most aesthetically audacious films ever made….

A joyous romp through the dance, food, music, friendship, and even religion of the Polka. The explosive energy and high spirits of the polka subculture are rendered with warmth and…

A Dutch documentary about legendary French filmmaker Robert Bresson.

From an early age Yossi Klein received a special education. He was prepared for another Holocaust. So were other children in Boro Park, the largest Orthodox survivor community in America,…

An exploration of Burroughs’ life story, as told by Burroughs himself along with many of his contemporaries, including Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin, Francis Bacon, Herbert Huncke, Patti Smith, Terry Southern,…

Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant’s PBS documentary tracks the rise and fall of subway graffiti in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

This is an intimate portrait of life in the Mississippi Delta, where Chinese, African Americans and Whites live in a complex world of cotton, work, and racial conflict. The history…

Incident at Restigouche is a 1984 documentary film by Alanis Obomsawin, chronicling a series of two raids on the Listuguj Mi’gmaq First Nation (Restigouche) by the Sûreté du Québec in…

Commissioned by French television, this is a short documentary on the neo-classical statues found throughout Paris, predominantly on the walls of buildings, holding up windows, roofs etc.

The Official Golden Harvest tribute to the Master of the Martial Arts Film, Bruce Lee.

A documentary made by Italian television with behind-the-scenes footage of the making of Federico Fellini’s AND THE SHIP SAILS ON and extensive interview footage of Fellini.

By the time director Katja Raganelli arrived in California to make a film about Dorothy Arzner in 1980, Arzner had passed away in a car accident. Nonetheless, Raganelli visited Arzner’s…

Through the experiences of two women in Paris and London, Ghost Dance offers an analysis of the complexity of our conceptions of ghosts, memory and the past. The film focuses…

THE STORE is a film about the main Neiman-Marcus store and corporate headquarters in Dallas. The sequences in the film include the selection, presentation, marketing, pricing, advertising and selling of…

One of comedian Richard Pryor’s later stand-up performances. As foul-mouthed as ever, Pryor touches on most of the same topics as in his previous live shows.

Time is the most precious and valuable thing we own, so hopefully, you’ll invest yours in Ski Time. From the Alps to Oregon, Montana, Idaho, down to New Zealand, and…

A superb, moving and thrilling interview with American actor Sterling Hayden (1916-86), held in Besançon, France, on board a dilapidated barge, when he was 65 years old. An unparalleled portrait,…

What starts off as a squadron of American daredevil bombers in World War II, branded by society as renegades, turns into a revealing ride into the world of honor, violence,…

The true story of German-Czech businessman Oskar Schindler (1908-74) as told by some of the Jews — more than a thousand people — whose lives he saved from extermination during…

Set in the North Carolina Appalachians, Sprout Wings and Fly honors the fiddle playing of 82-year-old Tommy Jarrell of Toast, NC. Tommy was quirky, gregarious and generous, and this film…

A complex visual study of the women of rural Senegal. Through a complicity of interaction between film and spectator, Reassemblage reflects on documentary filmmaking and the ethnographic representation of cultures.

Emotions and feelings should not be confused with sentimentality. Emotion is ancient and more powerful than any artistic expression. The film observes young couples facing difficulties while trying to move…

In their final year at Muncie’s Southside High School, a group of seniors hurtles toward maturity with a combination of joy, despair, and an aggravated sense of urgency. They are…

When Women Kill is a poignant documentary exploring the shocking violence that seven women fell victim to at the hands of men. The program profiles the battered women who speak…

A documentary about the lives of six transgender women in post-Franco Spain.

Reverend Huie Rogers is a preacher at the Bible Way Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Brooklyn. He is the topic of this short film, during which launches into…

Recorded at the breathtakingly beautiful Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado in 1983, this concert features Irish rock sensation U2 and front man Bono in their early glory days. Including five…

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither…

Declared to be the funniest Robin Williams video made, this is a don’t-miss comedy.

Documentary on modern black gospel music, focusing on the pioneering Rev. Thomas Dorsey and Mother Willie Mae Ford Smith

“La Zerda and the songs of oblivion” (1982) is one of only two films made by the Algerian novelist Assia Djebar, with “La Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua” (1977)….