Documentary Movies

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…

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,…

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…

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

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…

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…

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)….

Dramatization of the trial of Christian anti-war activists, known collectively as the “Plowshares Eight”. In September 1980, they broke into a General Electric weapons plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania,…

Gil Scott-Heron, one of rap’s earliest (and unfortunately unknown) pioneers, gets his full due in Black Wax, the 1982 documentary recently reissued on video. Interspliced between performance footage of Scott-Heron…

A documentary about the life and works of Margaret Tait.

Theodore Roosevelt was America’s 26th president and a larger-than-life legend whose incredible story must be seen to be believed. Narrated by George C. Scott, this documentary weaves extremely rare archival…

Derek Jarman’s film portrait of American writer William S. Burroughs was shot in September 1982 during his first visit to England to attend the legendary Final Academy events at the…

An unconventional portrait of painter Frida Kahlo and photographer Tina Modotti. Simple in style but complex in its analysis, it explores the divergent themes and styles of two contemporary and…

Grab your skis and discover the Snowonder of skiing. Join the likes of skiers like David Butterfield, Billy Campbell, Greg Athens, Dick Dorworth, John Harlan, Hal O’Leary, and many others…

The Amazon rain forest, 1979. The crew of Fitzcarraldo (1982), a film directed by German director Werner Herzog, soon finds itself with problems related to casting, tribal struggles and accidents,…

Now, for the first time, you can re-live the Beatles legends with this stunning 2-hour musical “Rockumentary”. It’s all there from the wild exuberance of the early Cavern Club days…

More than 20 contemporary North American poets recite, sing, and perform their work. Early in the film, Charles Bukowski talks about the energy of poets and of a poem. These…

Mueda was a massacre. The name is that of the village in Northern Mozambique where in 1960 it took place. The Portuguese colonial regime did the killing. In independent Mozambique,…

This feature documentary retraces the century of haggling by successive federal and provincial governments to agree on a formula to bring home the Canadian Constitution from England. This film concentrates…

A disturbing collection of 1940s and 1950s United States government-issued propaganda films designed to reassure Americans that the atomic bomb was not a threat to their safety.

The mass murder of Jewish people by the Nazi regime is chronicled, with a warning that anti-Semitism is on the rise and the events of the Holocaust could happen again….

Richard Pryor’s stand-up act includes his frank discussion about his freebasing addiction, as well as the infamous night on June 9, 1980 that he caught on fire.

“Breathtaking in its techniques, rhapsodic in its passion, and encyclopedic in its scope, the film traces the long fall from paradise into modern barbarism.” – Art Gallery of Ontario

A portrait of the groundbreaking Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane, documenting a series of electrifying live performances in Tunisia, Morocco, and France; on the streets of Casablanca; and in intimate…

During 1977-1981 The Police went on a truly global tour which took them through more than a dozen countries, including many that most Rock bands of the period would fail…