Documentary

  • Les Blank – J’ai été au bal AKA I Went To The Dance (1989)

    USA1981-1990DocumentaryLes Blank

    Quote:
    The definitive film on the history of the toe-tapping, foot-stomping music of French Southwest Louisiana. Includes many Cajun and Zydeco greats, featuring Michael Doucet and Beausoleil, Clifton Chenier, Marc and Ann Savoy, D.L. Menard, and many othersRead More »

  • Errol Morris – Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997)

    1991-2000CultDocumentaryErrol MorrisUSA

    What do an elderly topiary gardener, a retired lion tamer, a man fascinated by mole rats, and a cutting-edge robotics designer have in common…Read More »

  • Kaku Arakawa – 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki (2019)

    2011-2020DocumentaryJapanKaku ArakawaTV

    Synopsis

    A 4-part documentary chronicling the creative process of the legendary Japanese filmmaker. He is shown as a passionate artisan, a steadfast trailblazer, and a father butting heads with his son.Read More »

  • Godfrey Reggio – Powaqqatsi (1988)

    1981-1990DocumentaryGodfrey ReggioUSA

    Quote:
    Five years after Godfrey Reggio stunned audiences with Koyaanisqatsi, he again joined forces with composer Philip Glass and other collaborators for a second chapter. Here, Reggio turns his sights on third-world nations in the Southern Hemisphere. Forgoing the sped-up aesthetic of the first film, Powaqqatsi employs a meditative slow motion in order to reveal the beauty of the traditional ways of life in those parts of the planet, and to show how cultures there are being eroded as their environments are taken over by industry. This is the most intensely spiritual segment of Reggio’s philosophical and visually remarkable Qatsi Trilogy.Read More »

  • Peter Davis – Hearts and Minds [+ Commentary] (1974)

    1971-1980DocumentaryPeter DavisPoliticsUSA

    Academy Award for Best Documentary (1975).

    “We weren’t on the wrong side. We were the wrong side.”

    A courageous and startling film, Peter Davis’s landmark documentary Hearts and Minds unflinchingly confronts the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. Using a wealth of sources—from interviews to newsreels to documentary footage of the conflict at home and abroad—Davis constructs a powerfully affecting portrait of the disastrous effects of war. Explosive, persuasive, and shocking, Hearts and Minds is an overwhelming emotional experience and the controversial winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary.Read More »

  • Olivier Nicklaus – Vadim Mister Cool (2016) (DVD)

    2011-2020DocumentaryFranceOlivier Nicklaus

    VADİM MİSTER COOL
    With his most recent documentary, Vadim Mister Cool (2016), Parisian writer/director Olivier Nicklaus examines the life and career of another Parisian writer/director, the notorious Roger Vadim. His films were groundbreaking for their depiction of sensuality on the screen, eventually making him a pioneer of the French New Wave. However, Vadim’s work was often held back by his personal life. In his lifetime, Vadim was involved with some of the most beautiful and glamorous women in movie history. This reputation as a ladies’ man, combined with his films, made Vadim the male embodiment of the hedonism of 1960s Europe.Read More »

  • Terry Zwigoff – Crumb (1994)

    1991-2000DocumentaryTerry ZwigoffUSA

    Quote:
    A very intimate documentary depicting the controversial, underground cartoonist Robert Crumb along with most of his immediate family, riddled with psychological issues and sicknesses, mental issues and disturbing events. The documentary shows Crumb in all of his artistic genius while also trying to figure out the unique, complex, artistic, troubling, contradict and sometimes even perverse personality that is Robert Crumb. –Read More »

  • Babis Makridis – Birds (or how to be one) (2020)

    2011-2020Babis MakridisDocumentaryExperimentalGreece

    Cineuropa wrote:

    Following on from L [+] (2012) and Pity [+] (2018), Babis Makridis is returning to the International Rotterdam Film Festival, within the Voices line-up, with Birds (Or How To Be One), a film based on Aristofane’s Greek comedy The Birds, exploring the desire for and fear of freedom. The story tells the tale of two men who distance themselves from the rest of humanity in order to find the man-bird Upupa and build a city where birds can live in harmony, far away from humankind. Makridis takes this premise as his starting point to develop a work of an experimental form, bringing together the casting process, rehearsals for a theatre production of the comedy in question (directed by Nikos Karathanos) and interviews bordering on the absurd.
    Read More »

  • Sofia Bohdanowicz & Deragh Campbell – MS Slavic 7 (2019)

    2011-2020ArthouseCanadaDeragh CampbellDocumentarySofia Bohdanowicz

    A woman who has trouble articulating herself finds a place of her own in researching the letters of her great-grandmother in this entrancing character study.Read More »

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