Documentaries
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- DirectorJeff MalmbergChris ShellenStarsAndrea CrestiChiara Del CiondoloGianna FioreOnce upon a time there was a tiny hill town in Tuscany that found a remarkable way to confront their issues - they turned their lives into a play. "Spettacolo" is a portrait of this 50-year-old tradition, where their piazza becomes their stage and every villager from 6 to 90 plays a part - the role of themselves.
- DirectorWerner HerzogStarsTimothy TreadwellAmie HuguenardWerner HerzogA devastating and heart-rending take on grizzly bear activists Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard, who were killed in October of 2003 while living among grizzly bears in Alaska.
- DirectorOndi TimonerStarsJosh HarrisTom HarrisCarlos AlvarezA documentary focusing on the life of dot-com entrepreneur Josh Harris, and his exploits over the last decade.
- DirectorTodd NilssenStarsPeter ArnoldLiz ArnoldAlec CanarriThe Elan School was the last stop. Set deep in the woods of Maine, Elan delivered controversial therapy to troubled teens. It was a meat grinder of raw emotion and harsh discipline. Some say it sold hope, others say it sold Hell.
- DirectorNick BrandestiniStarsMonty BranniganNancy BranniganHank JonesPropelled from society by tragic turns, the isolated community of Darwin, Death Valley (population 35) must now find ways to coexist in a place without a government, a church, jobs, or children.
- DirectorTony KayeStarsNoam ChomskyBill BairdFlip BenhamA graphic documentary on both sides of the abortion debate.
- DirectorLucien Castaing-TaylorVerena ParavelStarsBrian JannelleAdrian GuilletteArthur SmithA documentary shot in the North Atlantic and focused on the commercial fishing industry.
- DirectorPeter LiechtiStarsPeter MettlerAlexander TschernekNikola WeisseA hunter in a remote and idyllic forest stumbles on a make shift tent fashioned from sheets of plastic and containing the mummified remains of a corpse. A detailed journal found on site reveals the man committed suicide by self-imposed starvation. Who was this man? Why did he kill himself in such a manner? Inspired by this true event and by the novella 'Until I Am a Mummy' by Shimada Masahiko, Insects sensuously evokes the mysterious man's last days.
- DirectorChantal AkermanStarsChantal AkermanImpersonal and beautiful images of Akerman's life in New York are combined with letters from her loving but manipulative mother, read by Akerman herself.
- DirectorJames BenningStarsRhonda BellElion SucherIn "Landscape Suicide" Benning continues his examination of Americana through the stories of two murderers. Ed Gein was a Wisconsin farmer and multiple murderer who taxidermied his victims in the 1950s. Bernadette Prott was a California teenager who stabbed a friend to death over an insult in 1984. Benning's distanced approach to such grisly material is as far removed as possible from sensationalism, however. Although the acts of murder are both bizarre and violent, Benning dwells on them only minimally, emphasizing instead the details of psychological motivation, which in both cases seem frighteningly mundane. Benning has created a script which is a masterpiece of understated colloquial writing, and the actors he employs to re-enact confessional testimony and incidents recounted in trial transcripts perform with a flatly convincing lack of affect reminiscent of Gary Gilmore. The two monologues are embedded in Benning's characteristic meditations of landscape: long shots of the Wisconsin farmlands, general stores, dirt roads and pick-up trucks, and the carefully tended lawns, swimming pools, sprawling bungalows and malls of the middle-class California suburb. These images are offered in the classically spare mise-en-scene which Benning has perfected in his work as a cinematic poet of the contemporary American environment. Here, in his most accessible film so far, the beautiful, open vistas are dense with the significance of the catastrophes they engendered
- DirectorWilliam GreavesStarsPatricia Ree GilbertDon FellowsJonathan GordonFilmmaker William Greaves auditioned acting students for a fictional drama, while simultaneously shooting the behind-the-scenes drama taking place.
- DirectorChris HegedusD.A. PennebakerStarsNorman MailerGermaine GreerDiana TrillingInfamously macho author Norman Mailer shares a 1971 NYC panel with an audience of intellectual women and famous feminists receiving a lively critique revealing the sophisticated political, literary discourse of early Women's Lib movement.
- DirectorJørgen LethLars von TrierStarsClaus NissenMajken Algren NielsenDaniel Hernandez RodriguezFilmmaker Lars Von Trier challenges Jørgen Leth, the filmmaker behind The Perfect Human (1967), to remake his classic short under circumstances of increasing constraint.
- DirectorGodfrey ReggioStarsEdward AsnerPat BenatarJerry BrownA collection of expertly photographed phenomena with no conventional plot. The footage focuses on the relationship between nature, humanity, and technology.
- DirectorWim WendersStarsPina BauschRegina AdventoMalou AiraudoA tribute to the late German choreographer Pina Bausch, as her dancers perform her most famous creations.
- DirectorJonas MekasStarsJonas MekasStan BrakhageRobert BreerDirector Jonas Mekas provides an intimate glimpse of his personal life by constructing a feature length narrative from over 30 years of private home movie footage.
- DirectorRoss McElweeStarsRoss McElweeDede McElweeRoss McElwee Jr.Documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee sets out to make a movie about Union General Sherman's March to the Sea towards the end of the American Civil War, but keeps getting sidetracked by his own love life.
- DirectorKirsten JohnsonStarsKirsten JohnsonAisha BukarEric W. DavisExposing her role behind the camera, Kirsten Johnson reaches into the vast trove of footage she has shot over decades around the world. What emerges is a visually bold memoir and a revelatory interrogation of the power of the camera.
- DirectorJonathan CaouetteStarsJonathan CaouetteRenee LeblancAdolph DavisFilmmaker Jonathan Caouette's documentary on growing up with his schizophrenic mother -- a mixture of snapshots, Super-8 film, answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, and more - culled from nineteen years of his life.
- DirectorSarah PolleyStarsMichael PolleyJohn BuchanMark PolleyA film that excavates layers of myth and memory to find the elusive truth at the core of a family of storytellers.
- DirectorPaul MorrisseyAndy WarholStarsBrigid BerlinRandy BorscheidtChristian PäffgenLacking a formal narrative, Warhol's art house classic follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City, presented in a split screen with a single audio track in conjunction with one side of screen.
- DirectorVíctor EriceStarsAntonio LópezMaría MorenoEnrique GranThe artist Antonio López tries to capture the sunlight hitting his quince tree all autumn, but the struggle seems futile.
- DirectorBenjamin ChristensenStarsBenjamin ChristensenElisabeth ChristensenMaren PedersenFictionalized documentary showing the evolution of witchcraft, from its pagan roots to its confusion with hysteria in Eastern Europe.
- DirectorLemohang Jeremiah MoseseThe people on the dusty streets of Lesotho stare inquisitively at the young woman, who, like Jesus, carries a wooden cross on her back. She looks back into their faces, at mystically beautiful landscapes, a herd of sheep, and a pair of hands that knit unceasingly. What she sees is rendered more visually precise by the black and white, more abstract by the slowed-down images, it is filtered through memories. A raw voice-over - aware that it is not being heard by those being addressed - structures the flow of images into a cinematic lament. In this essay film, Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese succeeds in creating the chronicle of a radicalising sorrow, which steadily increases in scope from a personal farewell to the mother to a politically aware defection from the motherland. The painful process of shifting from an internal view of the small African country to an external one is visualised and commented on in a profoundly personal way - from the perspective of today, in exile, in Berlin. A pretty angel accompanies the passage. In intense, aching fashion, this unusual lament on an African story of migration sheds light on an realm of experience that is taboo and not only in cinema.