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Wasaga
OntarioMixing conventional and new digital technologies, Judith Doyle also weaves a dialectic between reality and fiction linked by he casual introspection of the film's narrator, a video artist named Rebecca. Over black and white archival footage from a fifties tourism film about Wasaga Beach, Rebecca says "I videotape photographs and places that are gone."
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The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl
🇩🇪 Germany The 1940s The 1930sThis documentary recounts the life and work of one of most famous, and yet reviled, German film directors in history, Leni Riefenstahl. The film recounts the rise of her career from a dancer, to a movie actor to the most important film director in Nazi Germany who directed such famous propaganda films as Triumph of the Will and Olympiad. The film also explores her later activities after Nazi Germany's defeat in 1945 and her disgrace for being so associated with it which includes her amazingly active life over the age of 90.
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Image and music are intertwined in this third collaboration between director Godfrey Reggio and composer Philip Glass. The film was produced to celebrate the World Wildlife Fund's Biological Diversity Campaign. The film combines images of nature with pulsing rhythms in a Microcosmos (1997) meets Koyaanisqatsi (1983) spectacle. Written by Martin Lewison
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It's All True
🇲🇽 Mexico 🇧🇷 BrazilA documentary about Orson Welles's unfinished three-part film about South America.
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Silverlake Life: The View from Here
California The 1990sAn extraordinary video diary about living with AIDS documenting, with guts and humor, the love and dedication of longtime companions Tom Joslin and Mark Massi, from the emotional challenge of living with a fatal illness to the frustration of maintaining daily routines,.
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Documentary film about life in the slums of Palermo, Sicily. Revisiting the family featured in a 1961 documentary from Michael Roemer, and Robert Young (the father/ father in law of this film's directors).
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The Forbidden Quest
🇮🇪 Ireland 🇦🇶 Antarctica The 1930s1931: in Ireland, a film maker hears of an aged ship's carpenter who knows the fate of the Hollandia, a Norse ship that set sail in 1905 and vanished. The old salt has canisters of film to prove his tale. We see the footage as he narrates. They sail south in June, 1905, with scores of Siberian huskies aboard, meeting no living soul, the crew ignorant of the trip's purpose, until they reach Antarctica. A mysterious Italian paces the deck; a polar bear appears, and the Italian, possessed, hunts it down. That night, the boatswain explains to the crew how an Arctic bear could be at the South Pole and why the Hollandia has come. Visitors arrive, and the Gothic tale plays out.
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Vermont Is for Lovers
VermontVermont is for Lovers is an independently produced docudrama released in 1992, starring George Thrush and Marya Cohn and shot on location Tunbridge, Vermont. The film concerns a couple visiting Vermont in order to be married, and interviewing local residents on the subject of marriage. Largely improvised and using non-professional actors, the film was shown at various film festivals including the Melbourne International Film Festival and the Hawaii International Film Festival. The movie was not very well-received by the national press, with the New York Times calling it, “vaguely amiable.” While the Washington Post review commented that the film was an “all-too-easy target for ridicule,” it also mentioned one of the film’s high points: “In one scene, a typically droll Vermont resident (playing himself) sums up his state’s fabled coolness to strangers by suggesting that a sign be placed at the state line, reading ‘Welcome to Vermont. Now Leave.’”
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Time Machine: The Journey Back
The 1910sDocumentary/Sequel to 1960 adaptation of "The Time Machine"
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Incident at Oglala
South Dakota The 1970sOn June 26, 1975, during a period of high tensions on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, two FBI agents were killed in a shootout with a group of Indians. Although several men were charged with killing the agents, only one, Leonard Peltier, was found guilty. This film describes the events surrounding the shootout and suggests that Peltier was unjustly convicted.
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Brother's Keeper
New YorkA heartwarming tale of murder. — This documentary by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky details the murder trial of Delbert Ward. Delbert was a member of a family of four elderly brothers, working as semi-literate farmers and living together in isolation from the rest of society until William's death.
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The Feast of the Chicken
🇦🇹 AustriaThe morals and customs of the "native peoples" of Upper Austria are described by a team of anthropologists from Sub-Saharan Africa in the style of European and American anthropologists in the non-western world. While making the film, they discover new cultural phenomena. Wippersberg turns around the research methodology of Western anthropologists of performing ethnologic studies, and then popularising them by means of a documentary film.
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The Quince Tree Sun
🇪🇸 Spain The 1990sFilmmaker Victor Erice follows Spanish artist Antonio Lopez in his painstaking attempt to paint the image of a tree.
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Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer
Florida The 1980s The 1990sAileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (1993) is a documentary film about Aileen Wuornos, made by Nick Broomfield. It documents Broomfield's attempts to interview Wuornos, which involves a long process of mediation through her adopted mother Arlene Pralle and lawyer, Steve Glazer.
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Speak It! From the Heart of Black Nova Scotia
Nova ScotiaIn their predominantly white high school in Halifax, a group of black students face daily reminders of racism, ranging from abuse (racist graffiti on washroom walls), to exclusion (the omission of black history from textbooks). They work to establish a Cultural Awareness Youth Group, a vehicle for building pride and self-esteem through educational and cultural programs. With help from mentors, they discover the richness of their heritage and learn some of the ways they can begin to effect change.
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L'Abbé Stock, le passeur d'âmes
🇫🇷 France The 1940s -
A Brief History of Time
England The 1940s The 1950s The 1960s The 1970s The 1980s The 1990sThis shows physicist Stephen Hawking's life as he deals with the ALS that renders him immobile and unable to speak without the use of a computer. Hawking's friends, family, classmates, and peers are interviewed not only about his theories but the man himself.
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Madonna: Truth or Dare
🇯🇵 Japan 🇨🇦 Canada Michigan The 1990sFrom the rain of Japan, through threats of arrest for 'public indecency' in Canada, and a birthday tribute to her father in Detroit, this documentary follows Madonna on her 1990 'Blond Ambition' concert tour. Filmed in black and white, with the concert pieces in glittering MTV color, it is an intimate look at the work of the music performer, from a prayer circle with the dancers before each performance to bed games with the dance troupe afterwards.
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Antarctica
🇦🇶 AntarcticaThis large format film explores the last great wilderness on earth. It takes you to the coldest, driest, windiest continent, Antarctica. The film explores the life in Antarctica, both for the animals that live their and the scientist that work there.
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Paris Is Burning
New York The 1980sHaving a ball… Wish you were here — Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City's African American and Latinx Harlem drag-ball scene. Made over seven years, PARIS IS BURNING offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion "houses," from fierce contests for trophies to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women — including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza.
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Cairo as Told by Youssef Chahine
🇪🇬 EgyptThis concise masterpiece began as a commission by French TV for the news series Envoyé spécial. By filming Cairo with his unique sense of artistic digression, Chahine transformed this portrait of a city into the self-portrait of a filmmaker.
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Coney Island
New York The 19th Century The 1900s The 1910sBefore there was Disneyland, there was Coney Island. By the turn of the century, this tiny piece of New York real estate was internationally famous. On summer Sundays, three great pleasure domes--Steeplechase, Luna Park and Dreamland--competed for the patronage of a half-million people. By day it was the world's most amazing amusement park, by night, an electric "Eden".
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I Dreamt I Woke Up
🇮🇪 IrelandFilm about the influences in director John Boorman's life and work, including family and neighbors and the landscape of the Wicklow mountains surrounding his home in Ireland.
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A Song for Tibet
TibetFilmed in the Indian Himalayas and in Canada, A Song for Tibet tells the dramatic story of the efforts by Tibetans in exile, including the Dalai Lama, to save their homeland and preserve their heritage against overwhelming odds. Since the invasion of their territory by China in the late 1950s, Tibetans have been struggling for cultural and political survival.
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Close-Up
🇮🇷 IranThis fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves.
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Berkeley in the Sixties
California The 1960sThe untold story of students in the 60s — A documentary about militant student political activity at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s.
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American Dream
Texas The 1980sThe award-winning film of American lives, American courage, and the... — Chronicles the six-month strike at Hormel in Austin, Minnesota, in 1985-86. The local union, P-9 of the Food and Commercial Workers, overwhelmingly rejects a contract offer with a $2/hour wage cut. They strike and hire a New York consultant to manage a national media campaign against Hormel. Despite support from P-9's rank and file, FCWU's international disagrees with the strategy. In addition to union-company tension, there's union-union in-fighting. Hormel holds firm; scabs, replacement workers, brothers on opposite sides, a union coup d'état, and a new contract materialize. The film asks, was it worth it, or was the strike a long-term disaster for organized labor?
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Echoes from a Sombre Empire
🇨🇫 Central African RepublicDocumentary examining Bokassa's rule in the Central African Republic using the testimony of witnesses and visits to key sites.
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You Can't Live Like That
The 1990sA feature-publicistic film about the socio-political condition of the Soviet society at the end of the eghties.
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Au chic Resto Pop
QuebecIn a poor eastern quarter of Montreal, a restaurant is dedicated for the poors only: le Chic Resto Pop. It used the surplus of some merchants to offer cheap meals. The young people who work there for free get a lot of satisfaction in their work in spite of the difficulties. The movie is build around six songs written by them.
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Roger & Me
MichiganA 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 interview with GM CEO Roger Smith.
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For All Mankind
Texas The Moon The 1960s The 1970sFrom 1968 til 1972, twenty-four human beings went to the moon. Their journey lives as the ultimate adventure story. — 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 who braved the remarkable journey to the moon and back.
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Water and Power
California The 1980sPat O'Neill, one of the most interesting filmmakers in America today, offers a dazzling reflection on the conflict between nature and man in Los Angeles, or the desertification of the city's surroundings due to its enormous water consumption. More interestingly, it is also a film in the age-old tradition of city symphonies: a film about LA's foundation myths and the dreams it embodies, about its history and (grim) future, its topography and ethnography. O'Neill uses footage from several classic films to recreate the several layers of meaning emanating from the city, juxtaposing images and fantasies and hardly ever allowing one picture to go untouched. George Lockwood's swarming soundtrack is likewise composed of conflicting languages, an elaborate work of plunderphonics in which snippets of sound stolen from movies collide with electronic soundscapes, contemporary chamber music, improv, and what not.
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Angano... Angano... Tales from Madagascar
🇲🇬 MadagascarDocumentary — Venerable storytellers recount for the camera and their listeners the founding myths of Malagasy culture.
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The Thin Blue Line
Texas The 1970sA softcore movie, Dr. Death, a chocolate milkshake, a nosey blonde and "The Carol Burnett Show." Solving this mystery is going to be murder. — Errol Morris's unique documentary dramatically re-enacts the crime scene and investigation of a police officer's murder in Dallas.
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The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years
California The 1980sIt's more than music...it's a way of life. — An exploration of the heavy metal scene in Los Angeles, with particular emphasis on glam metal. It features concert footage and interviews of legendary heavy metal and hard rock bands and artists such as Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Megadeth, Motörhead, Ozzy Osbourne and W.A.S.P..
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Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie
🇫🇷 France 🇧🇴 Bolivia The 1950s The 1960s The 1970s The 1980s The 1940sWinner of a Best Documentary Academy Award, Marcel Ophuls' riveting film details the heinous legacy of the Gestapo head dubbed "The Butcher of Lyon." Responsible for over 4,000 deaths in occupied France during World War II, Barbie would escape--with U.S. help--to South America in 1951, where he lived until a global manhunt led to his 1983 arrest and subsequent trial.
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A one-hour documentary on the making of Frank Zappa's bizarre 1971 comic musical. Vintage private footage from Frank's personal archives plus behind-the-scenes of the actual shooting and recording. With Ringo Starr, Theodore Bikel, Keith Moon and such songs as "Sleeping in a Jar," and "Strictly Genteel." The inside history of the first feature-length film to be shot on video in 6 days.
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Land of Dreams
🇸🇪 Sweden The 1980s"Land of Dreams" - When the daughter Johanna is born in 1983, Jan Troell tells the story about his childhood Sweden and how things were when he grow-up in the land of fairy tales and potential prosperity.
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Radio Bikini
🇲🇭 Marshall IslandsIt starts with a live radio broadcast from the Bikini Atoll a few days before it is annihilated by a nuclear test. Shows great footage from these times and tells the story of the US Navy Sailors who were exposed to radioactive fallout. One interviewed sailor suffered grotesquely swollen limbs and he is shown being interviewed with enormous left arm and hand.
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The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On
Hyōgo PrefectureKenzo Okuzaki, a 62-year-old veteran of the New Guinea campaign in World War II, sets out to conduct interviews with survivors and relatives to find the truth behind atrocities committed while the Japanese garrison was surrounded, in particular the unexplained killing of two Japanese privates in his unit.
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Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam
🇺🇸 United States of America 🇻🇳 Vietnam The 1960s The 1970sAddressed to the heart of America. — Real-life letters written by American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines during the Vietnam War to their families and friends back home. Archive footage of the war and news coverage thereof augment the first-person "narrative" by men and women who were in the war, some of whom did not survive it.
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Uncle Meat
The 1960sThis is a documentary about an unfinished movie. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention try to film the sci-fi epic "Uncle Meat."
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Who Killed Vincent Chin?
MichiganThis film recounts the murder of Vincent Chin, an automotive engineer mistaken as Japanese who was slain by an assembly line worker who blamed him for the competition by the Japanese auto makers that were threatening his job. It then recounts how that murderer escaped justice in the court system.
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Beirut: The Last Home Movie
🇱🇧 Lebanon The 1980sBeirut: The Last Home Movie is a 1987 documentary film directed by Jennifer Fox. It follows the life of Gaby Bustros and her family, who live in in a 200-year old mansion in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. The Bustros family, one of the noble families of Beirut, remain in their ancestral home despite the endless war that surrounds them.
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Location Africa
🇬🇭 GhanaMaking-of documentary that covers "Cobra Verde," Herzog's last film with Kinski before Kinski's death. This is the documentary that registers the behind the scenes moments of "Cobra Verde", the last project that united director Werner Herzog to actor Klaus Kinski. The notorious and infamous relation between the two filled Cinema theatres with masterpieces, but also filled pages of Cinema History with mutual declarations of both love and hate.
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Heavy Metal Parking Lot
Maryland The 1980sThe wildest rock 'n' roll documentary of all time. — Heavy Metal Parking Lot documents heavy metal music fans tailgating in the parking lot outside the Capital Centre (since demolished) in Landover, Maryland, on May 31, 1986, before a Judas Priest concert (with opening act Dokken).
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Chile: A Genral Record
🇨🇱 Chile The 1970sIn 1985, Miguel Littin returned clandestinely to Chile and made this documentary divided in four parts about the political reality of the country. The parts are titled, Miguel Littin: Clandestine in Chile; The North of Chile: When I Fled to the Pampa; From the Frontier to the Interior of Chile in Flames; and Allende: the Time of History, the film features testimony from Garcia Marquez, Fidel Castro and Hortensia Bussi. Also shown is the Chile of Augusto Pinochet and Salvador Allende. When Littin returned to Spain and finished his work, Gabriel Garcia Marquez set out to write the story of the film, published under the title Clandestine in Chile: the Adventures of Miguel Littin, which quickly became a best seller.
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Chile: Hasta Cuando?
🇨🇱 Chile The 1980sA portrait of a brutal Pinochet military dictatorship made during a three month visit to Chile in 1985 by David Bradbury. The footage reveals a country torn with civil strife and political unrest; military intimidation of the population; indiscriminate arrests: murder torture and disappearances were facts of Chilean life.
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