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16 Days of Glory
California The 1980sThe 1984 Summer Olympics — The definitive photographic record of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, told "from the inside" through the lives of the participants, the words of David Perry, and the singing voice of Placido Domingo. From the opening to closing ceremonies, this unique style of storytelling shows a side of the Olympic Games not seen by television audiences.
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The Blooms of Banjeli
🇹🇬 TogoThe Blooms of Banjeli documents research in Banjeli, Togo on iron-smelting technology, its rituals, and the sexual prohibitions surrounding it. Including rare historical footage from the same village in 1914, it provides a unique technological record of the traditional method of preparing a furnace to smelt iron. This documentary offers an interesting approach to our understanding of the relationship between conceptions of gender and technology in traditional African society. The people of Banjeli liken the furnace to a woman's body, which is 'impregnated' by the smelter. The process of smelting is compared to that of giving birth, the furnace being the womb and the iron bloom, the newborn.
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Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti
🇭🇹 Haiti The 1950s The 1940sThis intimate ethnographic study of Voudoun dances and rituals was shot by Maya Deren during her years in Haiti (1947-1951); she never edited the footage, so this “finished” version was made by Teiji Ito and Cherel Ito after Deren’s death.
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Sherman's March
GeorgiaAn improbable search for love — Ross McElwee sets out to make a documentary about the lingering effects of General Sherman's march of destruction through the South during the Civil War, but is continually sidetracked by women who come and go in his life, his recurring dreams of nuclear holocaust, and Burt Reynolds.
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Broken Rainbow
ArizonaThere is no Word for Relocation in the Navajo Language; to Relocate is to Disappear and Never be Seen Again. — Documentary chronicling the government relocation of 10,000 Navajo Indians in Arizona.
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Tokyo-Ga
Tokyo PrefectureGerman director Wim Wenders made this documentary in which he tries to explore the Tokyo that was depicted in the films of Yasujiro Ozu. When Wenders visits Tokyo for the first time, he finds a very different city, one with a booming fascination with technology that often clashes with the traditional elements of Japanese culture. Wenders also interviews Ozu's cinematographer, Yuharu Atsuta, and Chishu Ryu, an actor who frequently collaborated with Ozu.
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God's Country
Minnesota The 1980s The 1970sOriginal footage of the prosperous farming community of Glencoe, Minnesota — 60 miles west of Minneapolis — was filmed in 1979 for a PBS documentary. But for the next six years, Malle was too busy with other projects to finish this work. He returned in 1985 for a follow-up and found the community reacting to the mid-eighties crisis of overproduction in farm country. With weekly foreclosures on family farms and many families moving to the south, Malle documented a sense of frustration and apprehension from the same participants he had befriended in better times only half a decade earlier.
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Document of the Dead
PennsylvaniaA documentary about George A. Romero's films, with a behind scenes look at Dawn of the Dead.
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The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo
🇦🇷 Argentina1985 Argentine documentary film directed by Susana Blaustein Muñoz and Lourdes Portillo about the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.
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Trances
🇲🇦 MoroccoHere at last comes the time of ecstasy, of trances. — Documentary about the Moroccan musical group Nass El Ghiwane.
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Caffe Italia Montréal
Quebec The 1900s The 1910s The 1920s The 1930s The 1940sUsing archival documents, fictions, current accounts, and excerpts from a theatrical creation, Paul Tana paints a nuanced portrait of the Italians of Montreal. From the first waves of immigration at the beginning of the century to the men and women taken to a prisoner of war camps during World War II, to the hardships and joys of building vibrant lives in Montréal. Caffè Italia Montréal chronicles a significant chapter in Canada’s history.
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Before Stonewall
🇺🇸 United States of America The 1960s The 1950s The 1940s The 1930s The 1920s The 1910sNew 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 June 27-28, 1969. This documentary uses extensive archival film, movie clips and personal recollections to construct an audiovisual history of the gay community before the Stonewall riots.
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The Times of Harvey Milk
California The 1970sHe was powerful, charismatic, compassionate and gay. After eleven months in office he was assassinated. — 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 inspire disenfranchised people around the world.
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Another State of Mind
California Oregon District of Columbia Washington The 1980sUnder the makeup. Over the edge. An incredible journey through the underground. — Another State of Mind is a documentary film made in the summer of 1982 chronicling the adventure (and misadventure) of two punk bands – Social Distortion and Youth Brigade – as they embark on their first international tour. Along the way they meet up with another progressive punk band, Minor Threat, whom they hang out with at the Dischord house for about a week near the end of their ill-fated tour.
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Streetwise
Washington The 1980sSeattle, 1983 — Taking their camera to the streets of what was supposedly America’s most livable city, filmmaker Martin Bell, photographer Mary Ellen Mark, and journalist Cheryl McCall set out to tell the stories of those society had left behind: homeless and runaway teenagers living on the city’s margins. Born from a Life magazine exposé by Mark and McCall, Streetwise follows an unforgettable group of at-risk children—including iron-willed fourteen-year-old Tiny, who would become the project’s most haunting and enduring figure, along with the pugnacious yet resourceful Rat and the affable drifter Dewayne—who, driven from their broken homes, survive by hustling, panhandling, and dumpster diving. Granted remarkable access to their world, the filmmakers craft a devastatingly frank, empathetic portrait of lost youth growing up far too soon in a world that has failed them.
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In Heaven There Is No Beer?
Connecticut Illinois Minnesota Pennsylvania The 1960s The 1980sA 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 dedication to scholarship in this journey through Polish-American celebrations. Polka stars like Jimmy Sturr, Eddie Blazonzyck and Walt Solek are featured.
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Hookers on Davie
British ColumbiaDocumentary following hookers in Vancouver.
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Dulce Patria
🇨🇱 ChileFilmed during hard and decisive years of the democratic struggle against the regime of Augusto Pinochet, it is the first film in which a group of Chilean filmmakers, without anonymity try to give a global account of the Chilean situation of those days. The film reflects the vision and personal testimony of its director about his country at that moment.
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Special Effects
New York District of ColumbiaPresents a historical overview of special cinematographic effects, also demonstrating current techniques of computer-controlled camerawork and computer-generated sequences.
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Sans Soleil
🇯🇵 Japan 🇬🇼 Guinea-Bissau"He wrote me..." A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.
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Style Wars
New York The 1970s The 1980sTony 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.
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Diary
🇮🇱 Israel 🇧🇷 Brazil The 1970s The 1980s The 1990s The 1950s The 2000sA film diary in which Perlov films the minutiae of his and his family's day-to-day life. From these small bits, he builds up a broad picture of life in Israel in the '70s and '80s.
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Seventeen
Indiana The 1980sIn 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 also learning a great deal about life, both in and out of school, and not what school officials think they are teaching.
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Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists
🇺🇸 United States of America The 1920s The 1930s The 1950s The 1940sA unique documentary that looks at the political activities of the American Communist Party in the early to mid-twentieth century.
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The Courtesans of Bombay
🇮🇳 IndiaIn the Mumbai, India, tenement community of Pavanpul, young female courtesans sing, dance and perform sexual favors for male clientele. Directors James Ivory and Ismail Merchant blend documentary footage and dramatic reenactments in their exploration of this seamy underworld, the flip side of the Bollywood film industry, where aspiring actors and dancers -- some even sold into prostitution by their own families -- end up, with their innocence lost and their hopes for movie stardom shattered.
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When the Mountains Tremble
🇬🇹 Guatemala The 1970s The 1980s The 1960sA documentary on the war between the Guatemalan military and the Mayan population, with first hand accounts by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú.
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Half a Life
🇫🇷 France The 1960s The 1970sMichel Recanati was a militant leader in the May, 1968 riots in Paris, organizing many groups to meet, discuss, and act on leftist principles both before and after the disturbances. He was imprisoned for a short while in 1973. Disillusioned after the failure of the demonstrations and the death of the only woman he had loved, his life seems to have changed from a period of hope and activism to one of bottomless despair. His friend, Romain Goupil wrote and directed this biographical documentary. Death at 30 received the 1982 Cannes Film Festival's Golden Camera Award for "Best First Feature-Length Film."
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Comfort and Indifference
QuebecMade shortly after the referendum on Quebec's independence was held, this documentary illustrates what the politicians' promises were and how the population did not really care nor truly understand what was really at stake, even though just about everyone had an opinion on the subject.
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Ben's Mill
Vermont The 1980s1982 documentary film directed by Michel Chalufour and John Karol. The film portrays how the energy from the river is used to drive the multitudes of leather belts used to drive the various machines. The film focuses on the steps one man, Ben, uses to make one of his white pine watering tanks.
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The Shimmering Beast
QuebecA documentary film about a group of hunters who gather annually to hunt moose near Maniwaki, Quebec.
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Ted Baryluk's Grocery
ManitobaUkrainian-Canadian Ted Baryluk's grocery store has been a fixture in Winnipeg's North End for over 20 years. In this photo study, Ted talks about his store, the customers who have come and gone and the social changes his multicultural neighbourhood has seen. But most of all he wonders what will become of his store after he retires. He hopes his daughter will take over, but she wants to move away. The film is a wistful rendering of a shopkeeper's relationship with his daughter and a fascinating portrait of a neighbourhood and its inhabitants.
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Love Letters in Somalia
🇸🇴 SomaliaIn this epistolary film, the traveler gives us his impressions of Africa parallel to the expression of his amorous distress. The images of the present intertwine with the incessant echoes of lost love, combining intimate pain with the misery of a country torn apart by internal struggles and poverty.
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The Decline of Western Civilization
California The 1980sSee it in a theater.... where you can't get hurt. — The Los Angeles punk music scene circa 1980 is the focus of this film. With Alice Bag Band, Black Flag, Catholic Discipline, Circle Jerks, Fear, Germs, and X.
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El Salvador: Another Vietnam
🇸🇻 El Salvador The 1920s The 1930s The 1950s The 1960s The 1970s The 1940sThis political documentary illustrates the turbulent history of El Salvador from the 1920s-1970s, and the role of the U.S. government in that history. The most comprehensive film introduction to that country, examines the civil war there in light of the Reagan administration's decision to "draw the line" against "communist interference" in Central America. Archival material offers an overview of U.S. military and economic policy in Central America since 1948, while footage drawn from sources in the U.S., Mexico, and Europe provides extensive background to the current political and military situation.
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Turumba
🇵🇭 Philippines 🇩🇪 Germany The 1970sSet in a tiny Philippine village, the inimitable Kidlat Tahimik's film focuses on a family that makes paper-mache animals to sell during the traditional Turumba festivities. One year, a department store buyer purchases all their stock. When she returns with an order for 500 more (this time with the word "Oktoberfest" painted on them), the family's seasonal occupation becomes year-round alienated labor.
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The Space Movie
Texas1969's Apollo 11 mission to the moon is highlighted in this tribute to the history of the United States' space program.
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O Sport, You Are Peace!
🇷🇺 Russia The 1980sA 1981 documentary film directed by Yuri Ozerov. It showed the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1980 Summer Olympics held in Moscow. The director was awarded the State Prize of the USSR in 1982. The film was selected as the Soviet entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 54th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.
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N!ai, The Story of a !Kung Woman
🇧🇼 Botswana The 1970sThis film provides a broad overview of Ju/'hoan life, both past and present, and an intimate portrait of N!ai, a Ju/'hoan woman who in 1978 was in her mid-thirties. N!ai tells her own story, and in so doing, the story of Ju/'hoan life over a thirty year period. "Before the white people came we did what we wanted," N!ai recalls, describing the life she remembers as a child: following her mother to pick berries, roots, and nuts as the season changed; the division of giraffe meat; the kinds of rain; her resistance to her marriage to /Gunda at the age of eight; and her changing feelings about her husband when he becomes a healer. As N!ai speaks, the film presents scenes from the 1950's that show her as a young girl and a young wife. The uniqueness of N!ai may lie in its tight integration of ethnography and history. While it portrays the changes in Ju/'hoan society over thirty years, it never loses sight of the individual, N!ai.
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A Step Away
🇷🇺 Russia The 1980sThe only and official movie of the VIII Puerto Rico 1979 PanAmerican Games — Focuses on the performance of various elite athletes during the PanAmerican Games held in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1979. Athletes showcased in the documentary include USA team swimmer of Puerto Rican origin Jesse Vassallo; legendary Cuban track and field athlete Alberto Juantorena; Mexican diver Carlos Girón; American diver Greg Louganis; and the Puerto Rico national basketball team, among others. At the end of the film, the athletes expressed their hopes of being "a step away" from the 1980 Olympics Games; however, these hopes were shattered by the political crisis and the eventual USA-led boycott to the Olympic Games held in Moscow in 1980.
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Paper Wheat
SaskatchewanThis film, based on the play of the same name, portrays the harsh lives of early Saskatchewan settlers and the foundation of the co-op movement on the Prairies.
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No Maps on My Taps
New YorkThe art of jazz tap dancing — The remarkable spirit of tap dancers and their history provides a joyous backdrop for intimate portraits of hoofers Sandman Sims, Chuck Green, and Bunny Briggs.
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Wilmington 10 -- U.S.A. 10,000
North CarolinaA documentary on the Wilmington 10, 9 afro-Americans and 1 white woman who were unjustly imprisoned.
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Germany in Autumn
🇩🇪 Germany The 1970sGermany in Autumn does not have a plot per se; it mixes documentary footage, along with standard movie scenes, to give the audience the mood of Germany during the late 1970s. The movie covers the two month time period during 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped, and later murdered, by the left-wing terrorists known as the RAF-Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction). The businessman had been kidnapped in an effort to secure the release of the orginal leaders of the RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. When the kidnapping effort and a plane hijacking effort failed, the three most prominent leaders of the RAF, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe, all committed suicide in prison. It has become an article of faith within the left-wing community that these three were actually murdered by the state.
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A Dream Is What You Wake Up From
New York The 1970sThree black families, observed in their daily lives, their thoughts, values, and aspirations expressed on the soundtrack, and their different approaches to the struggle for survival in contemporary society and their methods of coping with the contradictory stresses placed on the individual in the family environment.
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These Are the Weapons
🇲🇿 MozambiqueThe agitprop film Estas são as armas by Murilo Salles was edited together from archival images and formed one of the first works to be produced by the newly founded film institute in Maputo.
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ABBA: The Movie
🇦🇺 AustraliaFrontstage, backstage & on the road - take the tour — A radio DJ in pursuit of an exclusive interview follows ABBA during their mega-successful tour of Australia.
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Harlan County U.S.A.
Kentucky The 1970sWhich Side Are You On? — This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA.
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Powers of Ten
Illinois FloridaA scientific film essay, narrated by Phil Morrison. A set of pictures of two picnickers in a park, with the area of each frame one-tenth the size of the one before. Starting from a view of the entire known universe, the camera gradually zooms in until we are viewing the subatomic particles on a man's hand.
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