Documentary Movies

For 50 years radio dominated the airwaves and the American consciousness as the first “mass medium.” In Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, Ken Burns examines the…

This 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,…

A filmmaker reunites with the daughter she gave up for adoption twenty years later.

Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during…

From the rains 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…

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…

They speak the same language, share a similar culture and once belonged to a single nation. When the Korean War ended in 1953, ten million families were torn apart. By…

A documentary about the films of Italian horror director Dario Argento. Included are clips from many of his films and interviews with friends, actors and colleagues.

Documentary about the making of the 1967 Czech film “Marketa Lazarova”.

Winter can be long and boring but grab a pair of skis or a snowboard and transform it and find out what it’s like to have an Extreme Winter. Ride…

When workers at the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota are asked to take a substantial pay cut in a highly profitable year, the local labor union decides to go…

Documentary about the life and work of film director Preston Sturges.

A look at what it’s like to be gay and black in America.

This intimate portrait of Andy Warhol pulls together a unique library of material shot by New York film legend Jonas Mekas. Spanning from 1963 to 1990, the film features a…

Tells the story of a group of Chilean children who discover a larger reality and a different world through the cinema. Each Saturday, Alicia Vega transforms the chapel of Lo…

A documentary about militant student political activity at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s.

Marlon Riggs, with assistance from other gay Black men, especially poet Essex Hemphill, celebrates Black men loving Black men as a revolutionary act. The film intercuts footage of Hemphill reciting…

Songs for Drella is a concept album by Lou Reed and John Cale, both formerly of The Velvet Underground, and is dedicated to the memory of Andy Warhol, their mentor,…

From the unique vantage point of 200 miles above Earth’s surface, we see how natural forces – volcanoes, earthquakes and hurricanes – affect our world, and how a powerful new…

“From waterfalls to water-sports, crystal-clear pools to tropical island lagoons, Playboy’s famous playmates get ‘wet and wild’ in an all-new series of exciting escapades and provocative nude scenes.”

Documentary about a small town in Austria.

Sam Kinison live at the Felt Forum, 2/14/89. Also has opening act Carl Labove plus Sam’s 3 MTV videos.

The story of a black lesbian’s relationship with a white, upper middle class high school girl.

The most explosive barehanded combat sequences ever filmed. An electrifying video of martial arts mastery and mayhem. This program takes a behind-the-scenes look at the weapons, the mystical eastern philosophy,…

On the eve of 1987’s Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, surviving families and friends of people who have died of AIDS prepare panels to be…

Their job is stealing, their lives a cruel dead end. Director Jon Alpert takes his cameras undercover for this hard-hitting look at men who live by theft and suffer addiction….

A documentary about Forbidden City, a San Francisco Chinese-American nightclub open from the 1930s to the 1960s.

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…

From an official perspective, marginal youth culture did not exist in East Germany. The topic of subcultures was taboo in the GDR, and groups such as goths, skinheads, anti-skins, punks…

Portrait of a private coal company in East Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district in 1988/89. The feisty woman boss runs the business with humour and understanding. Her seven male employees respect…

Thomas Hart Benton’s paintings were energetic and uncompromising. Today his works are in museums, but Benton hung them in saloons for ordinary people to appreciate.

Celebrities and creatives — including musician David Byrne, performance artist Spalding Gray, comedian Sandra Bernhard, radical activist Abbie Hoffman, and poet Allen Ginsberg– recall their earliest sexual experiences.

A 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…

A camera crew follows Helmut Newton, the fashion and ad photographer whose images of tall, blond, big-breasted women are part of the iconography of twentieth-century erotic fantasy. He’s on the…

A survey of the artistic history of the comic book medium and some of the major talents associated with it.

A fascinating documentary focusing on backstage realities of art and business during the British synthesizer band’s 1988 American tour.

Water-themed vignettes.

Filmmaker Morley Markson shows Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, and other ’60s rebels, then and now in a follow up to his 1971 film “Breathing Together: Revolution…

The film evolves around questions of identity, popular memory and culture. While focusing on aspects of Vietnamese reality as seen through the lives and history of women resistance in Vietnam…

The updated autobiography of Britain’s most controversial film director, the maker of Women in Love, The Devils, The Music Lovers, Tommy and The Rainbow, is as unconventional and brilliant as…