Documentary
What happened when we built Utopia? New Town Utopia is feature documentary about the power of art, architecture, the state of the nation – and some rather angry puppets.
A concert inspired by the Coen Brothers’ film, ‘Inside Llewyn Davis,’ which is set in the 1960s Greenwich Village folk music scene, featuring live performances of the film’s music, as well as songs from the early 1960s. Performers include the Avett Brothers, Joan Baez, Dave Rawlings Machine, Rhiannon Giddens, Lake Street Dive, Colin Meloy, The Milk Carton Kids, Marcus Mumford, Punch Brothers, Patti Smith, Willie Watson, Gillian Welch, and Jack White, as well as the star of the film Oscar Isaac.
Money & Life is an inspirational essay-style documentary that asks a provocative question: can we see the economic crisis not as a disaster, but as a tremendous opportunity? This cinematic odyssey connects the dots on our current economic pains and offers a new story of money based on an emerging paradigm of planetary well-being that understands all of life as profoundly interconnected.
Watch clowns, acrobats and sword swallowers train and compete for the top prize at the grandest of circus festivals held in Monte Carlo. A FilmBuff Presentation.
Documentary – War zone borders, engine trouble and the difficulties of making money to survive couldn’t outweigh the thrill of adventure and discovery Daniel Rintz encountered while motorcycling around the world for two and a half years.
The macabre rituals of serial killers are examined.
Follow renowned journalist Elvis Mitchell as he travels with A-list filmmakers and actors to places of inspiration around the world with unprecedented access, exploring how each location shaped their work and identity.
This four-part docuseries investigates the events of 1993, where Lorena Bobbitt sliced off her husband’s penis after years of abuse. John and Lorena Bobbitt’s stories exploded into a 24-hour news cycle. She became a national joke, her suffering ignored by the male-dominated press. But as John spiraled downward, Lorena found strength in the scars of her ordeal.
This documentary follows seven wine-making families in the Burgundy region of France, delving into the cultural and creative process of making wine. You’ll never look at wine the same way again.
Broadway Idiot follows Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong from a punk rock concert at Madison Square Garden to the opening of his musical American Idiot on Broadway – only ten blocks away, but worlds apart. From behind the curtain share in the crazy journey of turning the mega-hit album into a punk rock musical – and ultimately see how the world of theater transformed Billie Joe.
Filmed for over a decade, MAGICAL UNIVERSE is a portrait of Al Carbee, an 88 year old strange and reclusive outsider artist who spends his days alone in a massive house in Maine creating art — mostly featuring Barbie Dolls in elaborate dioramas. The documentary profiles Carbee’s amazing body of work and his relentlessly creative lifestyle. Carbee’s story is explored through the prism of his unlikely friendship with New York filmmaker Jeremy Workman, who unexpectedly becomes Carbee’s closest friend and only link to the outside world. Far beyond just a portrait of an eccentric, MAGICAL UNIVERSE is about wonder, friendship, and the transcendent power of creativity. Its story culminates with Al Carbee’s greatest triumph as an artist and a man.
A behind-the-scenes look at Moscow’s prestigious Bolshoi Theatre as it’s rocked by an acid-attack scandal in 2013.
Under the direction of founder and world-renowned DJ Peanut Butter Wolf, Stones Throw Records has consistently released critically acclaimed, left-of-center albums since its founding in 1996. Drawing on live concert footage, never-before-seen archival material, inner-circle home video and photographs and in-depth interviews with the folks who put Stones Throw on the map, this documentary will delve deeper into the label’s enigmatic artists, history, culture and global following.
A cinematic portrait of the homeless population who live permanently in the underground tunnels of New York City.
A documentary that weaves together personal journeys, historical facts and expert analysis to show the world through the eyes of those touched by the issue of “colourism”.
Join our fiendish host, Dr. Vincent Van Gore, as he leads you into the forbidden world of the dead. Only the nastiest car accidents, suicides and murders are here; faithfully and explicitly documented through actual crime scene investigations by police and emergency response teams from around the world. Everything you see is real; nothing has been faked. There are no boring autopsies or old World War II footage. Only the best and bloodiest corpses killed within the past 10 years are good enough to become the FACES OF GORE! If you cannot handle smashed brains, bug-eyed corpses and char-boiled fetuses, then DO NOT WATCH THIS DVD! Nothing you have ever seen before can prepare you for this breakthrough new horror film by TODD TJERSLAND, the Visionary Overlord of American Horror!
Follows three young, committed Public Defenders who are dedicated to working for the people society would rather forget. Long hours, low pay and staggering caseloads are so common that even the most committed often give up.
Harris Glenn Milstead, aka Divine (1945-1988) was the ultimate outsider turned underground hero. Spitting in the face of the status quos of body image, gender identity, sexuality, and preconceived notions of beauty, Divine succeeded in becoming an internationally recognized icon, recording artist, and character actor of stage and screen. Glenn went from the often-mocked, schoolyard fat kid to underdog royalty, standing up for millions of gay men and women, drag queens and punk rockers, and countless other socially ostracized misfits and freaks. With a completely committed in-your-face style, he blurred the line between performer and personality, and revolutionized pop culture.
In Extase’ (‘In Ecstacy’) takes you on a journey through the fascinating world of Dance music. House, Techno, Hardcore, Trance, from the underground scene in a squatter’s village to the immense Amsterdam Arena filled with 40,000 people all dressed in white, you’ll get the ultimate insider’s experience.
Scientists Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss travel the globe promoting a scientific worldview and the rational questioning of religious belief.
Soul Power is a 2008 documentary film about the Zaire 74 music festival in Kinshasa which accompanied the Rumble in the Jungle heavyweight boxing championship match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in October 1974. The film was made from archival footage; other footage shot at the time focusing on the fight was edited to form the film When We Were Kings.
Far outside what’s normally taught as “history”, this 6-hour documentary attempts to explain what’s normally glossed over – Germany’s actions prior to WWII, Hitler’s popularity, the support of the Nazis by the Germans, the basis for hardline Nazi stances against Jews, and why Nazism was such a danger to the established world powers. It chronicles the German WWI defeat, communist attempts to take over Germany; hyperinflation during the Weimar Republic, widespread unemployment and misery that served as the foundation of Nazi principles, and Hitler’s amazing rise to power. It also reveals a personal side of Hitler: his family background, his artwork and struggles, and what motivated him to pursue a career in politics. While open to criticism for being “pro-Nazi” in its perspectives, the documentary does present many factual foundations for those perspectives, highlighting an endless list of hypocrisies and double-standards imposed on Germany in the years before, during, and after WWII.
300 miles off the coast of North America, in the dark waters of the Atlantic Ocean, a group of ships have come together at the site of the Titanic. Experts from the United States, Great Britain, Canada and France have convened with one goal, to conduct the first full-scale investigation of the Titanic Disaster.
The Serengeti’s fight over life and death is between predator and prey. The omnipresence of grazing animals means abundant kills for prides of golden-maned lions. Solitary leopards haunt the acacia trees lining the Seronera River, while numerous cheetahs scour the southeastern plains. Almost nowhere else in Africa can all of the continent s jackal species be found in the same place. The immensity of this animal drama is equaled by the liberating vastness of open space so characteristic of the Serengeti Plains, which extend out from sun-baked savannas to shimmering golden horizons that seem to lie at the end of the earth.
Longinotto’s documentary is about Brenda Myers-Powell, who fights against sexual exploitation and supports prostitutes in Chicago. Brenda knows what she is talking about: her own story, involving teenage prostitution and a life of violence and abuse, is in stark contrast to her dauntless energy and optimism.
A behind-the-scenes documentary pieced together from over 100 hours of footage showing not just the preparation that went into Katy Perry’s Super Bowl performance but the nerve it took to pull off such a massive, career-defining performance.
History of Jerusalem
Odette Springer is working in the B movie industry as a singer/composer, hating it but needing the work. She begins making this documentary about the low budget sex and slasher flicks and the people who work on them. Along the way, she meets unrepentantly boorish producers, directors arguing the legitimacy of what they’re doing and numerous actresses who feel trapped, with no other way to succeed in Hollywood. The project is eye-opening to the viewer…and to Odette herself.
A look at one of the most exclusive holiday destinations in the world – Necker Island. This reveals how the rich holiday, and what it’s like for the staff who serve them. For the first time viewers are given an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at one of the most exclusive holiday destinations in the world – Necker Island. This film is an intimate portrait of how the rich, powerful and famous holiday, and what it’s like for the staff who serve them. It’s an upstairs-downstairs world where nearly 100 staff cater to just 30 guests – where some have over a staggering £40,000 a night to experience the perfect island paradise. And while Necker is home to Sir Richard Branson and his family, it is also a serious commercial venture. Meeting the needs of these VIPs are the staff of British, European and local islanders. It may seem that they’ve landed the dream job working in paradise, however the realities of living in the middle of the Caribbean Sea bring a whole host of major challenges.
Four people seek a more sustainable and secure future by asking the question: “What is it really like to build and live in a tiny house?”
Documentarians Justine Shapiro and B.Z. Goldberg traveled to Israel to interview Palestinian and Israeli kids ages 11 to 13, assembling their views on living in a society afflicted with violence, separatism and religious and political extremism. This 2002 Oscar nominee for Best Feature Documentary culminates in an astonishing day in which two Israeli children meet Palestinian youngsters at a refugee camp.
This in-depth documentary explores the dark side of American higher education, exposing predatory for-profit colleges and the tactics they use to defraud students and the government.
One of the most enigmatic artists of the 20th century, writer, composer and wanderer Paul Bowles (1910-1999) is profiled by a filmmaker who has been obsessed with his genius since age nineteen. Set against the dramatic landscape of North Africa, the mystery of Bowles (famed author of The Sheltering Sky) begins to unravel in Jennifer Baichwal’s poetic and moving Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles. Rare, candid interviews with the reclusive Bowles–at home in Tangier, as well as in New York during an extraordinary final reunion with Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs–are intercut with conflicting views of his supporters and detractors. At the time in his mid-eighties, Bowles speaks with unprecedented candor about his work, his controversial private life and his relationships with Gertrude Stein, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, the Beats, and his wife and fellow author Jane Bowles.
Lonely son of a Canadian preacher man Michael builds the first professional wrestling company in faraway Finland. Young transsexual wrestler Jessica infiltrates into the company contesting Michael both physically and ideologically. Anger and frustration get to Michael who is now 40 years old still looking for companion. He is looking for love, but first must learn not to hate. As Michael finds true love online he redefines his values, and reinvents himself as a wrestler in love.
Between 1926 and 1927, the Italian intellectual and Communist political figure Antonio Gramsci spent 44 days imprisoned on the island of Ustica, off the northern coast of Sicily. Together with his fellow prisoners, he founded a school. This unique institution was open to all, welcoming people of all ages and social backgrounds, even the illiterate. Ustica still remembers this revolutionary school. Ustica, remote and neglected, still waits patiently at the harbor, hoping that the boat from the mainland will come.
Afghanistan’s film history might well have have been lost forever, if not for the brave custodians who risked their lives to conceal films from the Taliban regime. This is a chronicle of their attempts to preserve and restore thousands of hours of film.
Lying on the remote north west coast of England is one of the most secret places in the country – Sellafield, the most controversial nuclear facility in Britain. Now, Sellafield are letting nuclear physicist Professor Jim Al-Khalili and the television cameras in to discover the real story. Inside, Jim encounters some of the most dangerous substances on earth, reveals the nature of radiation and even attempts to split the atom. He sees inside a nuclear reactor, glimpses one of the rarest elements in the world – radioactive plutonium – and even subjects living tissue to deadly radiation. Ultimately, the film reveals Britain’s attempts – past, present and future – to harness the almost limitless power of the atom.
Dr. Feelgood shares several perspectives on prescription drug use, exploring the issues involved when doctors are faced with patients seeking help for chronic pain.
This documentary places the Bush Administration’s original justifications for war in Iraq within the larger context of a two-decade struggle by neo-conservatives to dramatically increase military spending while projecting American power and influence globally by means of force.
Delves into the shooting death of Mark Duggan, a young black British man, by London Metropolitan Police in 2011.