8.2
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—PARIS IS BURNING brings it, celebrating the joy of movement, the force of eloquence, and the draw of community.
6.6
“Is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?” At the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders invited fifteen other filmmakers to give their personal answers to that question. Their responses—recorded privately via a static camera inside a hotel room—form an enlightening, provocative, and philosophical reflection on the challenges then facing filmmakers and on the possible future of their industry. Featuring luminaries such as Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Steven Spielberg, Michelangelo Antonioni, Susan Seidelman, Yılmaz Güney, and, in his last interview before his death just weeks later, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, ROOM 666 offers a uniquely candid look at the relationship between artists and their craft.
7.1
Founded in 1958 to produce aviation engines, the once prosperous, now abandoned Chengdu Engine Group, known as Factory 420, awaits its destiny. Sold for millions to real estate developers, it will be transformed into an emblem of China’s new market economy: a complex of luxury apartment blocks called 24 City. Constructed around eight dramatic interviews, punctuated by snippets of pop songs and poetry, along with beautifully shot footage of the demolition, 24 CITY attempts to understand the complexity of the social changes sweeping across China by exploring both the factory’s physical destruction and its powerful symbolic echo of a half century of Communist rule.
6.6
An electrifying portrait of Brazil’s fraught contemporary moment that blends documentary with narrative and genre elements, DRY GROUND BURNING reunites filmmakers Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós (ONCE THERE WAS BRASILIA) to offer a unique vision of the country’s possible future. Just out of prison, Léa (Léa Alves da Silva) returns home to the Brasilia favela of Sol Nascente and relives her past experiences with her half-sister Chitara (Joana Darc Furtado), the fearless leader of an all-female gang that once stole and refined oil from underground pipes and sold gasoline to a clandestine network of motorcyclists. Living in constant opposition to Jair Bolsonaro’s fiercely authoritarian and militarized government, Chitara’s women claim the streets for themselves as a declaration of radical political resistance on behalf of the incarcerated and the oppressed.
7.9
For nearly five years, acclaimed German filmmaker Werner Herzog desperately tried to complete one of the most ambitious and difficult films of his career, FITZCARRALDO, the story of one man’s attempt to build an opera house deep in the Amazon jungle. Documentary filmmaker Les Blank captured the unfolding of this production, made more perilous by Herzog’s determination to shoot the most daunting scenes without models or special effects, including a sequence requiring hundreds of native Indians to pull a full-size, 320-ton steamship over a small mountain. The result is an extraordinary document of the filmmaking process and a unique look into the single-minded mission of one of cinema’s most fearless directors.
7.3
L writes letters to her estranged lover. Through these letters, we get a glimpse into the drastic changes taking place around her. Merging reality with fiction, dreams, memories, fantasies and anxieties, an amorphous narrative unfolds.
7.6
Traveling from the streets of Havana to the stage of Carnegie Hall, this revelatory documentary captures a forgotten generation of Cuba’s brightest musical talents as they enjoy an unexpected encounter with world fame. The veteran vocalists and instrumentalists collaborated with American guitarist and roots-music champion Ry Cooder to form the Buena Vista Social Club, playing a jazz-inflected mix of cha-cha, mambo, bolero, and other traditional Latin American styles, and recording an album that won a Grammy and made them an international phenomenon. In the wake of this success, director Wim Wenders filmed the ensemble’s members—including golden-voiced Ibrahim Ferrer and piano virtuoso Rubén González—in a series of illuminating interviews and live performances. The result is one of the most beloved documentaries of the 1990s, and an infectious ode to a neglected corner of Cuba’s prerevolutionary heritage.
7.5
The final film by renowned director and cinema historian Peter Bogdanovich is an affectionate, illuminating celebration of the life, career, and artistry of pioneering filmmaker and comedian Buster Keaton, whose ambition, daring, and technical innovation made him one of the great visionaries of the silent era. Featuring interviews with legends like Mel Brooks, Quentin Tarantino, and Werner Herzog and vividly illustrated with a wealth of archival footage, THE GREAT BUSTER is an essential introduction to a singularly influential artist whose work continues to astonish and thrill.
7.7
Agnès Varda’s extraordinary late-career renaissance began with this wonderfully idiosyncratic, self-reflexive documentary in which the French cinema icon explores the world of modern-day gleaners: those living on the margins who survive by foraging for what society throws away. Embracing the intimacy and freedom of digital filmmaking, Varda posits herself as a kind of gleaner of images and ideas, one whose generous, expansive vision makes room for ruminations on everything from aging to the birth of cinema to the beauty of heart-shaped potatoes. By turns playful, philosophical, and subtly political, THE GLEANERS AND I is a warmly human reflection on the contradictions of our consumerist world from an artist who, like her subjects, finds unexpected richness where few think to look.
6.8
A sublime work of trance-state cinema, the debut feature by the Mexican Ethiopian filmmaker Jessica Beshir is a hypnotic immersion in the world of rural Ethiopia, a place where one commodity—khat, a euphoria-inducing plant once prized for its supposedly mystical properties—holds sway over the rituals and rhythms of everyday life. As if under the intoxicating influence of the drug itself, FAYA DAYI unfurls as a hallucinogenic cinematic reverie, capturing hushed, intimate moments in the existences of everyone from the harvesters of the crop to people lost in its narcotic haze to a desperate but determined younger generation searching for an escape from the region’s political strife. The film’s exquisite monochrome cinematography—each frame a masterpiece sculpted from light and shadow—and time-bending, elliptical editing create a ravishing sensory experience that hovers between consciousness and dreaming.
8.6
Ten years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, filmmaker Alain Resnais documented the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek in NIGHT AND FOG (NUIT ET BROUILLARD), one of the first cinematic reflections on the Holocaust. Juxtaposing the stillness of the abandoned camps’ empty buildings with haunting wartime footage, Resnais investigates humanity’s capacity for violence, and presents the devastating suggestion that such horrors could occur again.
7.7
Chris Marker, filmmaker, poet, novelist, photographer, editor, and now videographer and digital multimedia artist, has been challenging moviegoers, philosophers, and himself for years with his complex queries about time, memory, and the rapid advancement of life on this planet. SANS SOLEIL is his mind-bending free-form travelogue that journeys from Africa to Japan.
7.4
Restored by the Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata in association with Ciné-Tamaris and The Film Foundation. Restoration funding provided by the Annenberg Foundation, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and The Film Foundation.
7.5
Meet Big and Little Edie Beale: mother and daughter, high-society dropouts, and reclusive relatives of Jackie Onassis. The two manage to thrive together amid the decay and disorder of their East Hampton, New York, mansion, making for an eerily ramshackle echo of the American Camelot. An impossibly intimate portrait, this 1976 documentary by Albert and David Maysles, codirected by Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer, quickly became a cult classic and established Little Edie as a fashion icon and philosopher queen.
7.3
On the streets of Tokyo and in meetings with some of Yasujiro Ozu's legendary collaborators, renowned director Wim Wenders explores the world of Ozu, whom Wenders considers 'a sacred treasure of cinema.'
7
Made up of intimate, revelatory footage of the singular author and poet filmed over the course of five years, Howard Brookner’s 1983 documentary about William S. Burroughs was for decades mainly the stuff of legend; that changed when Aaron Brookner, the late director’s nephew, discovered a print of it in 2011 and spearheaded a restoration. Now viewers can enjoy the invigorating candidness of BURROUGHS: THE MOVIE, a one-of-a-kind nonfiction portrait that was brought to life with the help of a remarkable crew of friends, including Jim Jarmusch and Tom DiCillo, and that features on-screen appearances by fellow artists of Burroughs’s including Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke, Patti Smith, and Terry Southern.
7
Vernon is a town in the Florida panhandle surrounded by swamps. Here, Errol Morris found the quietly fascinating subjects for the follow-up to his galvanizing debut, GATES OF HEAVEN. As ever humane yet sharply focused, Morris lets his camera subjects pontificate and perambulate the environs of this seemingly unremarkable little community. The result is a strangely philosophical work that cemented its director’s standing as an important figure in American film.
8
This Oscar-winning documentary is a twentieth-century fable, the story of an American dreamer who rose from humble origins to the heights of political power. Robert S. McNamara was both witness to and participant in many of the crucial events of his lifetime: the crippling Depression of the 1930s; the industrialization of the war years; the development of a different kind of warfare based on air power; and the creation of a new American meritocracy. He was also an idealist who saw his dreams and ideals challenged by the ambiguous role he played in history. Filmmaker Errol Morris lets McNamara tell his story in his own words, letting his subject draw lessons from the successes and failures of his career.
6.7
Visionary cinema historian Mark Cousins (THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY) charts the unknown territory of the imagination of one of the twentieth century’s most revolutionary artists. Granted unprecedented access to hundreds of sketches, drawings, and paintings by Orson Welles—tantalizing, never-before-seen glimpses into the filmmaker’s rich inner life—Cousins sheds new light on the experiences, dreams, desires, and obsessions that fueled his creativity and inspired his masterpieces. Playful, profound, and as daringly iconoclastic as its subject, THE EYES OF ORSON WELLES is a one-of-a-kind work of visual archaeology, a fresh way of looking at a cinematic giant whose singular worldview—fiercely humanist, defiantly antiauthoritarian—resonates now more urgently than ever.
7.4
A boxing match in Brooklyn; life in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina; the daily routine of a Nigerian midwife; an intimate family moment at home with the director: Kirsten Johnson weaves these scenes and others into her film CAMERAPERSON, a tapestry of footage captured over her twenty-five-year career as a documentary cinematographer. Through a series of episodic juxtapositions, Johnson explores the relationships between image makers and their subjects, the tension between the objectivity and intervention of the camera, and the complex interaction of unfiltered reality with crafted narrative. A work that combines documentary, autobiography, and ethical inquiry, CAMERAPERSON is a moving glimpse into one filmmaker’s personal journey and a thoughtful examination of what it means to train a camera on the world.
8
“If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes. If we opened me up, we’d find beaches.” Originally intended to be Agnès Varda’s farewell to filmmaking, this enchanting auto-portrait, made in her eightieth year, is a freewheeling journey through her life, career, and artistic philosophy. Revisiting the places that shaped her—from the North Sea beaches of Belgium where she spent her childhood to the Mediterranean village where she shot her first film to the boardwalks of Los Angeles where she lived with her husband, Jacques Demy—Varda reflects on a lifetime of creation and inspiration, successes and setbacks, heartbreak and joy. Replete with images of wonder and whimsy—the ocean reflected in a kaleidoscope of mirrors, the streets of Paris transformed into a sandy beach, the filmmaker herself ensconced in the belly of a whale—The Beaches of Agnès is a playful and poignant record of a life lived fully and passionately in the name of cinema.
7
Winner of the SXSW Audience Award for Documentary Feature, RESYNATOR marks filmmaker Alison Tavel’s directorial debut, chronicling her ten-year journey as she uncovers the revolutionary synthesizer her late father created in the 1970s. What begins as a resurrection of the instrument evolves into an intimate and deeply personal journey—one that unexpectedly forges a profound connection with the father she never knew. Featuring appearances from Peter Gabriel, Fred Armisen, Mark Ronson, Grace Potter, and more, this heartfelt documentary is both a touching family portrait and a captivating deep dive into a nearly forgotten chapter of synth history.
7.1
When filmmaker Chris Wilcha revisits the record store he worked at as a teenager in New Jersey, he finds the once-thriving bastion of music and weirdness from his youth slowly falling apart and out of touch with the times. FLIPSIDE documents his tragicomic attempt to revive the store while revisiting other documentary projects he has abandoned over the years. In the process, Wilcha captures “This American Life” host Ira Glass in the midst of a creative rebirth, discovers the origin story of David Bowie’s ode to a local New Jersey cable-television hero, and uncovers the unlikely connection between jazz photographer Herman Leonard and TV writer David Milch. This disparate collection of stories coheres into something strange and expansive—a moving meditation on music, work, and the sacrifices and satisfaction of trying to live a creative life.
8
“To call RYUICHI SAKAMOTO | OPUS a concert film would be correct and also drastically inadequate . . . A testament to the artistic spirit and, above all, an act of love.” —Sheri Linden, “The Hollywood Reporter” “A spare, lovely work . . . The culmination of a lifelong journey.” —Bilge Ebiri, “New York Magazine”
