7.5
This immersive sensory odyssey from Academy Award–nominated documentarian Sam Green (THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND) explores the elemental phenomenon of sound by weaving together thirty-two specific auditory explorations into a meditation on the power of sound to bend time, cross borders, and profoundly shape our perception of the world around us. Featuring original music by JD Samson (Le Tigre, MEN), 32 SOUNDS takes the audience on a journey through time and space, exploring everything from forgotten childhood memories to the soundtrack of resistance to subaquatic symphonies, and inviting us to experience anew the astonishing sounds of everyday life.
7.5
An intimate and haunting portrayal of a quest for love and acceptance at any cost, this powerfully personal, compassionate documentary depicts the insidious influence of a secretive matriarchal religious order on three generations of the filmmaker’s family. In her captivating feature debut, Lebanese-American director Jude Chehab—who also shot the film—gracefully documents the unspoken ties and consequences of loyalty that have bonded her mother, grandmother, and herself to the mysterious organization. A captivating portrait of the toll that decades of unrequited love, lost hope, abuse, and despair take on a person, Q weaves a stunning multigenerational tale of the eternal search for meaning.
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.
7.4
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.
7.5
Meet Seymour Bernstein: a virtuoso pianist, veteran New Yorker, and true original who gave up a successful concert career to teach music. In this wonderfully warm, witty, and intimate tribute from his friend Ethan Hawke, Seymour shares unforgettable stories from his remarkable life, eye-opening words of wisdom, and his hard-won insights into art, creativity, and the search for fulfillment. A poignant reflection on the dedication, perseverance, and fortitude essential to creating both art and a rewarding life, SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION will leave audiences uplifted and inspired.
7.5
In 1979, Louis Malle traveled into the heart of Minnesota to capture the everyday lives of the men and women in a prosperous farming community. Six years later, during Ronald Reagan's second term, he returned to find drastic economic decline. Free of stereotypes about America's "heartland" God's Country, commissioned for American public television, is a stunning work of emotional and political clarity.
7.5
The Making of Fanny and Alexander is a fascinating look at the creation of a masterpiece. Directed by Ingmar Bergman himself, this feature-length documentary chronicles the methods of one of cinema’s true luminaries as he labors to realize his crowning production. Featuring Bergman at work with many of his longtime collaborators—including cinematographer Sven Nykvist and actors Erland Josephson, Gunnar Björnstrand, and Harriet Andersson—The Making of Fanny and Alexander is a witty and revealing portrait of a virtuoso filmmaker.
7.5
Made in the spring of 1979, not long after the shah’s overthrow, this extraordinary film serves as a Rorschach blot for people in a revolutionary mindset. Abbas Kiarostami stages two versions of a classroom-discipline situation—in one, a student tells on a troublemaker; in the other, seven students refuse to rat—and then has several adult authorities comment on the outcomes. The fascinating responses evoke conflicts between order and resistance.
7.5
Saul J. Turell's Academy Award-winning documentary short Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist, narrated by Sidney Poitier, traces his career through his activism and his socially charged performances of his signature song, "Ol' Man River."
7.5
Upon its release 1979—when tap dancing was largely seen as a relic of the past—this captivating documentary instantly revived interest in a uniquely American art form. Through a celebration of three remarkable dancers—Bunny Briggs, Chuck Green, and Harold “Sandman” Sims—director George T. Nierenberg traces the history of tap and its importance within African American culture, transmitting his love for the art and its practitioners with an infectious sense of joy. Featuring music by jazz legend Lionel Hampton, NO MAPS ON MY TAPS remains an essential cultural record that has inspired countless young dancers to put on tap shoes.
7.5
RUNNING FENCE depicts the long struggle by the artists, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, to build a 24 mile fence of white fabric over the hills of California disappearing into the Pacific. Cost: 3 million dollars. The idea at first must seem the limit of absurdity for the fence was taken down as planned at the end of two weeks and now exists solely on film. There is a struggle between the artists and the state bureaucracy, who want to prevent the fence being erected, even though the ranchers whose land it crosses want it. Opposition seems insurmountable.
7.5
An documentary about a real-life marriage in crisis, in which the couple attempts to identify and resolve the conflicts and resentments that have driven them to the brink of separation.
7.5
In this riveting short documentary by pioneering Trinidadian-British filmmaker Horace Ové, James Baldwin and comedian-activist Dick Gregory speak to a group of radical West Indian students in London about everything from the state of the civil rights movement to the perils of false consciousness. The provocative title, drawn from Baldwin’s words, refers to one of the painful realities of Black American identity: that even his name conjures a history of slavery.
7.5
Let’s talk about sex. In this radically engaged and engaging documentary, Pier Paolo Pasolini takes to the streets, town squares, beaches, factories, and universities of 1960s Italy to solicit everyday citizens’ thoughts on a host of hot-button subjects, including sex work, gender equality, homosexuality, and divorce (then illegal in Italy). What emerges is both a kaleidoscopic cross section of faces and places—from the industrialized cities of the North to the rural villages of the South—and an incisive portrait of a society where, despite the rapid modernization brought on by the postwar “economic miracle,” hypocrisy, repression, and conformism still hold sway.
7.5
Before WOODSTOCK and MONTEREY POP, there was FESTIVAL. From 1963 through 1966, Murray Lerner visited the annual Newport Folk Festival to document a thriving, idealistic musical movement as it reached its peak as a popular phenomenon. Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Howlin’ Wolf, Johnny Cash, the Staple Singers, Pete Seeger, Son House, and Peter, Paul and Mary were just a few of the legends who shared the stage at Newport, treating audiences to a range of folk music that encompassed the genre’s roots in blues, country, and gospel as well as its newer flirtations with rock and roll. Shooting in gorgeous black and white, Lerner juxtaposes performances with snapshot interviews with artists and their fans, weaving footage from four years of the festival into an intimate record of a pivotal time in music—and in American culture at large.
7.5
With extraordinary access and unflinching frankness, this remarkable, underseen documentary offers an X-ray of the soul of a divided America working through the social shockwaves of the civil rights movement. The film chronicles the struggles of Rev. L. William Youngdahl, pastor of the Augustana Lutheran Church in Omaha, Nebraska, as he tries to persuade members of his all-white congregation to reach out to their Black neighbors in an attempt to right some of the wrongs of systemic racism. A TIME FOR BURNING captures both the resistance of the white churchgoers, who speak candidly about their fears of integration, and the incisive perspectives of the Black residents (including firebrand activist and future state senator Ernie Chambers) who see through the hypocrisy of the church.
7.5
Agnès Varda constructed this invigorating travelogue from over four hundred still photographs taken during a trip to Cuba in the wake of its 1959 revolution. Through fluid montage, the people captured by her camera come to playful, loving life.
7.5
This contemplative short film, directed by Maurice Pialat in 1960, depicts life in the banlieues, or suburbs, of Paris and the dead-end existence of the youth residing there.
7.5
Shot in 1953, though not completed until 1957, Daybreak Express was the first film D. A. Pennebaker made, a mad rush of images of New York City captured from a train and edited to the rhythm of Duke Ellington's song of the same name. A jazz aficionado, Pennebaker thought his career would continue along this path, making short films cut to songs.
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.
7.3
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.'
7.4
In 1956, Floyd Norman made history when he became the first Black animator to be hired by Disney, where he worked on such classics as SLEEPING BEAUTY and 101 DALMATIANS before being selected by Walt Disney himself to serve on the story team for THE JUNGLE BOOK. Featuring testimonials from many of Norman’s colleagues and friends, including Whoopi Goldberg and Leonard Maltin, this warmly affectionate documentary catches up with Norman at age eighty. As vital and youthful as ever, he reflects on his trailblazing career with humility and humor while continuing to be a force in the animation world.
7.4
Whether headlining films in Sweden, Italy, or Hollywood, Ingrid Bergman always pierced the screen with a singular soulfulness. With this new documentary, made on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of Bergman's birth, director Stig Björkman allows us unprecedented access to her world, culling from the most personal of archival materials, letters, diary entries, photographs, and 8 mm and 16 mm footage Bergman herself shot, and following her from youth to tumultuous married life and motherhood. Intimate and artful, this lovingly assembled portrait, narrated by actor Alicia Vikander, provides luminous insight into the life and career of an undiminished legend.
7.4
Louis I. Kahn, who died in 1974, was one of the greatest architects of the twentieth century, but he left behind an illegitimate son, Nathaniel, and a personal life of secrets and broken promises. MY ARCHITECT takes us on a heartbreaking yet humorous journey as Nathaniel attempts to reconnect with his deceased father. The riveting narrative takes us from the men’s room in Penn Station, where Kahn died bankrupt and alone, to the bustling streets of Bangladesh, the inner sanctums of Jerusalem politics, and unforgettable encounters with the world’s most celebrated architects. In a documentary with all the emotional impact of a dramatic feature film, Nathaniel’s journey becomes a universal investigation of identity—and a celebration of art and, ultimately, life itself.
