6.7
In 1964, author Samuel Beckett set out on one of the strangest ventures in cinematic history: his embattled collaboration with silent-era genius Buster Keaton on the production of a short, untitled avant-garde film. Beckett was nearing the peak of his fame, which would culminate in his receiving a Nobel Prize five years later. Keaton, in his waning years, would not live to see Beckett’s canonization. The film they made along with director Alan Schneider, renegade publisher Barney Rosset, and Academy Award–winning cinematographer Boris Kaufman has been the subject of praise, condemnation, and controversy for decades. Yet the eclectic participants are just one part of a story that stretches to the birth of cinema and encompasses our very understanding of human consciousness. NOTFILM is the feature-length movie on FILM’s production and its philosophical implications, utilizing additional outtakes, never-before-heard audio recordings of the production meetings, and other rare archival elements.
6.7
Legendary Beat visionary Bob Kaufman considered poetry a key to human survival, an idea made all the more legitimate by the longevity it is granted: the things he saw, heard, tasted, felt, and, most of all, thought were preserved in his work. Embodying the spirit of those efforts, director Billy Woodberry’s first feature since his 1983 LA Rebellion landmark BLESS THEIR LITTLE HEARTS is perhaps the closest we can come to knowing the man and his time. Both dense and nimble in its assemblage of archival footage and photos, interviews with contemporaries, and readings from the likes of Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, AND WHEN I DIE looks back at a familiar era with new eyes, thanks in no small part to the honest assessment provided by many figures of New York’s Beat generation some half-century removed.
7.2
A sublime work of art in its own right, this beautifully shot, endlessly revealing documentary offers unprecedented insight into the life and work of one of the greatest artists of our time. In the spring and summer of 2009, legendary German painter Gerhard Richter granted filmmaker Corinna Belz access to his studio, where he was working on a series of large abstract paintings. In quiet, highly concentrated images, GERHARD RICHTER PAINTING provides a fly-on-the-wall perspective on the very personal, tension-filled process of artistic creation. Richter is his own worst critic, destroying multiple canvases before his creative spirit takes hold and the astonishing final compositions emerge.
7.8
In DONT LOOK BACK, D. A. Pennebaker immortalized Bob Dylan’s landmark 1965 British tour with one of the greatest music documentaries of all time. With 65 REVISITED, Pennebaker returned to his trove of archival footage to create an alternate record of that now-legendary tour, assembling outtakes and unused footage for an equally intimate, revealing document of the brilliantly enigmatic singer-songwriter as he bid farewell to his acoustic phase. Devoting more time to the music than the original film, this essential companion piece features Dylan’s enthralling performances of songs like “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” and “If You Gotta Go, Go Now,” alongside appearances by fellow luminaries like Joan Baez, Nico, and Bob Neuwirth.
7.1
Sing along with the common people in this exuberant, appropriately offbeat tribute to the charmingly cheeky Britpop legends. Though culminating with the farewell concert the band played to thousands of adoring fans in their hometown of Sheffield, England, PULP: A FILM ABOUT LIFE, DEATH & SUPERMARKETS is by no means a traditional concert film or rock doc. As much a testament to the band as it is to the city and inhabitants of Sheffield, the film weaves exclusive concert footage with man-on-the-street interviews and dreamy staged sequences to paint a picture much larger, funnier, and more life-affirming than any music film of recent memory.
6.7
One of the pioneers of Direct Cinema, filmmaker Richard Leacock helped revolutionize the art of documentary filmmaking using handheld cameras and microphones to create a sense of vérité, fly-on-the-wall immediacy. In this portrait of a true original, Les Blank and codirector Gina Leibrecht visit Leacock at his rustic farm in Normandy, France, where Leacock expounds upon his legendary career and cinematic philosophy while sharing his passion for food and cooking.
7.6
What if you could morph your car into a mobile work of art and drive it down the road for all to see? What would it look like? What would the world think of you? How would you be changed? AUTOMORPHOSIS looks into the minds and hearts of a delightful collection of eccentrics, visionaries, and just plain folks who have transformed their autos into artworks. On a humorous and touching journey, we discover what drives the creative process for these unconventional characters. And in the end, we find that an art car has the power to change us and to alter our view of our increasingly homogeneous world.
8.1
Jimi Hendrix arrived in California virtually unknown. Returning stateside from London, where he had moved to launch his musical career, Hendrix exploded at Monterey, flooring an unsuspecting audience with his maniacal six-string pyrotechnics. JIMI PLAYS MONTEREY features the entire set of this legendary musician, a performance that has entered rock-and-roll mythology.
7
Two decades after his cult documentary CANE TOADS: AN UNNATURAL HISTORY first brought the story to the screen, director Mark Lewis invites you to join the cane toads on their unstoppable journey across the Australian continent as they leave behind them a broken trail of human folly, endless controversy, and a series of extraordinary close encounters. Meet the scientists, community groups, politicians, and ordinary people who have crossed their path, and discover the incredible and ongoing story behind one of Australia’s most notorious environmental blunders. Poignant and hilarious, CANE TOADS: THE CONQUEST is the irreverent, comic, and provocative true story about the great Australian menace.
5.8
This 2016 documentary, directed by Valentina Agostinis on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of BLOW-UP, features the film's dialogue assistant, Piers Haggard, model Jill Kennington, former Yardbirds manager Simon Napier-Bell, photographer David Montgomery, historian Philippe Garner, art historian David Alan Mellor, and several others. The documentary returns to a few key locations and explores director Michelangelo Antonioni's meticulous approach to art and photography.
7.9
Michael Glawogger’s startling, unflinching look at some of the world’s most dangerous jobs is an eye-opening confrontation with the kind of backbreaking, life-threatening labor that is often rendered invisible. Shooting amid the harsh conditions of volcanic sulfur mines in Indonesia, a ship-breaking yard in Pakistan, a Nigerian butcher’s market, a Chinese steel mill, and beyond, Glawogger captures images of overwhelming, sometimes almost apocalyptic power set to an entrancing score by John Zorn.
7.2
GRAMERCY STORIES is an inspiring look inside a unique residence in Manhattan that provides a safe home for twenty-five gay and transgender teenagers who have experienced violence at home and on the streets. Told from their candid, often witty perspective, the film follows these courageous kids as they strive to remake their lives.
6.3
FIELD NOTES is an experimental portrait of the ghosts embedded in the culture of Trinidad and Tobago. Structured as a visual and aural field guide to the spirits, jumbies, shapeshifters, and bloodsuckers that inhabit the island’s lore, it focuses on the places where the natural and supernatural collide.
6.1
In fifteen linked chapters shot in locations ranging from Moscow to New York to Istanbul, Jem Cohen merges city symphony, diary film, and personal/political essay to create a vivid portrait of contemporary life. Perhaps the most personal of Cohen's films, COUNTING measures street life, light, and time, noting not only surveillance and overdevelopment but resistance and its phantoms as manifested in music, animals, and everyday magic.
6.9
Director Stig Björkman creates a portrait of Ingmar Bergman through behind-the-scenes footage collected over a forty year period, as well as a testament to Bergman's lasting influence through interviews with directors Woody Allen, Olivier Assayas, Martin Scorsese, and others.
5.6
The films of Kevin Jerome Everson are rigorously crafted, thoughtfully illuminating records of Black American working-class life that bring into focus the often invisible routines of work and labor. In Tonsler Park, Everson trains his black-and-white 16 mm camera on the activity around voting precincts in Charlottesville, Virginia (future site of the infamous white supremacist Unite the Right rally), on Election Day, November 8, 2016—a day that would prove pivotal in the course of American democracy. Capturing, in detail, the vital work of mostly Black civil servants and citizens engaging in the democratic process, Everson pointedly centers their participation in a system that has long sought to disenfranchise them.
6.7
Reconstructing a series of unearthed home movies, Dustin Guy Defa dubs his own voice over the voices of his family members to create an unsettling personal portrait of family dysfunction, revealing the devastating legacy of addiction, abuse, and trauma embedded within the images.
7.1
Filmed over sixteen years, this obsessively made documentary explores the creative life and adventures of the eccentric artist and entrepreneur Harrod Blank. Chronicling everything from his youth growing up in the woods with chickens and working as a camera assistant for his father, the venerable filmmaker Les Blank, to the creation of his first attention-getting art car, to his current multifaceted career as creator and head of a nationwide art-car movement, this engaging portrait is an appropriately offbeat ode to a true original defiantly pursuing his own form of nonconformity.
7.7
The Nazi persecution of homosexuals may be one of the least-told stories of the Third Reich. Directed by Oscar winners Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, PARAGRAPH 175 fills a crucial gap in the historical record, and reveals the lasting consequences of this hidden chapter of twentieth-century history. These are stories of survivors—sometimes bitter, but just as often filled with irony and humor; tortured by their memories, yet infused with a powerful will to endure. Their moving testimonies, rendered with evocative images of their lives and times, tell a haunting, compelling story of human resistance. Intimate in its portrayals, sweeping in its implications, PARAGRAPH 175 raises provocative questions about memory, history, and identity.
7.1
Join noted tea guru and importer David Lee Hoffman as he scours China for the finest teas in the world. Following Hoffman as he travels to local tea farms deep in the Chinese countryside, extols the virtues of organic farming and the fertilizing benefits of the humble earthworm, and talks tea with none other than Werner Herzog, director Les Blank (shooting digitally for the first time) crafts a portrait of a man driven by an all-consuming passion and an ode to the myriad pleasures of an ancient beverage.
7.9
Filmed over the course of more than ten years, from 1987 to 1998, INSTRUMENT is director Jem Cohen’s visceral, fittingly unconventional portrait of legendary DC punk band Fugazi from their origins through their electrifying prime. Capturing the blistering intensity of their live shows, intimate moments backstage and in the studio, and interviews with members including frontmen Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto, the film sheds light on an often enigmatic band whose unwavering commitment to their independent, anticorporate ideals—forgoing money and mainstream fame in favor of accessibility and activism—continues to inspire the DIY underground.
6.3
For more then 20 years Charles Manson has refused to communicate to the outside world. Until now. These are actual never before heard phone conversations between Canadian best selling author Marlin Marynick and Charles Manson.
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.
7.9
In 1974, Leon Gast traveled to Africa to film Zaïre 74, a music festival planned to accompany an unprecedented sports spectacle: the Rumble in the Jungle, in which late-career underdog Muhammad Ali would contend with the younger powerhouse George Foreman for the boxing heavyweight championship title—“a fight between two Blacks in a Black nation, organized by Blacks,” as a Kinshasa billboard put it. When the main event was delayed, extending Ali’s stay in Africa, Gast wound up amassing a treasure trove of footage, observing the wildly charismatic athlete training for one of the toughest bouts of his career while basking in his role as Black America’s proud ambassador to postcolonial Africa. Two decades in the making, WHEN WE WERE KINGS features interviews with Norman Mailer and George Plimpton that illustrate the sensational impact of the fight, rounding out an Academy Award–winning portrait of Ali that captures his charm, grace, and defiance.
