Betty Tells Her Story
1972, Movie
7.3

This poignant tale of beauty, identity, and a dress is considered a classic of documentary filmmaking. It was the first independent film of the women’s movement to explore the issues of body image, self-worth, and appearance in American society. In this unconventional documentary, Betty tells her story of the search for the “perfect dress” twice—first as a humorous anecdote and again as her underlying feelings emerge. The contrast between the two stories is haunting.

Faces of November
1964, Movie
7.3

An intimate portrait of President John F. Kennedy's funeral in November of 1963, this short work crafted by documentarian Robert Drew captures one of the most solemn moments in U.S. history.

À propos de Nice
1930, Movie
7.3

Jean Vigo was twenty-five when he made this, his debut film, a silent cinematic poem that reveals, through a thrilling and ironic use of montage, the economic reality hidden behind the facade of the Mediterranean resort town of Nice. The first of Vigo’s several collaborations with cinematographer Boris Kaufman (Dziga Vertov’s brother and a future Oscar winner), À PROPOS DE NICE is both a scathing and invigorating look at 1930 French culture.

The White Stadium
1928, Movie
7.3

THE WHITE STADIUM (Das Weisse Stadion), the film of the II Olympic Winter Games St. Moritz 1928 in Switzerland, holds particular interest because it was directed by Arnold Fanck, a geologist turned filmmaker known for his sumptuous outdoor cinematography and his aesthete's eye for filming natural landscapes. On a technical level, THE WHITE STADIUM exemplifies the rapid progress in Olympic films where cameras and montage are concerned.

Anselm
2023, Movie
7.2

In ANSELM, Wim Wenders creates a hypnotic portrait of Anselm Kiefer, one of the most innovative and important painters and sculptors of our time. Shot in 6K resolution—and released theatrically in 3D—the film presents an immersive cinematic experience of the German artist’s work, which explores the overawing beauty of human existence, landscape, and myth, and confronts the horrors of his country’s history, seeking to undo the postwar silence in which Kiefer came of age. Through archival footage, reenactment, and direct access to his subject at work in the massive installation in Southern France where he now lives amid his creations, Wenders traces the arc of Kiefer’s career, provoking an engagement with creativity through the senses, intellect, and spirit.

Mizuko
2019, Movie
7.2

In Japan, there is a special way to grieve after having an abortion. Inspired by these Buddhist rituals, MIZUKO is an intimate look at how a half-Japanese American woman reevaluates the controversial drawing of “the line” in abortion ethics when she becomes pregnant herself.

The Above
2015, Movie
7.2

This 2015 short film by Kirsten Johnson was commissioned by Field of Vision, a filmmaker-driven visual journalism unit that pairs directors with developing stories around the globe. In THE ABOVE, a U.S. military surveillance balloon floats on a tether high about Kabul, Afghanistan. Its capacities are highly classified and deeply mysterious.

Gerhard Richter Painting
2012, Movie
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.

Gramercy Stories
2008, Movie
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.

The Beales of Grey Gardens
2006, Movie
7.2

The 1976 cinema vérité classic GREY GARDENS, which captured in remarkable close-up the lives of the eccentric East Hampton recluses Big and Little Edie Beale, has spawned everything from a midnight-movie cult following to a Broadway musical, to an upcoming Hollywood adaptation. The filmmakers then went back to their vaults of footage to create part two, THE BEALES OF GREY GARDENS, a tribute both to these indomitable women and to the original landmark documentary’s legions of fans, who have made them American counterculture icons.

First Graders
1996, Movie
7.2

Inspired by his work at Kanoon and his own sons’ schooling, the first of Abbas Kiarostami’s two documentary features about education looks in on a schoolyard of chanting, playful boys but mainly transpires in the office of a supervisor who has to deal with latecomers and discipline problems. You can almost see the boys’ personalities forming in their first encounters with authorities and peers outside the home.

Shinjuku Boys
1995, Movie
7.2

This remarkable documentary offers rich insight into gender and sexuality in Japan via a candid portrait of Kazuki, Tatsu, and Gaish, three trans masc hosts working at the New Marilyn Club in Tokyo’s bustling Shinjuku district. As the film follows them at home and on the job, all three talk frankly about their lives, revealing their views on love, sex, and identity. Alternating with these illuminating interviews are fabulous sequences shot inside the club, a place patronized largely by heterosexual women.

Lillehammer ’94: 16 Days of Glory
1994, Movie
7.2

Since television coverage of the Olympic Games had almost reached saturation point, Bud Greenspan made LILLEHAMMER '94: 16 DAYS OF GLORY to dwell more exclusively on personalities and champions rather than events.

The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years
1988, Movie
7.2

The second in Penelope Spheeris’s trilogy on alternative LA, THE METAL YEARS takes a fast-paced look at the outrageous heavy metal scene of the late eighties. Set in Los Angeles, the film explores the lives of struggling musicians, fans, and starstruck groupies. Featuring Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, Poison, and members of Aerosmith, Kiss, and Motörhead, as well as performances by Megadeth, Faster Pussycat, Lizzy Borden, London, Odin, and Seduce, this raucous and entertaining chapter chronicles the lonely naiveté of the striving bands, the endless flow of alcohol and drugs, and the relentless sexism endemic to the scene.

A Place of Rage
1991, Movie
7.2

Featuring enlightening interviews with Angela Davis, June Jordan, and Alice Walker, this essential documentary is an exuberant celebration of Black American women and their achievements. Within the context of the civil rights, Black power, feminist, and LGBT movements, the trio reassess how women such as Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer revolutionized American society and the world. Featuring the music of Prince, Janet Jackson, the Neville Brothers, and the Staple Singers, A PLACE OF RAGE illuminates a stirring moment in American history from the perspective of those on the forefront of social change.

Jane B. by Agnès V.
1988, Movie
7.2

The interests, obsessions, and fantasies of two singular artists converge in this inspired collaboration between Agnès Varda and her longtime friend the actor Jane Birkin. Made over the course of a year and motivated by Birkin’s fortieth birthday—a milestone she admits to some anxiety over—JANE B. PAR AGNÈS V. contrasts the private, reflective Birkin with Birkin the icon, as Varda casts her variously as a classical muse, a femme fatale, a Spanish dancer, Joan of Arc, and even a deadpan Laurel opposite a clownish Hardy in a fanciful slapstick spoof. Made in the spirit of pure, uninhibited play, this free-flowing dual portrait unfolds as a shared reverie between two women as they collapse the boundaries between artist and subject.

Gap-Toothed Women
1987, Movie
7.2

Filmmaker Les Blank breezily questions our commonly accepted standards of beauty with this paean to women with extra-wide dental spaces.

Islands
1987, Movie
7.2

For two brief weeks in May of 1983, Christo and Jeanne-Claude's piece entitled Surrounded Islands blossomed on the waters of Biscayne Bay, Florida. Eleven scrub-pine islands were surrounded by 6.5 million square feet of bright pink fabric. A three-year struggle, a work of art; a political drama interwoven with two other projects-in-progress; the wrapping of the Pont Neuf in Paris and the Reichstag in Berlin.

… And the Pursuit of Happiness
1986, Movie
7.2

In 1986, Louis Malle, himself a transplant to the United States, set out to investigate the ever-widening range of immigrant experience in America. Interviewing a variety of newcomers (from teachers to astronauts to doctors) in middle- and working-class communities from coast to coast, Malle paints a generous, humane portrait of their individual struggles in an increasingly polyglot nation.

Antonio Gaudí
1984, Movie
7.2

Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926) designed some of the world’s most astonishing buildings, interiors, and parks; Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara constructed some of the most aesthetically audacious films ever made. In ANTONIO GAUDÍ, their artistry melds in a unique, enthralling cinematic experience. Less a documentary than a visual poem, Teshigahara’s film takes viewers on a tour of Gaudí’s truly spectacular architecture, including his massive, still-unfinished master­piece, the Sagrada Família basilica in Barcelona. With camera work as bold and sensual as the curves of his subject’s organic structures, Teshigahara immortalizes Gaudí on film.

India Cabaret
1985, Movie
7.2

This documentary examines the line separating “good” and “bad” women in Indian society, specifically by focusing on the dancers at a Bombay strip club, a frequent patron, and his stay-at-home wife.

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe
1980, Movie
7.2

As a result of a lost bet with his assistant, Errol Morris, director Werner Herzog must eat his own shoe.

Town Bloody Hall
1979, Movie
7.2

On April 30, 1971, a standing-room-only crowd of New York’s intellectual elite packed the city’s Town Hall theater to see Norman Mailer—fresh from the controversy over his essay “The Prisoner of Sex” and the backlash it received from leaders of the women’s movement—tangle with a panel of four prominent female thinkers and activists: Jacqueline Ceballos, Germaine Greer, Jill Johnston, and Diana Trilling. Part intellectual death match, part three-ring circus, the proceedings were captured with crackling, fly-on-the-wall immediacy by the documentary great D. A. Pennebaker and a small crew, with Chris Hegedus later condensing the three-and-a-half-hour affair into this briskly entertaining snapshot of a singular cultural moment. Heady, heated, and hilarious, TOWN BLOODY HALL is a dazzling display of feminist firepower courtesy of some of the most influential figures of the era, with Mailer plainly relishing his role as the pugnacious rabble-rouser and literary lion at the center of it all.

Koko: A Talking Gorilla
1978, Movie
7.2

In 1977, acclaimed director Barbet Schroeder and cinematographer Nestor Almendros entered the universe of the world’s most famous primate to create the captivating documentary KOKO: A TALKING GORILLA. The film introduces us to Koko soon after she was brought from the San Francisco Zoo to Stanford University by Dr. Penny Patterson for a controversial experiment—she would be taught the basics of human communication through American Sign Language. An entertaining, troubling, and still relevant documentary, KOKO: A TALKING GORILLA sheds light on the ongoing ethical and philosophical debates over the individual rights of animals and brings us face-to-face with an amazing gorilla caught in the middle.