Documentary

From the Film Reference Library:
One of the most controversial films in Canadian history, On est au coton is an examination of the exploitation and repression of textile workers in Quebec. This National Film Board production, more social inquiry than documentary, contrasts the lives of textile workers and their bosses and places their situation in an historical context by employing footage from old films about the industry. (The title is a pun which literally means “we are in cotton,” but it also connotes “we are fed up.”)Read More »

It’s 1969 and headlines blare war and civil unrest while John Lennon and Yoko Ono -rock ‘n’ roll’s most eccentric couple- are in love. They have just gotten married,they are happy to be together and they see that the world needs some changew. They announce their mission for peace and they invite the rest of the world to do the same as they do: they are lying on their bed. But people call them silly and naive they see clowns instead of true believers.
John and Yoko just do not care…Read More »

Summary from yesasia – “It has been three years since pop auteur Iwai Shunji’s last film Hana and Alice, and his latest offering may seem a bit surprising. In a marked departure from his previous youth-centric works, his new film is a documentary about legendary director Ichikawa Kon, whom Iwai cites as one of his greatest influences. In a momentous career spanning over fifty years, 91-year-old Ichikawa Kon has long established himself as one of the great masters of Japanese cinema. A lifetime his junior, 44-year-old Iwai Shunji has, through acclaimed films like Swallowtail Butterfly and All About Lily Chou-Chou, emerged with a distinct voice and language of his own amongst the current generation of filmmakers.Read More »

Interpretive documentary in Peru featuring Machu Pichu.

“Book-ended by the most awe-inspiring shots of the sky that I’ve literally ever seen, Fulton’s Inca Light might also serve as one of the most impressive ethnographic documents available.”
– M Kitchell (letterboxd)Read More »

From Amazon.com –

The real drama happens behind the curtain in this fascinating and rare look at four high-profile Broadway musicals (Wicked, Taboo, Caroline, Or Change, and Avenue Q) and their fearless journey to the Tony Awards®. Including a star-studded cast, this entertaining film takes viewers on an unprecedented behind-the-scenes view of the creative process that captures all the heartbreak and hilarity of trying make it big in Show Business!

The playful but intense and vastly informative Show Business: The Road to Broadway is a documentary about four musicals that were contenders for top Tony Awards prizes in the 2004 Broadway season. Following the parallel action between the quartet–“Wicked,” “Avenue Q,” “Taboo,” and “Caroline, or Change”–from concept through casting, rewrites, rehearsals, opening nights and the relative box-office fortunes of each, the film dazzles a viewer by seeming to be everywhere at once. Along the way, one encounters cascades of neuroses and anxieties from the creative community involved in these shows, but there is also tremendous insight shared by the various playwrights, composers, lyricists, producers, directors, and stars who get these productions up and running. There’s sundry drama, too, especially concerning the brief run of “Taboo,” the financially disastrous musical about Boy George that was largely bankrolled by Rosie O’Donnell and ran into a variety of problems. Excellent fly-on-the-wall moments include a dinner sequence involving a handful of well-known theatre critics, whose tastes vary and who often champion shows no one else seems to like. Everything leads to highlights from the 2004 Tony Awards show, which was full of surprises. A final sequence in which one catches up with the many talents involved says everything about how success and failure is often a mere roll of the cosmic dice.
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Penny Patterson, an American psychology student, began an experiment in primate communication in the early 1970s using a young zoo gorilla named Koko, who was loaned to Penny for the experiment. Due to a philosophical predisposition to consider that “humanizing” animals is wrong, and alarmed at the increasing publicity over the experiments, the zoo took back the gorilla, which by then had learned over three hundred signs and showed, to many observers, an almost human comprehension of her condition. This French documentary explores the experiments, the circumstances of Koko’s being withdrawn from them, and the question of the gorilla’s “civil rights,” if any.

– All Movie GuideRead More »

In 1998, SVT made a documentary about Leila K’s claim for stardom called Fuck You, Fuck You Very Much. The event focuses on an incident that happened during the 1996 Swedish Grammis awards. In 2000, she appeared on Daisy Dee’s “Open Sesame” video, a cover of her own 1991 hit. Daisy Dee was the presenter of the show “Viva Club Rotation” at the time. In 2003, Swedish media reported that Leila K was living on the streets, stealing her food.

2009 the rock documentary Fuck You, Fuck You Very Much was released May 2009 in Sweden.Read More »

It’s an exceptional documentary about the Soviet Air Industry after the end of the Soviet Union, full of anecdotes about what’s happened to people on Russian airlines. Really, this is priceless. This rip is from an old VHS tape.Read More »

In Beirut, Syrian construction workers are building a skyscraper while at the same time their own houses at home are being shelled. The Lebanese war is over but the Syrian one still rages on. The workers are locked in the building site. They are not allowed to leave it after 7p.m. The Lebanese government has imposed night-time curfews on the refugees. The only contact with the outside world for these Syrian workers is the hole through which they climb out in the morning to begin a new day of work. Cut off from their homeland, they gather at night around a small TV set to get the news from Syria. Tormented by anguish and anxiety, while suffering the deprivation of the most basic human and workers right, they keep hoping for a different life.Read More »