Documentary

  • Sheldon Renan – The Killing of America (1981)

    1981-1990DocumentaryExploitationSheldon RenanUSA

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    Severin Films wrote:
    “AUSTERE AND REMARKABLE…A battering-ram cavalcade of race riots, genuine assassination footage and interviews with killers that strikes a powerful chord.”
    – The Guardian

    “A RIVETING FILM…Its traumatic imagery forces uncomfortable but critical questions about American policy at home and abroad.”
    – Spectacular Optical

    The First Ever U.S. Release Of Perhaps The Most Controversial Documentary In History

    “All of the film you are about to see is real,” it begins. “Nothing has been staged.”
    Read More »

  • Masao Adachi – Ryakusho: renzoku shasatsuma AKA Serial Killer (1969)

    1961-1970DocumentaryExperimentalJapanMasao Adachi

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Midnight Eye wrote:
    A horrifying series of murders, committed by a teenaged killer in 1968, prompted a group of filmmakers to chart his path, capturing the things he might have seen before committing his crimes. Their result is this provocative, rarely-screened meditation on geography and society.Read More »

  • Nick Broomfield – Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam (1995)

    1991-2000CultDocumentaryNick BroomfieldUnited Kingdom

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    Synopsis:
    A documentary crew from the BBC arrives in L.A. intent on interviewing Heidi Fleiss, a year after her arrest for running a brothel but before her trial. Several months elapse before the interview, so the crew searches for anyone who’ll talk about the young woman. Two people have a lot to say to the camera: a retired madam named Alex for whom Fleiss once worked and Fleiss’s one-time boyfriend, Ivan Nagy, who introduced her to Alex. Alex and Nagy don’t like each other, so the crew shuttles between them with “she said” and “he said.” When they finally interview Fleiss, they spend their time reciting what Alex and Nagy have had to say and asking her reaction.Read More »

  • Eric Steel – Kiss the Water (2013)

    2011-2020ArthouseDocumentaryEric SteelUnited Kingdom

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    Quote/
    “I read the obituaries in The New York Times first thing every day. I know I am not alone in this. It is a melancholy devotion, and slightly occult, and allows me to wander outside my own skin, and to wonder how a life’s essence can be captured in miniature, immortalized in a few words.Read More »

  • Rebecca Baron – Detour de Force (2014)

    2011-2020DocumentaryExperimentalRebecca BaronUSA

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    Detour de Force presents the world of thoughtographer Ted Serios, a charismatic Chicago bell hop who, in the mid-1960’s produced hundreds of Polaroid images from his mind. Constructed from 16mm documentation of Serios’s sessions and audio recordings of Serios speaking with Dr. Jule Eisenbud, the Denver psychiatrist who championed his abilities, the film is more ethnography than biography, portraying the social and scientific environments in which Serios thrived. The film foregrounds the state of image and sound recording technologies of the period as essential to the emergence of Serios’s psychic photography. It is also a document of the filmmaker’s encounters with the archival materials themselves. The film enjoys a rich sound environment by Ernst Karel, Kyle Bruckmann and Guiseppe Ielasi.Read More »

  • John Ford & Otto Brower – Sex Hygiene (1941)

    1941-1950DocumentaryJohn FordOtto BrowerUSA

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    Searching for John Ford by Joseph McBride wrote:
    Shot quickly at Fox and ready for use by March 1941, the black and white Sex Hygiene is suitably horrifying but also somewhat tongue in cheek. Coing directly from making Tobacco Road, Ford was in a bawdy mood when he filmed the scenes of the soldiers (including George Reeves, later known as TV’s Superman) playing pool in an army canteen before one young man makes the mistake of slipping off to a brothel. The results of his and others’ sexual follies are displayed in a graphic illustrated lecture by a medical officer intoned in stentorian fashion by Charles Trowbridge, who later was promoted by Ford to admiral and/or general in They Were Expendable, When Willie Comes Marching Home and The Wings of Eagles. Perhaps it is fitting that the one Ford film dealing explicitly with sexual themes makes the subject seem so thoroughly revolting.Read More »

  • Xiong zaixia – Yi Ge Ren De Zi Mu aka Zen for Subtitle (2017)

    2011-2020AsianChinaDocumentaryXiong zaixia

    Synopsis
    What does subtitle translation mean in my eyes? I have devoted my youth and effort of 4 years of campus life and 2 years of work life. When I have given up translating subtitle, I want to look back to and remember such a bygone by documentary.
    Subtitle is equal to public: By this documentary I want to show how a cinephile makes a link with film and makes effect to more cinephile in such a special situation in China. This documentary also displays a tip of the iceberg of the cinephile cultural history in China.
    Subtitle is equal to privacy: I hope to experience the progress of subtitle translation again, in order to cast my ambition and burden in the old days. I want to say goodbye to that ego with subtitle translation and move forwards to that ego with indie-documentary direction. I want to search more possibilities to the films. Read More »

  • Kasper Collin – I Called Him Morgan (2016)

    2011-2020DocumentaryDramaSweden

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    On a snowy night in February 1972, celebrated jazz musician Lee Morgan was shot dead by his common-law wife Helen during a gig at a club in New York City. The murder sent shockwaves through the jazz community, and the memory of the event still haunts those who knew the Morgans. This feature documentary by Swedish filmmaker Kasper Collin is a love letter to two unique personalities and the music that brought them together. A film about love, jazz and America.Read More »

  • Semyon Aranovich & Aleksandr Sokurov – Altovaya Sonata. Dmitriy Shostakovich AKA Viola Sonata. Dmitriy Shostakovich (1981)

    1981-1990ArthouseDocumentarySemyon Aranovich and Aleksandr SokurovUSSR

    Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    The life and work of the great Russian composer Dmitriy Shostakovich is presented in this documentary through rare images and audios from many archives, at one time censored by the Soviet government. A brief take on his life, from his transition as an early prodigy to a first rate artist, his celebrated compositions and the final years with a declining health.Read More »

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