Popular Documentary Movies on Kanopy - Page 125

Chichinette: The Accidental Spy

2019

Chichinette: The Accidental Spy

2019
6.4
When it seems that all the stories about World War II have already been told, a new one is often found. Marthe Cohn is a French Jew, whose life resembles a real-world blockbuster. During the war, she took the cover name Chichinette, became a spy, and gathered intel that helped organize an important military operation. Chichinette suffered many losses during the war, having been born in a Jewish family in a small industrial town close to the border between France and Germany. Now Marthe is 98 years old. Despite her age, she is savvy in modern technology and loves traveling the globe - she is often invited to go abroad and tell the story of her military achievements.
Lee & Grant

2011

Lee & Grant

2011
Produced with the cooperation of leading Civil War historian Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump, Lee & Grant is a personal look at two iconic leaders of the Civil War. Surprising details reveal the bold choices and almost godlike power Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee summoned on decisive battlefields like Vicksburg and Gettysburg that, within days of each other, turned the tide of the war.
Battleground

2020

Battleground

2020
Battleground is an intimate look at our current political divide, as seen through the eyes of two grassroots activists in the pivot counties of the Lehigh Valley, PA. Tom Carroll is a Trump delegate, and a Tea Party Chairman. Greg Edwards is a Black pastor, and a progressive leader supported by Bernie Sanders. When their paths collide, we realize that they have much more in common than meets the eye.
East LA Interchange

2015

East LA Interchange

2015
2
East L.A. Interchange follows the evolution of working-class, immigrant Boyle Heights, the oldest neighborhood in East Los Angeles from multiethnic to predominately Latino and a cradle of Mexican-American culture in the U.S. The documentary tells the story of how one neighborhood managed to survive the construction of the largest and busiest freeway interchange in the nation and explores the shifting face of community in the United States today arguing why it should matter to us all.
Inside the Iranian Uprising

2023

Inside the Iranian Uprising

2023
In September 2022, a 22-year-old Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, died in police custody. She had been arrested by Iran’s religious police, accused of not wearing her hijab properly. The authorities said she had died of a heart attack, but rumors spread that she had been beaten on arrest. Citizens took to the streets in their thousands in fury. This is an extraordinary and shocking insight into what has been happening across Iran, revealing a regime under huge pressure and resorting to extreme cruelty to control its citizens.
At Home in Utopia

2008

At Home in Utopia

2008
During the economic boom of the 1920s, thousands of immigrant Jewish factory workers managed to build the house of their dreams, a cooperative apartment complex at the edge of Bronx Park. Then they were hit by the Great Depression. At Home in Utopia bears witness to an epic social experiment across two generations in the Coops - a place known as "little Moscow" - where people tried to change the American dream into one that included racial justice and workers' rights.
Capital in the Twenty-First Century

2019

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

2019
6.5
Film adaptation of French economist Thomas Piketty's ground-breaking global bestseller of the same name: an eye-opening journey through wealth and power.
The Decline of Western Civilization Part III

1998

The Decline of Western Civilization Part III

1998
6.8
A musical study of Los Angeles in the late 90s, where homeless teens roam the streets and profess to live a punk lifestyle of music, drugs, and flouting authority.
Songs of War: Music as a Weapon

2010

Songs of War: Music as a Weapon

2010
6.3
Music elates, touches the soul and bypasses reason. Music is magic. But precisely this magic can turn it into an insidious weapon for music and violence belong together. The brutal power of African war dances, the ferocity of Maori Hakas, the earth-shattering roar of US sound guns blasting Metallica at Taliban hideouts the principle is always the same: Aggressive sounds demoralise the enemy and whip the allies into a frenzy. In Songs of War, director Tristan Chytroschek explores the extraordinary harmony between music and violence. Sesame Street composer, Christopher Cerf, always wanted his music to be fun and entertaining. But then he learned that his songs had been used to torture prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. He is stunned by this abuse of his work and wants to find out how this could happen.
Color Me Obsessed: A Film About The Replacements

2011

Color Me Obsessed: A Film About The Replacements

2011
7
For some aging music fans and kids with a passion for musical history, The Replacements are rock and roll defined. Gorman Bechard's remarkable history of the 'Mats takes us from their first show as the Impediments to their 1991 onstage breakup in Chicago, and everywhere in between. Bechard bravely eschews including the band's music, photos, and live footage, instead relying solely on the fans: their well-kept memories, hilarious anecdotes, and differing points of views about the foursome's wildly varied discography and infamous antics.
Michelangelo: Love and Death

2017

Michelangelo: Love and Death

2017
7.2
The spectacular sculptures and paintings of Michelangelo seem so familiar to us, but what do we really know about this renaissance genius? Who was this ambitious and passionate man?
Horst

1988

Horst

1988
We enter the life of Horst, and see the world of fashion photography evolve from the 1930s to the 1980s through his work and stories.
Rome: Engineering an Empire

2005

Rome: Engineering an Empire

2005
8.5
Despite their personal short comings, many of the Roman Empires great engineering accomplishments were introduced during the reign of the Caesars. The tradition continued under Vespasian, builder of the Coliseum, Trajan, builder of the Forum, and Hadrian, builder and possibly the designer of the Pantheon. Finally, a decade later Caracalla built a bath complex/recreation center in an effort to secure his own reputation in history.
Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation

2013

Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation

2013
7
Explores the music scene in Greenwich Village, New York in the '60s and early '70s. The film highlights some of the finest singer/songwriters of the day.
A Midwife's Tale

1998

A Midwife's Tale

1998
7.8
To understand eighteenth-century America through a woman's eyes, historian and author Laurel Thatcher Ulrich spent eight years working through Martha Ballard's massive but cryptic diary. "A Midwife's Tale" chronicles the interwoven stories of two remarkable women: an eighteenth-century midwife and healer and the twentieth-century historian who brought her words to light.
A Place to Stand

2015

A Place to Stand

2015
Jimmy Santiago Baca was a petty thief and a drug dealer when he was sentenced to five years in Arizona State Prison, one of the deadliest prisons in America. Baca began his incarceration violent, angry and illiterate, yet taught himself how to read and write, discovering a passion for poetry that ultimately saved his life.
Love and Sex in West Africa

2022

Love and Sex in West Africa

2022
Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Senegal – when it comes to love and sex, these African countries are caught between tradition and modernity.
The Last Season

2014

The Last Season

2014
5.8
In search of the lucrative matsutake mushroom, two former soldiers discover the means to gradually heal their wounds of war. Roger, a self-described 'fall-down drunk' and sniper in Vietnam, and Kouy, a Cambodian refugee who fought the Khmer Rouge, bonded in the bustling tent-city known as Mushroom Camp, which pops up each autumn in the Oregon woods. Their friendship became an adoptive family; according to a Cambodian custom, if you lose your family like Kouy, you must rebuilt it anew. Now, however, this new family could be lost. Roger's health is declining and trauma flashbacks rack his mind; Kouy gently aids his family before the snow falls and the hunting season ends, signaling his time to leave.
All the Difference

2016

All the Difference

2016
Filmed over five and a half years, ALL THE DIFFERENCE (83 min.) weaves together the stories of two tough, yet promising young black men, Robert and Krishaun, as they navigate their lives through their high school senior year and all four years of college. They come from broken homes and low-income, high-risk communities in Chicago where barely 50% of young black men graduate from high school and of those that do graduate less than half go on to college and even fewer will graduate within 4 to 6 years. The film explores the factors in their lives (education, parents and grandparents, teachers, role models, personal drive and community support) that made all the difference in helping them be the first in their families to most likely escape poverty and secure a place in the middle class.
Beware of Mr. Baker

2012

Beware of Mr. Baker

2012
7.4
Ginger Baker is known for playing in Cream and Blind Faith, but the world's greatest drummer didn’t hit his stride until 1972, when he arrived in Nigeria and discovered Fela Kuti's Afrobeat. After leaving Nigeria, Ginger returned to his pattern of drug-induced self-destruction, and countless groundbreaking musical works, eventually settling in South Africa, where the 73-year-old lives with his young bride and 39 polo ponies. This documentary includes interviews with Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Carlos Santana and more. Beware of Mr. Baker! With every smash of the drum is a man smashing his way through life.