Popular Documentary Movies on Kanopy - Page 167

The First Year

2001

The First Year

2001
7
This fascinating documentary chronicles the emotional turmoil of five Los Angeles schoolteachers charged with educating inner-city youth, making it clear that the teachers helping these disadvantaged children are real heroes.
Seize the Summit

2024

Seize the Summit

2024
4 young strangers, all war refugees, unite to take on the challenge of summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro, one of the seven summits and the highest peak in Africa. They have been brought together by the charity INARA to shed light on the impact of war on children. The mountain always has a lesson, and often not what we think or expect it to be. Not all will make it to the summit, some will be forced to face dormant personal demons. This is a story of physical and emotional adventure, the rollercoaster of life, and the possibilities that emerge when we stand together.
Fifi Howls from Happiness

2013

Fifi Howls from Happiness

2013
6.8
Bahman Mohassess was a celebrated artist at the time of the Shah. Trained in Italy, he created sculptures and paintings in his homeland. But audiences often took offence at the pronounced phalli on his mostly naked bronze figures and his work was regularly censored. All traces of him were lost after the revolution. It was said he destroyed his remaining paintings and disappeared.
Dark Days

2000

Dark Days

2000
7.2
A cinematic portrait of the homeless population who live permanently in the underground tunnels of New York City.
Riveted: The History of Jeans

2022

Riveted: The History of Jeans

2022
5
Riveted: The History of Jeans reveals the fascinating and surprising story of this iconic American garment. At any given moment, half the people on the planet are wearing them. They have become a staple of clothing the world over, worn by everyone from presidents and supermodels to farmers and artists. More than just an item of apparel, America’s tangled past is woven into the indigo blue fabric. From its roots in slavery to its connection to the Wild West, youth culture, the civil rights movement, rock and roll, hippies, high fashion and hip-hop, jeans are the canvas on which the history of American ideology and politics is writ large.
The Falconer

2020

The Falconer

2020
This intimate portrait film follows master falconer Rodney Stotts on his mission to build a bird sanctuary and to provide access to nature for his stressed community. The Falconer weaves his present-day mission with the story of his past, both of which are deeply rooted in issues of social and environmental injustice. Stotts’s worldview in a nutshell: nature heals. In a forgotten corner of our nation’s capital, he takes the time to break through to those too often dismissed as “hard to reach.” This is a story of second chances: for injured birds of prey, for an abandoned plot of land, for a group of teenagers who have dropped out of high school, and for the falconer himself.
The Waldheim Waltz

2018

The Waldheim Waltz

2018
7.8
Ruth Beckermann documents the process of uncovering former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim’s wartime past. It shows the swift succession of new allegations by the World Jewish Congress during his Austrian presidential campaign, the denial by the Austrian political class, the outbreak of anti-Semitism and patriotism, which finally led to his election.
Loose Lips - Her Last Interview

2013

Loose Lips - Her Last Interview

2013
4.5
Before Linda Lovelace's untimely death in 2002, the sex superstar sat for a no-holds barred interview with pop-culture historian Legs McNeil for his book, The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry. Fortunately McNeil hired a film crew to record the historic event as Linda recounted the making of ""Deep Throat,"" the most successful X-rated film in history, how she introduced oral sex to America, her turbulent relationship with manager/husband Chuck Traynor, her role (and exploitation by) the anti-porn movement that she helped launch with her bestselling book, Ordeal, in 1980, and her subsequent return to pornography in 2001. With additional comments by Marilyn Chambers, FBI Agent Bill Kelly, Chuck Traynor.
Robinson in Ruins

2010

Robinson in Ruins

2010
6.8
The eagerly awaited sequel to Patrick Keiller's London and Robinson in Space is a beautifully photographed cinematic essay on our current environmental and economic predicament, narrated by Vanessa Redgrave. Timely, provocative and studded with surreal humour, Robinson in Ruins reveals hidden histories and surprising visions (from the opium poppy fields of Oxfordshire to what seems to be a talking post box), making us consider the world around us afresh.
Homo Sapiens

2016

Homo Sapiens

2016
7.1
HOMO SAPIENS is visionary documentarian Nikolaus Geyrhalter's exploration of the finiteness and fragility of human existence, the end of the industrial age, and what it means to be a human being. What will remain of our lives after we're gone? Empty spaces, ruins, cities, increasingly overgrown with vegetation, crumbling asphalt: the areas we currently inhabit, now abandoned and decaying, gradually reclaimed by nature. Comprised of a succession of eerily depopulated, dystopian landscapes from across the world, HOMO SAPIENS offers an at once mesmerizing and chilling vision of what a posthuman future might look like.
Fanny: The Right to Rock

2021

Fanny: The Right to Rock

2021
6.2
The untold story of a Filipina American founded, California garage band that morphed into the ferocious rock group Fanny, the first all female band to release an LP with a major label. Adored by David Bowie, the band's groundbreaking impact in music has been lost in the mists of time... until now. Fifty years later, bandmates reunite with a new record deal and a second chance to right the wrongs of history.
Apollo 11: Quarantine

2021

Apollo 11: Quarantine

2021
6
Summer 1969. The astronauts of Apollo 11 successfully land and walk on the moon. The crew will now quarantine for 21 days following contact with lunar material.
Haunters: The Art of the Scare

2017

Haunters: The Art of the Scare

2017
6.2
A heart-warming and heart-stopping documentary about people who sacrifice everything to create the most popular and polarizing haunted houses for Halloween - from boo-scare mazes to a controversial new subculture of extreme terror experiences.
Jaguar Beach‎

2025

Jaguar Beach‎

2025
In a remote region on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, a lush landscape characterized by volcanoes meets tropical dry forest. Right there is a very special beach where two completely different species meet: Sea turtles meet jaguars. This has spectacular consequences for both sides and their environment. The two animals form an alliance that is as surprising as it is unintentional. The predator suddenly becomes a protector.
2e: Twice Exceptional

2015

2e: Twice Exceptional

2015
'2E: Twice Exceptional' follows the personal journeys of a handful of middle school and high school students in Los Angeles who have been identified as 'twice exceptional' -- gifted or highly gifted individuals with learning disabilities or differences. They are geniuses, mavericks and dreamers -- Malcolm Gladwell's budding 'outliers.' Among them may be the next Einstein, Mozart or Steve Jobs... if they can survive the American school system and their own eccentricities.
Pink Saris

2010

Pink Saris

2010
4.6
Sampat Pal Devi, founder of India’s Gulabi (“Pink”) Gang and fearless defender of the rights of untouchable women, challenges husbands, fathers-in-law and policemen in this immersive study by acclaimed documentarian Kim Longinotto. More than a profile of an everyday heroine, the film captures the courage and sacrifice necessary for social progress.
Aggie

2020

Aggie

2020
1
An exploration of the nexus of art, race, and justice through the story of art collector and philanthropist Agnes Gund who sold Roy Lichtenstein’s painting “Masterpiece” in 2017 for $165 million to start the Art for Justice Fund to end mass incarceration.
People of the Wind

1976

People of the Wind

1976
5
The Bakhtiari migration is one of the most hazardous tests of human endurance known to mankind. Every year, 500,000 men, women and children — along with one million animals — struggle for eight grueling weeks to scale the massive Zagros Mountains — a range which is as high as the Alps and as broad as Switzerland — to reach their summer pastures.
The Steel Road

1929

The Steel Road

1929
5.8
Bold and exhilarating documentary account of the building of the Turkestan-Siberian railway, presented as a heroic triumph of Soviet progress over natural adversity.
Lady, You Shot Me: The Life and Death of Sam Cooke

2014

Lady, You Shot Me: The Life and Death of Sam Cooke

2014
5.5
Sam Cooke died at the age of 33 on December 11, 1964, at the Hacienda Motel, at 9137 South Figueroa Street, in Los Angeles, California. Answering separate reports of a shooting and of a kidnapping at the motel, police found Cooke's body, clad only in a sports jacket and shoes but no shirt, pants or underwear. He had sustained a gunshot wound to the chest, which was later determined to have pierced his heart. The motel's manager, Bertha Franklin, said she had shot Cooke in self-defense after he broke into her office residence and attacked her. Her account was immediately questioned and disputed by acquaintances.