Popular Documentary Movies on Kanopy - Page 172

Hobby Hustle

2025

Hobby Hustle

2025
5
Billions of dollars are generated each year in the sports memorabilia and trading card industry, but who are the buyers and sellers? What is the actual value of what is being sold? Hobby Hustle follows three separate people who became involved in the polarizing obsession that changed their lives forever.
Call Us Ishmael

2018

Call Us Ishmael

2018
Each and every year hundreds of people flock to New Bedford, MA in bleak mid-winter to partake in a celebration like none other. They read this single book out loud over the course of two full days without stopping. All of these people have one thing in common: they are obsessed with Moby Dick, the book that most call the Great American Novel.
Phantom Parrot

2024

Phantom Parrot

2024
The revelation of a top-secret British surveillance programme brings down the dominoes in a dark and analytical film about technology, rights and structural racism – and about a man with the courage to speak out.
The Great Buster: A Celebration

2018

The Great Buster: A Celebration

2018
7.2
A celebration of the life and career of one of America's most influential and celebrated filmmakers and comedians—Buster Keaton—whose singular style and fertile output during the silent era created his legacy as a true cinematic visionary.
Castro's Spies

2020

Castro's Spies

2020
9.2
The thrilling story of an elite group of Cuban spies sent undercover to the US in the 1990s. From their recruitment, training and eventual capture on US soil; this film peers into a secret world of false identities, love affairs and betrayal. Using never seen before footage from the Cuban Film Institute’s archive and first-hand testimony from the people at the heart of this story, Castro’s Spies gives a rare glimpse into the shadowy world of a spy – where the stakes are life and death.
Argentinian Lesson

2013

Argentinian Lesson

2013
6.5
Polish director, his wife and children are leaving Siberia for Argentina. For their little son, this trip will not only be an encounter with an unknown language. Influenced by their Argentinian friend, Janek enters the fascinating world of imagination, and is introduced to the bitterness of childhood prematurely contaminated by the problems of grown-ups.
The Grace Lee Project

2005

The Grace Lee Project

2005
1
Filmmaker Grace Lee leaves her Missouri home to travel the country and talk with an array of women who share her name.
Ningla A-Na

1972

Ningla A-Na

1972
7
Ningla A-Na documents the activism of the Black movement in south-east Australia in the 1970s and shows how the activists changed the direction of the movement both nationally and internationally.
Wilder than Wild: Fire, Forests, and the Future

2018

Wilder than Wild: Fire, Forests, and the Future

2018
Wilder than Wild reveals how fire suppression and climate change have exposed Western forests to large, high intensity wildfires, while greenhouse gases released from these fires contribute to global warming. This vicious cycle jeopardizes our forests and affects us all with extreme weather and more wildfires, some of which are now entering highly populated wildland-urban areas.
Tricked: The Documentary

2013

Tricked: The Documentary

2013
6.1
This character-driven film considers the evolving sex trafficking landscape as seen by the main players: the exploited, the pimps, the johns that fuel the business, and the cops who fight to stop it.
Fumiko Hayashida: The Woman Behind the Symbol

2009

Fumiko Hayashida: The Woman Behind the Symbol

2009
Fumiko Hayashida: The Woman Behind the Symbol is both a historical portrait of Fumiko, her family and the Bainbridge Island Japanese American community in the decades before World War II as well as a contemporary story which follows 97-year old Fumi and her daughter Natalie as they return to the site of the former Minidoka internment camp, their first trip back together in 63 years. The film reveals how the iconic photograph became the impetus for Fumiko to publicly lobby against the injustices of the past.
In Between

2015

In Between

2015
7
Once there was an age of ice but it is disappearing. This is a lyrical and thought-provoking film about the death of an era and a moment in time. A time when stoic creatures are caught in between what once was and what will inevitably come.
Girls Can't Surf

2021

Girls Can't Surf

2021
7.8
It’s the 1980s and the world of professional surfing is a circus of fluorescent colors, peroxide hair and radical male egos. "Girls Can't Surf" follows the journey of a band of renegade surfers who took on the male-dominated professional surfing world to achieve equality and change the sport forever. Featuring surfing greats Jodie Cooper, Frieda Zamba, Pauline Menczer, Lisa Andersen, Pam Burridge, Wendy Botha, Layne Beachley and more, "Girls Can't Surf" is a wild ride of clashing personalities, sexism, adventure and heartbreak, with each woman fighting against the odds to make their dreams of competing a reality.
The Barefoot Artist

2014

The Barefoot Artist

2014
5.3
Lily Yeh is a global artist who is fueled by a belief that art is a human right, and that artists can create a foundation for profound social change. Slight of frame, but large in spirit and vision, the 70-year-old artist was born in China, lives in Philadelphia, and now, as constant traveler, the world is her canvas. Our film explores two sides of Lily's life that are connected parts of the same journey: her international ventures helping to heal weakened spirits in communities around the world and a personal journey within, to repair her own fractured family.
Max Gimblett: Original Mind

2017

Max Gimblett: Original Mind

2017
Max Gimblett: Original Mind documents the life and process of eccentric, creative genius Max Gimblett. One of New Zealand’s most successful and internationally prominent living painters, Gimblett has been working in America since 1962. The filmmakers spent a week in Gimblett’s Soho loft where he and his devoted studio assistants generously revealed the techniques and philosophy behind his beautiful art.
From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians

1998

From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians

1998
9.5
This series tells the epic story of the rise of Christianity. The series explore the life and death of Jesus, and the men and women whose belief, conviction, and martyrdom created the religion we now know as Christianity. Drawing upon historical evidence, the series challenges familiar assumptions and conventional notions about Christian origins. Archaeological finds have yielded new understandings of Jesus' class and social status; fresh interpretations have transformed earlier ideas about the identity of the early Christians and their communities. Interviews with twelve scholars New Testament theologians, archaeologists, and historians. The scholars together represent a range of viewpoints and diversity of faiths and a shared commitment to bring new ways of thinking about Christianity to a public audience. They discuss the value in a historical approach to Jesus and the Bible and whether Christian faith can be reconciled with such an approach.
Boulevard! A Hollywood Story

2021

Boulevard! A Hollywood Story

2021
6.2
In the mid-1950s, Dickson Hughes and Richard Stapley, young composers and romantic partners, are hired by legendary silent film star Gloria Swanson to write a musical based on her film Sunset Boulevard, directed by Billy Wilder in 1950.
The Sheik

2014

The Sheik

2014
7.4
When Khosrow Vaziri became the World Wrestling Federations Iron Sheik and camel-clutched his way to fame in the 1980s, he achieved the American Dream by personifying a foreign villain. Losing his world championship belt to Hulk Hogan became a defining moment in professional wrestling. These days, the Sheiks smackdowns are on Twitter, where hes gained a new following. Once an Olympic hopeful, bodyguard to Irans Shah and pop culture icon, we witness Vaziri struggling with addiction and despair as a family man. But with the help of Torontos Magen brothers, the Sheik begins a road to redemption and renewed status as a public figure. Showcasing his powerful past and at times painful present, this is an insightful look at one of wrestlings biggest stars, but also a powerful story of personal sacrifice that, in the Sheiks own words, will make you humble.
Let Me Be Me

2022

Let Me Be Me

2022
This coming-of-age story focuses on Kyle Westphal, an isolated autistic boy who’s fascinated by fabric and emerges from an experimental autism treatment program to become a fashion designer. Westphal’s family looks back on twenty years of his development with candor and humor. The film combines observational footage, archival material, and animation to chronicle how a passion for fashion transformed Kyle and his family.
Keyboard Fantasies

2021

Keyboard Fantasies

2021
5
As a sci-fi obsessed woman living in near isolation, Beverly Glenn-Copeland wrote and self-released Keyboard Fantasies in Huntsville, Ontario back in 1986. Recorded in an Atari-powered home-studio, the cassette featured seven tracks of a curious folk-electronica hybrid, a sound realized far before its time. Three decades on, the musician – now Glenn Copeland – began to receive emails from people across the world, thanking him for the music they’d recently discovered.