Popular Documentary Movies on Kanopy - Page 237

Edith Head

1981

Edith Head

1981
A light-hearted, toe-tapping portrait of the well-known 8 Oscar winning Hollywood costume designer filmed in her opulent house and garden. Edith Head presents some of her famous designs using glamorous models to impersonate Mae West, Barbara Stanwyck, Dorothy Lamour, Ginger Rogers, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly. They move to the music of the films for which she was the designer as Head recalls the times and places that served as inspiration for the famed looks.
Burning Daylight

2007

Burning Daylight

2007
Burning Daylight is a dance/film project. The performance is set from late one night until dawn in a transit zone outside a notorious pub on a Broome-style Karaoke night. A series of contemporary dance scenes unfold expressing the...
Karlu Karlu: Devil's Marbles

2010

Karlu Karlu: Devil's Marbles

2010
We meet Warumungu elder Leslie Foster, senior Traditional Owner of country around this famous phenomenon south of Tennant Creek in Central Australia. Leslie shares the dreaming stories of the Marbles' creation, speaks of his 28-year struggle to regain rights over this land, and celebrates recent transfer of title over the Devils Marbles to Traditional Owners for share...
Histories of the Holocaust:Buchenwald

2010

Histories of the Holocaust:Buchenwald

2010
Contains 2 programs: Buchenwald 1937-1942 and Buchenwald 1942-1945. Every aspect of life within the fences was a torture where mistreatment by the guards was not only encouraged but was compulsory. Herman Pister's installment as commandant in 1942 only intensified the horrors committed there with experimentation on inmates in ways to kill more conveniently. The atrocities were discovered with its liberation by U.S. forces in 1945 and the desire for revenge took over as camp personnel were hunted down and made to publicly stand trial for war crimes.
Life in Australia: Geraldton

1966

Life in Australia: Geraldton

1966
Made by the Department of Immigration to entice immigrants from Great Britain, this film shows an idyllic picture of life in the Western Australian regional town of Geraldton in the mid 1960s.
The Red Button

2011

The Red Button

2011
Tells the dramatic story of Stanislav Petrov, the Russian officer who, in 1983, saved the world from atomic war.
Arata Isozaki: Early work in Japan

1985

Arata Isozaki: Early work in Japan

1985
Arata Isozaki: Early Work in Japan takes a detailed look at the architect's pieces, exploring applauded projects such as the EXPO '70 Osaka Festival Plaza, Gunma Prefectural Museum of Modern Art and Kitakyushu Municipal Library. The extraordinary series of architectural breakthroughs made during this time contributed significantly to the evolution of contemporary architecture worldwide, and eventually gained him his first foreign commission
Intervention: Stories From the Inside

2009

Intervention: Stories From the Inside

2009
On June 21 2007, the Howard Federal Government launched an intervention into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. It was one of the most dramatic policy shifts in the history of Aboriginal affairs. Relentless media attention focuses on ideological arguments for and against the Intervention, while the voices of those affected by the policy are rarely heard. For this film more than 40 Alice Springs town camp residents were interviewed in depth over the course of eight months to find out the answer to the question - is it working?
Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness

2009

Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness

2009
A documentary on what is it that makes us who we are: an African an African, a Jew a Jew, an Arab an Arab, a white person white -and what do we make of our apparent differences? Not so long ago, all human cultures assumed a natural and unassailable hierarchy - Europeans on the top, blacks on the bottom and everybody else in the middle. The work of the anthropologist Melville Jean Herskovits helped upend many of these assumptions. Herskovits: A Jew at the Heart of Blackness is the journey of a man into international race politics and its consequences for him -and us- in the first half of 20th century, when the battleground in the earliest "culture wars" was newspapers, radio shows, movies and cartoon, all infused with propaganda that explained why Caucasians dominated the world and other peoples as part of life's natural and inevitable order.
Without Country

2010

Without Country

2010
Winner of a Student Academy Award®, Sin País (Without Country) explores one family's complex and emotional journey involving deportation. A co-presentation with Latino Public Broadcasting.
Glorious Exit

2007

Glorious Exit

2007
Jarreth Merz, an actor of Swiss and Nigerian origins living in Los Angeles, ends up facing his roots when he is been told that his father is dead. Following the Nigerian tradition, in fact, the eldest son has to take care of the funeral of his father. But who is this unknown father? Why does Jarreth feel a moral obligation towards a family he hardly knows and who has never really been interested in him? Jarreth begins a journey to discover his father through the tales of the people who knew him and a country that doesn’t belong to him even if it is part of his life. Confronting himself with traditions that challenge his beliefs, from Los Angeles to Nigeria Jarreth will face this decisive chapter of his life and the changes that will follow.
The Big Banana

2011

The Big Banana

2011
Banned in Cameroon, The Big Banana illustrates the poor working conditions in banana plantations and exposes the adverse impact on the people of a corporatocracy government that affords super profits for corporations at the expense of the local population. The Big Banana outlines land grabbing tactics by company Plantation du Haut Penja (PHP) and the ensuing devastation for communities: poverty, pollution, and sickness from pesticides. Bieleu, who spent two years filming residents in the remote countryside of Cameroon also features local cooperatives resisting the devastation through business alliances with fair trade organizations.
Eight Ladies

2010

Eight Ladies

2010
The eight ladies in this film come from Alyawarr Country in the Sandover River region in central Australia, about 250km north of Alice Springs. The filmmakers joined them on a five-day journey into the bush to hunt echidna and gather bush foods such as the bush potato. As they hunt and gather, and as they sit around their campfire at night preparing the food, they talk about the old days and how life has changed.
Murales

2010

Murales

2010
They Turned Our Desert Into Fire

2007

They Turned Our Desert Into Fire

2007
Reporting the devastation, forced displacement, and genocide in Darfur should be a story with daily coverage. Mere mention of the word "Darfur" should set off a passionate exchange, or at least the question, "What can be done?". Unfortunately, the people of Darfur struggle with a problem common to so many victimized by geo-political realities: how to overcome the willful indifference of powerful government and media interests who find their story unimportant or merely inconvenient. With images and first-hand accounts, filmmaker Mark Brecke shares his experience of the Darfur crisis with Amtrak train passengers journeying eastward on a three day trip to Washington D.C. Their reactions, interwoven with hard facts and expert opinion, raise the central question in They Turned Our Desert Into Fire - Why does the public not understand the severity of this crisis and how can the world continue to do nothing?
Bitter Roots

2010

Bitter Roots

2010
BITTER ROOTS: THE ENDS OF A KALAHARI MYTH is set in Nyae-Nyae, a region of Namibia located in southern Africa's Kalahari desert, traditional home of the Ju/'hoansi. It updates the ethnographic film record begun in the 1950s by John Marshall, whose films documented 50 years of change, and who together with Claire Ritchie, established a grass-roots development foundation, which Adrian Strong (the filmmaker) joined in the late 1980s. Through archival footage and discussions with community members, this film sensitively examines the problems (lions, elephants, conservationists) currently facing the Ju/'hoansi and challenges the myth that they are culturally unable to farm. The film investigates the perpetuation of this myth by showing how tourists and filmmakers still demand to see how people used to live rather than they way they live now, and how the Ju/'hoansi cope with such expectations, while steadfastly continuing to farm against all the odds.
Moresby Modern

2009

Moresby Modern

2009
For many people, the mention of Papua New Guinea will evoke images such as remote highlands cultures and tribal warriors; or perhaps tropical islands and palm fringed beaches, or it may bring to mind darker images of poverty, corruption and raskol violence. But in PNG's capital, Port Moresby, things are starting to look a little different. PNG is slowly joining the globalised world, and if you look closely at this society in transition you can see signs of a modest middle class on the rise, and a new generation coming of age. In Moresby you can find a small band of business people, professionals, managers, and creatives, all working hard to build a better life for themselves and their families. Moresby Modern, is the stories of 7 such people, as they work in the challenging environment of a developing country, learning to balance the traditional expectations of their culture with the demands of modern society.
Christo: Wrapped Walk Ways

2009

Christo: Wrapped Walk Ways

2009
Wrapped Walk Ways, in Jacob Loose Memorial Park, Kansas City, Missouri, consisted of the installation of 136,268 square feet (12,540 square meters) of saffron-colored nylon fabric covering 2.7 miles (4.4 kilometers) of formal garden walkways and jogging paths.
Vija Celmins: 4 Decades

2007

Vija Celmins: 4 Decades

2007
Best known for her drawings of the ocean and the galaxies of the night sky, Vija Celmins has solidified herself as one of the most important artists of the postwar generation. Stepping back from painting in order to explore her photorealistic drawing style, Celmins creates spectacularly precise renderings of the natural world. In her forty year retrospective at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Celmins recalls her beginnings in abstraction, her choices of subject matter after freeing herself of the New York School influence, and her later immersion in what must be termed her great master drawings.
Hans Haacke: 4 Decades

2007

Hans Haacke: 4 Decades

2007
Hans Haacke is a key figure in contemporary art whose work intersects with conceptual, pop, minimal and land art. The artist is particularly known for his research into the hidden economies and politics of the art world and the repressed histories of places and peoples. Haacke's strong political, cultural and social concerns are reflected in his installations, texts and sculptures.