Popular Documentary Movies on Kanopy - Page 254

WITCH: We Intend to Cause Havoc

2019

WITCH: We Intend to Cause Havoc

2019
The film follows the 21st Century formation of WITCH (We Intend To Cause Havoc), Zambia's most popular rock band of the 1970s, and documents the life of its lead singer, Jagari, whose name is an Africanisation of Mick Jagger's. Through the resurrection of a music that was forgotten by many and unheard by most, the film explores the life of a former African rock-star, and the excitement around the rediscovery of his music by Western fans, many of whom had yet to be born when his last album was released.
In the Footsteps of Taytacha

1985

In the Footsteps of Taytacha

1985
In the Footsteps of Taytacha follows a group of Quechua-speaking musicians and dancers as they leave their remote villages high in the Andes Mountains of Peru and join thousands of other highlanders on the annual religious pilgrimage to the sacred peaks of Qoyllur-Rití. Quollur-Rití, the largest and most important religious ritual in the southern Andes, occurs only five days out of the year and involves walking both day and night in terrain over 4400 meters in altitude.
Brick by Brick: A Civil Rights Story

2007

Brick by Brick: A Civil Rights Story

2007
The real life story of the events surrounding the fight for and against public housing and racial integration in Yonkers, New York in the 1980s as portrayed in the HBO miniseries Show Me a Hero.
Julie Mehretu: Palimpsest

2021

Julie Mehretu: Palimpsest

2021
The film traces Ethiopian abstract artist Julie Mehretu’s preparations for her 20 year career retrospective, leading up to the installation and realization of the survey at LACMA in 2019. The artist offers extensive commentary on her work, her process, and the chronology of her career, from her graduate work at RISD (1996–97) to her current expansive multi-layered canvases.
Satya: A Prayer for the Enemy

1995

Satya: A Prayer for the Enemy

1995
The personal testimonies of the courageous Buddhist nuns who have led the nonviolent resistance against the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
A Thousand Girls Like Me

2018

A Thousand Girls Like Me

2018
8.2
When Khatera, a 23-year-old Afghan woman, forces her father to stand trial after a lifetime of sexual abuse, she risks her family, freedom, and personal safety to expose a judicial system that incriminates the very women who seek protection.
FLicKeR

2009

FLicKeR

2009
6.8
In 1960, Brion Gysin invented the Dream Machine, a hypnotic light device with the power to induce hallucinations, drugless highs, and revolutionize human consciousness. It looks simple enough; a 100-watt light bulb, a motor, and a rotating cylinder with cutouts. Just sit in front of it, close your eyes, and wait for the visions to come. The Dream Machine enthralled mystics and freethinkers everywhere; Kurt Cobain had a dream machine, and William S. Burroughs thought it could be used to “storm the citadels of enlightenment.” With a custom-made Dream Machine in tow, director Nik Sheehan takes us on a journey into the life of Brion Gysin; his art, his complex ideas, and his friendships with some of the most eccentric counter-cultural icons. Taking the Dream Machine as the basis of its explorations, FLicKeR asks crucial questions about the nature of art and consciousness, and imagines a humanity liberated to explore its creativity in complete freedom.
The Wood and the Calabash

2002

The Wood and the Calabash

2002
Among the Senufo people of northern Côte d'Ivoire, the balafon (xylophone with calabash resonators) is an emblematic musical instrument. Balafon makers are all musicians, but a balafon player isn't necessarily an instrument maker. The film shows in detail the manufacture of this musical instrument, an indispensable element in the life of the Senufo people. Each step is shown, from the initial prayer to the genies of the balafon before felling a tree, through the cutting and tuning of the keys and the resonators, to the fixing of the buzzing membranes, which give this instrument its very characteristic timbre. Nanga, the balafon maker, talks about his work and discusses different aspects with friends during a meal.
Sacred Sperm

2014

Sacred Sperm

2014
7
The film creates a daring first exposure on the way parents, rabbis, teachers, pedagogues and therapists within the Orthodox Hasidic Jewish Community educating their male children from infancy to adolescence, to avoid spilling their sperm. They target them to keep their seed only after marriage with a female for the purpose of fertilization. "Sacred Sperm" penetrates into one of the most suppressed hidden issues in the Orthodox Hasidic Jewish Community - a Taboo. Throughout the film we follow the emotional and theological struggle of the director who is trying to find a proper way as a father to explain his teenager son logically why he should keep this major Mitzvah (commandment) which perceived by many as unreasonable and seems impossible to fulfill.
Cannabis : quand le deal est légal

2019

Cannabis : quand le deal est légal

2019
8
Forgotten Hero: Walter White and the NAACP

2025

Forgotten Hero: Walter White and the NAACP

2025
10
While many consider the birth of the civil rights movement to be 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus, the stage had been set decades before by activists of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Some of the NAACP leaders are familiar, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Thurgood Marshall, but Walter White, head of the NAACP from 1929 to 1955, has been all but forgotten. With his blond hair and blue eyes, Walter White looked white; he described himself as “an enigma, a Black man occupying a white body.” Like virtually all light-skinned African Americans of his day, White was descended from enslaved Black women and powerful white men. But he was Black — by law, identity, and conviction and spent his entire life fighting for Black civil rights. Forgotten Hero: Walter White and the NAACP traces the life of this neglected civil rights hero and seeks to explain his disappearance from our history.
The Celts

2006

The Celts

2006
A fascinating journey through the history of the Celtic culture, following the trail back to pre-Roman times when the Celts were regarded as the masters of Europe. The appeal of being a Celt has rarely diminished over the centuries. Their leaders were men and women of legend - King Arthur of the Britons, the Warrior Queen Boudicca, and Vercingetorix the Gaul. However few people understand who the Celts actually were or what their true legacy is. This powerful series cuts through the romanticism and clichéd images to give a true picture of Celtic culture. Presenter Richard Rudgley follows the trail back to pre-Roman times, looking into every aspect of Celtic life to show how they adapted to change.
Coming Out Polish Style

2011

Coming Out Polish Style

2011
1
Rare look into the lives of gays and lesbians in contemporary Poland. It explores the issue of gay and lesbian rights in a conservative society, which is undergoing a very dynamic transformation, allowing for successful liberal changes.
One More Shot

2018

One More Shot

2018
7
We were completely ignorant of this subject until we tried to begin our family four years ago, and found we were unable to conceive. As we sought a solution, we began documenting our journey as a way of reflecting and coping, and we were overwhelmed by the physical, emotional, and financial cost of creating a baby. We filmed all important events, decisions, and results in real time, exposing the heartbreaking, challenging, and even hilarious roller-coaster ride undertaken by a couple struggling to build a family.Throughout our journey, we have interviewed many other couples who have experienced the same struggle and found alternative ways to construct their families. Through IVF, surrogacy, egg and sperm donation, adoption, and miraculous natural conceptions, these infertility “survivors” instill a sense of hope that creating a family when all hope seems lost is possible.
JessZilla

2023

JessZilla

2023
Jesselyn Silva is a 15-year-old 3x national boxing champion. However, when she is on the cusp of making the Olympic team, she is forced to face her toughest battle yet, a cancer diagnosis.
The Jesus Strand: A Search for DNA

2017

The Jesus Strand: A Search for DNA

2017
5
Geneticist George Busby and biblical scholar pastor Joe Basile travel the globe extracting and analyzing samples from the most famous religious relics from history in search of the DNA of the most famous figure in history; Jesus Christ.
A Normal Life

2024

A Normal Life

2024
A NORMAL LIFE shows the personal everyday life of four Bosnian women who were forced to flee their home country due to the consequences of the Yugoslav Wars and have been working as cleaning women in Vienna ever since. We get personal insights into their lives, their work, their urge to build a new life and their personal way of overcoming trauma.
The Red Bowmen

1978

The Red Bowmen

1978
5.5
Every year, a ritual known as ida is performed by the Umeda people, who inhabit the dense primary forest of the Waina-Sawanda district of West Sepik, Papua New Guinea. Ida, the central social and cultural drama of the Umeda, is a fertility ritual, in which a dominant theme is the metamorphosis of the cassowaries. An ethnography by anthropologist Alfred Gell, Metamorphosis of the Cassowaries, complements the film.
Omar & Pete

2005

Omar & Pete

2005
Omar and Pete are determined to change their lives. Both have been in and out of prison for more than 30 years — never out longer than six months. This intimate and penetrating film follows these two longtime African-American friends after what they hope will be their final release. Their lives take divergent paths in their native Baltimore as one wrestles with addiction and fear while the other finds success and freedom through helping others. With extraordinary cooperation from Maryland's innovative reentry programs — many run by former drug addicts and convicts themselves — Omar & Pete also provides a rare glimpse into an intense and very personal web of support.
Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground

2018

Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground

2018
The 29-minute experimental film Christmas on Earth caused a sensation when it first screened in New York City in 1964. Its orgy scenes, double projections and overlapping images shattered artistic conventions and announced a powerful new voice in the city's underground film scene. All the more remarkable, that vision belonged to a teenager, 18-year-old Barbara Rubin. A Zelig of the '60s, she introduced Andy Warhol to the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan to Kabbalah and bewitched Allen Ginsberg. The same unbridled creativity that inspired her to make films when women simply didn't, saw her breach yet another male domain, Orthodox Judaism, before her mysterious death at 35. Lifelong friend Jonas Mekas saved all her letters, creating a rich archive that filmmaker Chuck Smith carefully sculpts into this fascinating portrait of a nearly forgotten artist. An avante-garde maverick, a rebel in a man's world, Barbara Rubin regains her rightful place in film history.