Popular Documentary Movies on Kanopy - Page 254

Living Broke in Boom Times: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty

2001

Living Broke in Boom Times: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty

2001
The epic movement of poor Americans organizing to end poverty as documented in a decade-long journey by the filmmakers. Living Broke in Boom Times has condensed three groundbreaking documentary films spanning a decade into segments of ideal length for classroom use, with new wrap-around commentary from key activists who led the movement. Cheri Honkala, Willie Baptist and Liz Theoharis discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the organizing, and the lessons learned from hard-won experience.
Decade of Fire

2018

Decade of Fire

2018
7
As a kid in the South Bronx in the 1970s, Vivian Vazquez watched her tight-knit community become a burned-out ruin as an epidemic of fires raged through her Black and Puerto Rican neighborhood. As Vivian seeks to understand the lasting effects of this tragedy on her family and community, she uncovers a story of injustice, survival and hope that resonates deeply in cities today.
Naked Spaces: Living Is Round

1985

Naked Spaces: Living Is Round

1985
5
Shot with stunning elegance and clarity, NAKED SPACES explores the rhythm and ritual of life in the rural environments of six West African countries (Mauritania, Mali, Burkino Faso, Togo, Benin and Senegal). The nonlinear structure of NAKED SPACES challenges the traditions of ethnographic filmmaking, while sensuous sights and sounds lead the viewer on a poetic journey to the most inaccessible parts of the African continent: the private interaction of people in their living spaces.
Pretend Not to See Me

2009

Pretend Not to See Me

2009
Life and art intersect on a spectacular Newfoundland farm where visual artist Colette Urban mounts thirteen art performances in the fields and barns of her property. Resilient, determined, self aware and funny, Colette embraces the transformative power of art as she restages the significant art performances of her thirty-year career. With the camera as her audience she transforms the quotidian into a playful world of the imagination with elaborate costumes and idiosyncratic self invented rituals.
Les enfants de la liberté

2022

Les enfants de la liberté

2022
A simple nurse's aide and mother of three children, Sonia is committed to fundamental rights. She is convinced that the crisis that France has been experiencing since the beginning of the pandemic is more political than sanitary. Sonia founded the Blouses Blanches, a collective working for fundamental freedoms, and is opposed to the mandatory and systematic vaccination of caregivers and children. From her point of view, both have been sacrificed on the altar of the pandemic. For several months, Maga and Ariakina Ettori met with scientists, doctors and politicians in order to understand what this health crisis reveals about our health system, our society, our collective values and our democracy. A balanced and nuanced journalistic investigation.
End of the Line

2021

End of the Line

2021
Explores the role of the MTA in New York City and the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic had on the vital service it provides: transporting New York’s essential workers. The film acknowledges the decline of the subway infrastructure as a political issue and captures a tumultuous time that impacted every city in America. This film poses the question: what happens when the lifeline of a city goes flat?
Pearl Harbor: Into the Arizona

2016

Pearl Harbor: Into the Arizona

2016
7
Over 75 years ago, 1,177 men lost their lives on the USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor. The ship, underwater, is a shrine and monument, visited by tourists, and the families of those who perished. New 4K footage shows us previously unexplored areas of the battleship wreckage.
Absolutely Safe

2007

Absolutely Safe

2007
Filmmaker Carol Ciancutti-Leyva offers this penetrating look at the bewildering array of questions, opinions and troubling safety concerns that face everyday women who are contemplating breast augmentation. Following the stories of two women -- one who chooses to have implants, another who has her implants removed -- the film chronicles how big business, media and the medical community influence the debate surrounding the controversial procedure.
Only I Can Hear

2022

Only I Can Hear

2022
7.5
"I've always wanted to be deaf," says 15-year-old Nyla. She's the only hearing person in her family going back five generations and views her ability to hear as both a gift and a curse. Itaru Matsui and Heath Cozens weave together the fascinating experiences of four children of deaf adults—also known as CODAs—and the challenges and joys they face living between these two worlds.
62 Days

2017

62 Days

2017
An urgent examination of a growing trend of laws that seek to control a pregnant woman's body.
Richard Meier in Rome Building a Church in the City of Churches

2006

Richard Meier in Rome Building a Church in the City of Churches

2006
Known for his bold, abstract and stark white buildings, American architect Richard Meier now takes on the challenge of building the Jubilee Church in Rome. Holding the location in high regard, Meier praises the vibrant visual layout of the city and tells us, "Rome is a city of architecture; it's a city of walls and columns and spaces and places and defined places and wherever you look there's architecture" (Richard Meier). Staying true to his signature design style, Meier has created a structure resembling grand soaring sails which appear steady and peaceful as they stand in striking opposition to the city's landscape. Three curved walls separate three distinct spaces: the main sanctuary, the weekday chapel and the baptistry, each with its own entrance. As a contrast he shows us his favorite churches in Rome by his famous colleagues from earlier times.
Pidgin: The Voice of Hawai'i

2009

Pidgin: The Voice of Hawai'i

2009
6
What if you are made to feel ashamed when you speak your "mother tongue" or ridiculed because of your accent? "Pidgin: The Voice of Hawai'i" addresses these questions through its lively examination of Pidgin - the language spoken by over half of Hawai'i's people.
CyberWar Threat

2015

CyberWar Threat

2015
8
Amid the ever-changing cyberwar landscape, the powerful National Security Agency is viewed with a mixture of awe and fear around the world.
The United States of Detroit

2017

The United States of Detroit

2017
This is a film about the power and necessity of community action in Detroit, and the street level solutions that residents there are finding to make a way in the biggest city in our nation to ever go bust.
Circle of Poison

2015

Circle of Poison

2015
6.6
A global look at communities impacted by the export of toxic pesticides made in America and how they are fighting back.
Raising Shrimp

2013

Raising Shrimp

2013
America's most popular and iconic seafood is really a cheap foreign import. Raising Shrimp paints the economic and medical perils of an outsourced food supply,and follows Ted, an engineer, and Andy, an ecologist, on a quest for a better shrimp. In Texas, they find fishermen pushed from riches to rags by imports. In Belize, they find shrimp farmers striving for a natural balance with jungles and lagoons, but again globalization takes its toll, and the best farm collapses. Back home in the U.S. pioneering farmers harness the power of bacteria to grow shrimp inside a darkened warehouse without any waste. Encouraged, Andy and Ted see that raising shrimp this way offers hope for all.
Uncle Chatzkel

2000

Uncle Chatzkel

2000
Dede Chackelis (Uncle Chatzkel) portrays the patient triumph of one man's dignity and intellect over genocide, oppression and personal adversity.
Horizons

2015

Horizons

2015
6.3
By following the career of two dancers of the National Cuban Ballet, Amanda, young ballerina and Viengsay Valdez, star dancer, Horizons revisits the extraordinary destiny of Alicia Alonso, prima ballerina assoluta, with a steel temperament who is now in the twilight of her life.
One Cut, One Life

2014

One Cut, One Life

2014
5
When seminal documentarian Ed Pincus is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he and collaborator Lucia Small team up to make one last film, much to the chagrin of Jane, Ed’s wife of 50 years. Told from two points of view with vulnerability, intimacy and humor, ONE CUT, ONE LIFE challenges the form of first person documentary while offering a complex story of love, loss, legacy, and the delicacy of capturing the preciousness of life while time is fleeting.
Little Potato

2024

Little Potato

2024
This Documentary offers a poetic portrait of the film-maker’s grandmother, Shou Ai Xia, who suffers from dementia. It explores the fading memories of her ordinary life and the vivid hallucinations reflecting her decades of commitment to the Chinese Communist Party, providing a pathway beyond the traditional views of dementia.