Popular Documentary Movies on Kanopy - Page 289

Hutterites: To Care and Not to Care

1993

Hutterites: To Care and Not to Care

1993
Spiritual cousins of the Mennonites and Amish, the Hutterites live simply with austerity. By a way of life that is supremely communal rather than individualistic, the Hutterites have rid themselves of poverty, homicide and anxiety about the future.
The Planet

2016

The Planet

2016
In "The Planet," there are creatures who maintain their orbits via gravity, the force by which objects of mass are brought toward one another.
Ancient Rome

1949

Ancient Rome

1949
This classroom training film was designed to show the achievements of Roman culture in the areas of government, architecture, engineering, language and writing. It was aimed at intermediate and high-school students.
Rampart

2021

Rampart

2021
6.5
Marko spends time in the abandoned apartment of his childhood in Belgrade. Traces of the past are being drawn and memories, both idyllic and traumatic, are combined. The family VHS archive shows his universe during 1998 and 1999: gatherings, pets, videogames, and moments of uncertainty reveal a common life embraced by an historical event.
The 1936 Olympic Games

2016

The 1936 Olympic Games

2016
On the 1st August 1936, 100,000 spectators watched as Hitler and the Olympic delegates arrived at the Olympic opening ceremony in Berlin. The Olympic flags hung cheerfully side-by-side banners bearing the Nazi swastika. With the help of specialists and images from Léni Riefenstahl’s 1938 film, ‘Olympia’, we see what really went on behind the scenes and investigate the secret negotiations and compromises made by the International Olympic Committee to bring the Olympics to Berlin.
Florida Woman

2021

Florida Woman

2021
When the media gets wind of Mary Thorn’s story, there’s no stopping them from villainizing her as just another “Florida Man.” Florida Woman is a documentary portrait that peels back the curtain on the media’s portrayal of Mary Thorn, an ex-pro wrestler in Florida battling the state in order to save her pet alligator. Florida Woman ultimately reveals the humanity behind the viral headlines.
The Yangtze River's Green Sailors

2012

The Yangtze River's Green Sailors

2012
Descending from a long line of fishermen on the Yangtze River, Liu Gujun had to redefine his professional activity when the construction of the famous Three Gorges Dam began. His father, who has recently passed away, had to stop fishing the river due the growing pollution that the dam has created and asked his son to start cleaning the river. In the Chinese tradition of respect for the elder, Lui Gujon took the last wishes of his father very seriously. As such, he puts all his energy and invests every penny of his personal wealth into the ambitious project of cleaning up the river. For lack of sufficient grants from the government, Liu even contracts heavy loans to build a small flotilla of cleaning boats.
The Big Family

2013

The Big Family

2013
Zhou Zhi, the patriarch of the family, rules strictly following the handed-down 'hereditary tradition': listening to no one. In the face of new economic challenges, he decides and acts totally arbitrarily. Unable to adapt himself to "modern times", not the least because of his stubbornness, he runs into heavy debt putting the family in great financial difficulty. Turning to his daughters and sons-in-law for support, he receives a cold welcome. Around the almost larger-than-life patriarchal figure of Zhou Zhi, this film vividly portrays the difficulties of an ordinary Chinese family, with its members having to change their lifestyle in the face of economic difficulties and a shifting culture.
My Transgender Life: Paul Wears Dresses

2017

My Transgender Life: Paul Wears Dresses

2017
Follows the struggles of Stefonknee Wolscht, a trans woman trying to rebuild her life. Losing her home and her family, Stefonknee gives a first hand account of the many challenges trans people face. In her hometown, Stefonknee was known as a loving husband and father, a really good mechanic and a staunch Catholic but only she knew the truth; that she had been assigned to the wrong gender.
The Virus That Shook the World

2021

The Virus That Shook the World

2021
The epic story of how people around the world lived through the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, from lockdowns to funerals to protests. Filming across the globe and using extensive personal video and local footage, FRONTLINE documented how people and countries responded to COVID-19 across cultures, races, faiths and privilege.
Yanomamo: A Multidisciplinary Study

1968

Yanomamo: A Multidisciplinary Study

1968
This film illustrates the field techniques used by a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Michigan in collaboration with their Venezuelan colleagues. The film also includes a brief sketch of Yanomamo culture and society.
Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts

2021

Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts

2021
6
This illuminating documentary explores the life of a unique American artist, a man with a remarkable and unlikely biography. Bill Traylor was born into slavery in 1853 on a cotton plantation in rural Alabama. After the Civil War, Traylor continued to farm the land as a sharecropper until the late 1920s. Aging and alone, he moved to Montgomery and worked odd jobs in the thriving segregated black neighborhood. A decade later, in his late 80s, Traylor became homeless and started to draw and paint, both memories from plantation days and scenes of a radically changing urban culture. He made well over a thousand drawings and paintings between 1939-1942. This colorful, strikingly modernist work eventually led him to be recognized as one of America’s greatest self-taught artists and the subject of a Smithsonian retrospective.
Green Warriors: South Africa's Toxic Townships

2018

Green Warriors: South Africa's Toxic Townships

2018
Johannesburg is considered the most uranium-contaminated city in the world. Waste dumps from around 600 abandoned mines sit next to residential communities, blowing polluted dust into homes and contaminating the soil and water supplies. To get a sense of the sheer extent of the problem, Martin Boudot and his team of researchers investigate. Equipped with a Geiger counter, they uncover some dangerous realities...
The Cost of Living

2020

The Cost of Living

2020
THE COST OF LIVING is a documentary that explores the current socio-economic state of Britain and considers how the idea of a basic income could minimize poverty and the sociological toll of a growing precarious class. The film focuses on the feasibility of a basic income, John Rawls' theory of justice, automation and ultimately asks should there still be a cost attributed to survival?
Benny and The Dreamers

1992

Benny and The Dreamers

1992
A small group of Pintupi living in west Central Australia today can remember their first meeting with a white man, their first impressions of the white man's world and their expectations of what the white world had to offer.
Fly So Far

2021

Fly So Far

2021
7.7
In 2008, Teodora Vásquez was convicted of aggravated homicide and sentenced to 30 years in prison for having had a late-term miscarriage.
Shipping Home

2016

Shipping Home

2016
Shipping Home follows the year-long construction of Asheville, North Carolina’s first shipping container residence. But this is no HGTV fairytale – Ryan and Brook must balance life and parenthood with their aspirations of a sustainable dream house
Bat City USA

2012

Bat City USA

2012
5
Bat City USA delves into Austin's complicated relationship with a colony of Mexican free-tailed bats under the downtown Congress Avenue Bridge. Each year, thousands of people get a fascinating, close-up glimpse of the world's largest urban bat colony amid the colorful downtown Austin, Texas setting. The film reveals how the bats moved into the bridge and survived eradication plans by hostile residents. Viewers discover how the bats eventually became a beloved part of what makes Austin unique and weird, mainly through the efforts of Merlin Tuttle, founder of Bat Conservation International, who convinced residents of the benefits of the bats.
Generation Greta

2020

Generation Greta

2020
They are aged between 12 and 24. They have grown up in a world with increasing droughts, floods, fires. And they share a common fight: the climate emergency. In spite of their cultural and geographical differences, nine young female activists are united under the same struggle: raising awareness about the climate emergency, fighting against the inaction of politicians, and promoting radical societal change, so that nature and social justice become our top priority. In the wake of Greta Thunberg, the most famous of them all, these young women, aged between 12 and 24 years old, already possess the charisma and assurance of some of the history’s greatest political personalities. Who are these activists, set on changing the world? How can we understand their anger? What hopes do they carry? ‘Generation Greta’ recounts the story of these nine incredible young women, combining moving eyewitness accounts and breathtaking archive footage.
Ellipsis

2021

Ellipsis

2021
The narrator collides with animal-shaped shooting targets in the woods. She sets out to unravel a breathtaking and fascinating cultural-historical tangle of animal and human rights: the power of a gaze, the objects of exhibition, and the secondary power of being under scrutiny.