Popular Documentary Movies on Kanopy - Page 3

The French

1982

The French

1982
7.1
Roland-Garros, 1981: For the very first time, a documentary team is allowed to shoot sequences in the backstage of the French Open of tennis of Roland-Garros. William Klein's camera takes us on the heels of the greatest players of the time: Björn Borg, Jimmy Connors, Ivan Lendl, Chris Evert-Lloyd, John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova, Yannick Noah, Guillermo Vilas... Miles of film. Historical pictures, a thousand and one details, a thousand and one unusual scenes. A declaration of love from a tennis lover.
Samsara

2011

Samsara

2011
8
Filmed over nearly five years in twenty-five countries on five continents, and shot on seventy-millimetre film, Samsara transports us to the varied worlds of sacred grounds, disaster zones, industrial complexes, and natural wonders.
Ethnic Notions

1986

Ethnic Notions

1986
7.1
This documentary traces the deep-rooted stereotypes which have fueled anti-black prejudice.
Paragraph 175

2000

Paragraph 175

2000
6.5
During the Nazi regime, there was widespread persecution of homosexual men, which started in 1871 with the Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code. Thousands were murdered in concentration camps. This powerful and disturbing documentary, narrated by Rupert Everett, presents for the first time the largely untold testimonies of some of those who survived.
Hummingbirds

2023

Hummingbirds

2023
Best friends Silvia and Beba record their lives as they dance, make music, and face an uncertain immigration process in Texas near the Mexican border.
Concerning Violence

2014

Concerning Violence

2014
7
Based on powerful archival material documenting the most daring moments in the struggle for liberation in the Third World, this documentary is accompanied by classic text from The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.
Best Boy

1979

Best Boy

1979
6.4
In this documentary, the director follows the day-to-day activities of his retarded, middle-aged cousin Philly, over a three-year period.
Drew: The Man Behind the Poster

2013

Drew: The Man Behind the Poster

2013
7
A documentary on legendary movie-poster artist Drew Struzan.
Risk

2017

Risk

2017
6.6
Capturing the story of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with unprecedented access, director Laura Poitras finds herself caught between the motives and contradictions of Assange and his inner circle in a documentary portrait of power, betrayal, truth and sacrifice.
Girl Rising

2013

Girl Rising

2013
7
Nine filmmakers each profile a young girl from a different part of the world to weave a global tapestry of youth in the 21st century.
Bobbi Jene

2017

Bobbi Jene

2017
5.5
A love story, portraying the dilemmas and inevitable consequences of ambition. It is a film about a woman's fight for independence, a woman trying to succeed with her own art in the extremely competitive world of dance.
Dig!

2004

Dig!

2004
6.7
A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.
Great Directors

2009

Great Directors

2009
5.9
Features conversations with ten of the world's greatest living directors: Bernardo Bertolucci, David Lynch, Liliana Cavani, Stephen Frears, Agnes Varda, Ken Loach, Todd Haynes, Catherine Breillat, Richard Linklater and John Sayles. The film documents Ismailos' voyage of discovering the creative personalities behind the camera.
Waste Land

2010

Waste Land

2010
7.6
An uplifting feature documentary highlighting the transformative power of art and the beauty of the human spirit. Top-selling contemporary artist Vik Muniz takes us on an emotional journey from Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, to the heights of international art stardom. Vik collaborates with the brilliant catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, true Shakespearean characters who live and work in the garbage quoting Machiavelli and showing us how to recycle ourselves.
The Master Game

1998

The Master Game

1998
6.3
At the Vienna Art Academy in 1994, an unidentified person painted over 27 works by Austrian painter Arnulf Rainer. Rainer had become world-famous for his abstract art and, in particular, for his over-layering of photographs and overpainting of his own and other artists’ works. But who painted over the “overpainter”? Speculation rages: Did he attack his works himself? A year later, an unsigned letter surfaces claiming responsibility for the act directed against Rainer – and modern art in general – and accusing the artist of being complicit with “destructive modernism.” At the same time, Austria is shaken by a series of mail bombs by the Bajuwarian Liberation Army, in response to the supposed threat to Austria’s “German identity.” Are there connections between the overpainting event and the mail bombs? Or is this all just a game? A dream? Or perhaps a hallucination?
Tongues Untied

1990

Tongues Untied

1990
6.6
Marlon Riggs, with assistance from other gay Black men, especially poet Essex Hemphill, celebrates Black men loving Black men as a revolutionary act. The film intercuts footage of Hemphill reciting his poetry, Riggs telling the story of his growing up, scenes of men in social intercourse and dance, and various comic riffs, including a visit to the "Institute of Snap!thology," where men take lessons in how to snap their fingers: the sling snap, the point snap, the diva snap.
Fastball

2016

Fastball

2016
7.1
Since 1912, baseball has been a game obsessed with statistics and speed. Thrown at upwards of 100 miles per hour, a fastball moves too quickly for human cognition and accelerates into the realm of intuition. Fastball is a look at how the game at its highest levels of achievement transcends logic and even skill, becoming the primal struggle for man to control the uncontrollable.
Henry Ford

2013

Henry Ford

2013
8.4
HENRY FORD paints a fascinating portrait of a farm boy who rose from obscurity to become the most influential American innovator of the 20th century.
Apollo 11

2019

Apollo 11

2019
7.9
A look at the Apollo 11 mission to land on the moon led by commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin.
The Brink

2019

The Brink

2019
6.4
Now unconstrained by an official post, Steve Bannon is free to peddle influence as a perceived kingmaker, who some say still has a direct line to the White House. After anointing himself leader of the “populist movement,” he travels around the North America and Europe spreading his hard-line anti-immigration message.