Popular Documentary Movies on Kanopy - Page 303

Firestorm '77 The True Story of the Honda Canyon Fire

2022

Firestorm '77 The True Story of the Honda Canyon Fire

2022
Military commanders, fearful of the Base’s cold war secrets being compromised, attempted to control the protocols and procedures of the civilian fire fighters called upon to battle the1977 Honda Canyon Fire on Vandenberg Air Force Base. They intead offered up their own untrained personnel to fight a conflagration that, for all intents and purposes, should have never been fought and couldn’t be beaten.
Murales

2010

Murales

2010
Symphonies in Stone: St. Paul's Cathedral

1942

Symphonies in Stone: St. Paul's Cathedral

1942
A short guide around St Pauls Cathedral.
Love and Sex in Scandinavia

2021

Love and Sex in Scandinavia

2021
With its reputation for being liberal and sexually-open minded, Scandinavia leads the the world when it comes to gender equality. Its empowered women are not afraid to express their desires. But is gender equality enough to ensure harmony between men and women? We go in search of the secrets of Nordic love.
Pictures from a Hiroshima Schoolyard

2012

Pictures from a Hiroshima Schoolyard

2012
Survivors of Hiroshima discuss their lives amid the rubble after they are reunited with pictures they drew as children in 1947.
Cy Dear

2019

Cy Dear

2019
Cy Twombly was a truly amazing artist: painter, illustrator, sculptor, and photographer. This documentary is a tribute to the prolific American creator, a contemporary of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns who inspired Michel Basquiat, Anselm Kiefer, Francesco Clemente, and Julian Schnabel.
Le Jour et l'Heure

2021

Le Jour et l'Heure

2021
Baniyala

1996

Baniyala

1996
An archival record film of life at the small Madarrpa clan settlement of Bäniyala on Blue Mud Bay, some 200 kilometres south of Yirrkala.
A Peasant Chronicle in Gruyère

1990

A Peasant Chronicle in Gruyère

1990
The shooting of this peasant chronicle in the Gruyère region of Switzerland lasted a whole year, from July 1989 to July 1990. A year of work and festivities in the family of Conrad and Louise Bapst, their children and grandchildren who live in La Roche (canton of Fribourg). In summer, part of the family goes with the herd to the upper pastures, and will move six times in the next three months, as the grass for the cows grows in higher and higher places. At the farm below, the rest of the family mows the hay and the after crop, and tends the vegetable garden. Fall and winter bring new chores, along with feast-days, and the sale of cheeses to pay for rented pastures. We see the family participate in a vote for or against the Swiss Army, and at a meeting where mountain farmers discuss whether or not to join the European Union. The film displays the patient and human approach of an almost silent minority of Switzerland.
Madarrpa Funeral at Gurka’wuy

1979

Madarrpa Funeral at Gurka’wuy

1979
In 1976, Ian Dunlop was invited by Dundiwuy Wanambi, a leader of the Marrakulu clan, to Gurka’wuy on Trial Bay in the Gulf of Carpentaria. He wanted Film Australia to record the first major Marrakulu ceremony to be held at Gurka’wuy since its recent establishment as a clan settlement. While they were there, a baby boy died. The Madarrpa men, including the child’s father and Dundiwuy, asked for the funeral to be filmed.Mortuary rites of the Yolngu are extremely complex. Despite some practical modifications to traditional ceremonies as a result of life on mission stations, ritual remains extremely strong.
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?
Running Out of Time

2006

Running Out of Time

2006
In many ways the heart of indigenous India, mineral-rich Jharkhand is and has been at the core of India's industrial development after independence. There, the indigenous Adivasi people have borne the brunt of what is arguably India's most fundamental developmental conflict, which has pushed them to the verge of extinction as an agricultural people.
The Chairman and the Lions

2012

The Chairman and the Lions

2012
As recently as forty years ago, most sections of the Maasai were semi-nomadic and relatively independent of the nation-state. However, political, social and economic changes in East Africa have forced many herders to adopt a sedentary lifestyle. The Chairman and the Lions introduces Frank Kaipai Ikoyo, a charismatic Ilparakuyo Maasai who, at thirty-three, is the leader of a Tanzanian village called Lesoit. Ikoyo was elected to his post at the age of twenty-six in part because he had completed primary school. That someone so young would be accorded such authority would have been without precedent not long ago. Yet this ethnography of Ikoyo's duties as village chairman shows how literacy and insight into the workings of the nation-state are essential for Maasai to combat the many lions, both real and figurative, that beset them: land grabbers, "bush" lawyers, unemployment, out-migration and poverty.
Abraham and Sarah II. Hosting the Gundagundo Pilgrims

2019

Abraham and Sarah II. Hosting the Gundagundo Pilgrims

2019
The film is part of the Guardians of Productive Landscapes series and a sequel to 'Abraham and Sarah I: Creators of a productive landscape'. A Tigrean farmer and his wife, who host pilgrims to a festival at the Gundagundo monastery, have gained the biblical names Abraham and Sarah. We see Sarah and other women prepare food and drink for the pilgrims, while Abraham and other men erect a shelter. At dawn dozens of pilgrims descend the steep escarpment, eventually arriving at Gundagundo where celebrations are in full swing. We witness highlights of the festival, and the pilgrims' return to the homestead of Abraham and Sarah. Here they receive food, drink and shelter, and sing the praises of their hosts. At midnight visitors arrive with an old, sick monk. Before the guests depart next morning, a monk thanks and blesses Abraham and Sarah.
Abraham and Sarah. Creators of a Productive Landscape

2017

Abraham and Sarah. Creators of a Productive Landscape

2017
In the highlands of Tigray - northern Ethiopia - on the edge of the escarpment that descends steeply to the Danakil dessert, Hagos Mashisho and Desta Gidey have toiled and struggled for years to turn the rugged slopes of the East African Rift Valley into fertile ground. They have grown crops here not only to feed themselves and their family, but also to share with others, in particular the pilgrims who regularly pass by on their way to the monastery of Gundagundo. Touched by the kindness of their hosts, the pilgrims have given them the biblical names "Abraham" and "Sarah". The film explores the work ethos and grace of these Tigrean farmers: the cheerful mood with which they do what needs to be done; the devotedness to the tasks at hand; the coordinated movements of humans and animals as they work when ploughing, sowing, harvesting, threshing; - and finally those moments of invocation when the dependence on nature and the transcendent are acknowledged.
Journey West: Buwarrala Aryah

2019

Journey West: Buwarrala Aryah

2019
Growing concern among young Aboriginal community leaders, particularly those in the Borroloola Men's Group, drew them to the idea of re-enacting a walk that hadn't occurred for almost thirty years. The Buwarrala-Journey is a traditional walk for the Garrwa, Yanyuwa, Mara and Gurdanji peoples of the Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Australia. Practiced for generations as part of the initiation of young boys, the walk was re-enacted in 1988 and documented in the film, Buwarrala Agarriya - Journey East. Gadrian Jarwijalmar Hoosan was twelve years old then and was one of four boys or Daru – boys who were prepared for their initiation ceremony. As an adult he had become a mentor to younger men, and directed a new film to record the new re-enactment of the walk in late 2017. The walk involved over one hundred community members - children, their families, teachers and volunteers, who covered a distance of seventy kilometres in seven days.
Uncle Poison

1998

Uncle Poison

1998
A healer on healing, medicine & religion...Filmed in the modern city of Caracas, capital of Venezuela, Uncle Poison is an intimate portrait of a traditional faith healer, set against the backdrop of his community's Easter celebrations. Every day, Benito Reyes receives people at his house looking for all sorts of cures. Through his own testimony, this documentary looks at the healer's role as mediator between the social, natural and spiritual worlds. Curing someone or harvesting medicinal leaves, he must first seek permission from the plants he uses and from a variety of Saints. Like some plants and spirits, Benito has the power to extract the sickness and spells from his patients. A conjunction of sacred and profane, celebrating and mourning, Easter provides a rare opportunity to look at traditional faith healing in a wider social and religious context.
Via Dolorosa

1978

Via Dolorosa

1978
Every year, in the colonial city of Antigua, Guatemala, the "sorrowful way" of Good Friday is recreated by a path of colored sawdust and flower petals. Along this road several hundred people take turns carrying a ponderous mahoganybier.
Dancing Grass: Harvesting Teff in the Tigrean Highlands

2018

Dancing Grass: Harvesting Teff in the Tigrean Highlands

2018
Dancing Grass captures the communal harvesting of teff among Tigreans of Northern Ethiopia. Teff, an ancient indigenous grain, is central to the livelihood of smallholder farmers and may be called the 'cereal core' of Ethiopian national food identity. A local elder provides the commentary for the sequence of events that unfold in the homestead, fields and neighbourhood of the author's eldest brother and family: the cutting of the 'dancing grass'; the drying and stacking; the threshing and winnowing; then the sale of teff in the local market; off with a donkey to the mill; cooking enjera for family and guests; coffee drinking and blessing; and finally the Mesqel fire, an Orthodox Christian celebration at the end of the rainy season.
The Living Forest

2004

The Living Forest

2004
Living Forest explains the food forest system in use in an area near the river Amônia; a consortium in which everyone participates to provide better food for the entire community. Using forest management, the Ashaninka Indians turn degraded land into a place for communal cultivation. Banana trees are grown for food and also as fertilizer for other crops, including plants that are used for building materials. The video also shows how the Ashaninka are able to attract more wild game with the fruit that they grow, as well as keeping honeybees and turtles for food. By conducting studies of plants and animals they are continually finding ways to improve their system. Through communal, sustainable cultivation of the forest, these Indians protect their land and plan to feed themselves well into the future.