Popular Documentary Movies on Kanopy - Page 83

The Lottery

2010

The Lottery

2010
5.8
Four children enter a high-stakes lottery. If they win, they can attend one of the best schools in New York. A look at the crisis in public education, The Lottery makes the case than any child can succeed.
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution

2008

Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution

2008
6.2
For the first time ever, our children are growing up less healthy than we are. As the rate of cancer, infertility and other illnesses linked to environmental factors climbs upward each year, we must ask ourselves: why is this happening?
Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death

2003

Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death

2003
7.2
This true, astonishing story describes how King Leopold II of Belgium turned Congo into its private colony between 1885 and 1908. Under his control, Congo became a gulag labor camp of shocking brutality. Leopold posed as the protector of Africans fleeing Arab slave-traders but, in reality, he carved out an empire based on terror to harvest rubber.
The Hunters

1957

The Hunters

1957
6.1
An ethnographic film that documents the efforts of four !Kung men (also known as Ju/'hoansi or Bushmen) to hunt a giraffe in the Kalahari Desert of Namibia. The footage was shot by John Marshall during a Smithsonian-Harvard Peabody sponsored expedition in 1952–53. In addition to the giraffe hunt, the film shows other aspects of !Kung life at that time, including family relationships, socializing and storytelling, and the hard work of gathering plant foods and hunting for small game.
Domestic Violence 2

2002

Domestic Violence 2

2002
5.2
The opening scene in this film is of an arrest in Hillsborough County Florida where a woman has scratched her husband while he was trying to restrain her from getting back in her car and leaving after an argument. The officers explain that she has committed a battery and thereby earned herself an inescapable arrest and overnight stay in jail because by law they have no discretion. This sets the stage for two hours of court proceedings before three different judges, each trying to apply the Florida domestic violence laws.
Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square

1998

Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square

1998
6.5
This film illustrates the life of the film director, Shui-Bo Wang in The People's Republic of China. We learn of the life of the director in his own words and images from a child steeped in the values of Chinese communism exemplified by Chairman Mao, to a young man striving to live up to those ideals both as an artist and a soldier.
Brakhage

1998

Brakhage

1998
7
BRAKHAGE explores the depth and breadth of the filmmaker’s genius, the exquisite splendor of his films, his magic personal charm, his aesthetic fellow travelers, and the influence his work has had on generations of other creators. While touching on significant moments in Brakhage’s biography, the film celebrates Brakhage’s visionary genius, and explores the extraordinary artistic possibilities of cinema, a medium mostly known only for its commercial applications in the form of narratives, cartoons, documentaries, and advertising. BRAKHAGE combines excerpts from Brakhage’s films and films of other avant-garde filmmakers (eg, George Kuchar, Jonas Mekas, Willie Varela, Bruce Elder, and others); interviews with Brakhage, his friends, family, colleagues, and critics; archival footage of Brakhage spanning the past thirty-five years; and location shooting in Boulder, Colorado and New York.
Towards Mathilde

2005

Towards Mathilde

2005
6.3
The french choreographer Mathilde Monnier and her preparation for her next performance is the main focus of this documentary. The choreography's practices and the bodies, everything is registered in some sort of anthropological way by the filmmaker's camera.
Ram Dass: Fierce Grace

2001

Ram Dass: Fierce Grace

2001
5.7
Once a symbol of '60s counterculture and psychedelic drug use, Ram Dass has since become a renowned speaker and author on the topics of aging, spirituality, and overcoming the mistakes of the past. This documentary chronicles his journey from his affiliations with LSD advocate Timothy Leary to his endeavor to continue remaking himself after his stroke in 1997.
Zapatista

1999

Zapatista

1999
5.2
"Zapatista" is the definitive look at the uprising in Chiapas. It is the story of a Mayan peasant rebellion armed with sticks and their word against a first world military. It is the story of a global movement that has fought 175,000 federal troops to a stand still and transformed Mexican and international political culture forever.
The Joy of Life

2005

The Joy of Life

2005
5.2
A blending of documentary and experimental narrative strategies, combining stunning 16mm landscape cinematography with a bold, lyrical voice-over to share two San Francisco stories: the history of the Golden Gate Bridge as “suicide landmark,” and the story of a butch dyke in San Francisco searching for love and self-discovery. The Joy of Life is a film about landscapes, both physical and emotional.
Shadows of a Leader: Qaddafi's Female Bodyguards

2004

Shadows of a Leader: Qaddafi's Female Bodyguards

2004
7
The documentary investigates the phenomenon of Qaddafi's elite female bodyguard corps and the tensions these women embody: tensions between Islam, modernisation in a nomadic society, a militarist feminism and an urban dictatorship.
Wall

2004

Wall

2004
5.6
A meditation on the separation fence in Israel-Palestine that imprisons one people while enclosing the other.
Hofmann's Potion: The Pioneers of LSD

2002

Hofmann's Potion: The Pioneers of LSD

2002
4.8
Long before Timothy Leary urged a generation to "tune in, turn on and drop out," lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, was being used by researchers trying to understand the human mind. This documentary is a fascinating look at the story of "acid" before it hit the streets. Featuring interviews with many LSD pioneers, Hofmann's Potion is much more than a simple chronicle of the drug's early days. With thoughtful interviews, beautiful music and stunning cinematography, it is an invitation to look at LSD, and our world, with a more open, compassionate mind.
Ayurveda: Art of Being

2001

Ayurveda: Art of Being

2001
5.2
Ayurveda is a science of life and a healing art, where body, mind and spirit are given equal importance. This voyage of thousands of miles across India and abroad takes you on a unique poetic journey, where we encounter remarkable men of medicine or simply a villager who lives in harmony with nature. "Hope is nature's way of enabling us to survive so that we can discover nature itself."
Scottsboro: An American Tragedy

2000

Scottsboro: An American Tragedy

2000
8.2
A look at the infamous "Scottsboro Boys" case that occurred in Alabama in 1931, in which nine young black men were arrested, tried and quickly convicted in the rape of two white women, despite overwhelming evidence that showed their accusers had falsely accused them and the fact that one of the women later admitted that no rape had in fact occurred (although both had had sexual relations with their boyfriends on the day prior to the "rape"). The case was one of the first that shined a spotlight on what many called the "legal lynchings" that occurred in the South whenever blacks were accused of crimes, especially against whites and most especially against white women.
Herbie Hancock: Possibilities

2006

Herbie Hancock: Possibilities

2006
5.4
Imagine the possibilities….. "Possibilities" is the musical event of the year. The album is a series of inspired encounters between Herbie Hancock and world-renowned musicians – including John Mayer, Sting, Trey Anastasio, Annie Lennox, Damien Rice and Lisa Hannigan, Santana and Angelique Kidjo, Paul Simon, Christina Aguilera, Jonny Lang, Joss Stone, and Raul Midon. Herbie Hancock describes "Poss
In the Realm of the Hackers

2003

In the Realm of the Hackers

2003
6.3
In The Realm of the Hackers is a documentary about the prominent hacker community, centered in Melbourne, Australia in the late 80's to early 1990. The storyline is centered around the Australian teenagers going by the hacker names "Electron" and "Phoenix", who were members of an elite computer hacking group called The Realm and hacked into some of the most secure computer networks in the world, including those of the US Naval Research Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a government lab charged with the security of the US nuclear stockpile, and NASA.
Legacy

2000

Legacy

2000
6.2
The unflinching chronicle of one family’s triumphant journey out of povery and despair. Touchingly narrated by Nickcole Collins, a teenage girl wise beyond her years, the film follows the Collins family over five years as they slowly pull themselves out of a haze of poverty, drug addiction, and violence that plagues their public housing project in Chicago.
Methadonia

2005

Methadonia

2005
4.8
Shot over the course of 18 months in New York City's Lower East Side, METHADONIA sheds light on the inherent flaws of legal methadone treatments for heroin addiction by profiling eight addicts, in various stages of recovery and relapse, who attend the New York Center for Addiction Treatment Services (NYCATS).