Top Rated Documentary Movies on Free Services - Page 105

Following Sean

2006

Following Sean

2006
6.3
Filmmaker Ralph Arlyck first met Sean while living as a graduate student in Haight Ashbury at the height of the 1960s. The city was awash with the trappings of America’s cultural revolution-the San Francisco State University campus flooded with cops in riot gear, the Haight filled with drifters and idealists, and, on the third floor of Arlyck’s building, a come-one-come-all crashpad apartment. It was from this top floor commune that the precocious 4-year-old Sean would occasionally wander downstairs to visit and talk-and one day Arlyck turned on his camera. Sean’s casual commentary on everything from smoking pot to living with speed freaks was delivered in simple sincerity throughout the soon-to-be famous 15-minute film. This First Child of the notorious decade may have shaken the audience with his simple sentence- “Sure, I smoke pot”-but it was his barefoot impishness which would encapsulate the hope that lay in front of the nation: a promise of infinite possibility.
Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise

1980

Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise

1980
6.2
Robert Mugge filmed jazz great Sun Ra on location in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. between 1978 and 1980. The resulting 60-minute film includes multiple public and private performances, poetry readings, a band rehearsal, interviews, and extensive improvisations. Transferred to HD from the original 16mm film and lovingly restored for the best possible viewing experience.
Arabia 3D

2010

Arabia 3D

2010
6.5
From the Academy Award-nominated producers of Everest and Grand Canyon Adventure comes an all-new IMAX 3D Theatre experience—Arabia 3D—about the extraordinary culture, history and religion of Arabia.
Secrets of the Tribe

2010

Secrets of the Tribe

2010
6.9
What happens when western anthropologists descend on the Amazon and make one of the last unacculturated tribes in existence, the Yanomami, the most exhaustively filmed and studied tribe on the planet? Despite their "do no harm" creed and scientific aims, the small army of anthropologists that has studied the Yanomami since the 1960s has wreaked havoc among the tribe – and sparked a war within the anthropology community itself.
How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster?

2010

How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster?

2010
7.6
The film traces the rise of one of the world's premier architects, Norman Foster, and his unending quest to improve the quality of life through design.
The Upsetter: The Life and Music of Lee Scratch Perry

2008

The Upsetter: The Life and Music of Lee Scratch Perry

2008
6.5
The Upsetter tells the fascinating story of Lee Scratch Perry a visionary musician and artist from poor rural Jamaica who journeyed to the big city of Kingston in the late 1950’s with dreams of making it in the burgeoning record industry. He burst upon the scene with a brand new sound, inventing a genre of music that would come to be called Reggae, discovering a young Bob Marley and gaining international recognition as a record producer and solo artist. Soon he was being called upon by artists as diverse as The Clash and Paul McCartney to provide his unique sound.
The Phoenix Lights...We Are Not Alone

2005

The Phoenix Lights...We Are Not Alone

2005
6.9
During the evening of March 13, 1997, a mile-wide, V-shaped formation of lights (that seemed to be attached to something) slowly and silently traversed throughout Arizona at a very low altitude for many hours. The inexplicable and awesome event was witnessed by thousands of people, while they were looking up at the sky, purposely to catch a glimpse of the Halle-Bopp Comet. The significant statewide incident garnering headline news, catching the attention of USA Today, CNN, MSNBC, The Discovery Channel, EXTRA, national morning TV shows, as well as the Evening News with Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather.
Limelight

2011

Limelight

2011
5.8
A film about Peter Gatien, the owner of legendary New York nightclubs like Limelight, The Tunnel and the Palladium. The film documents his rise and fall from the 1980s through the 1990s.
Katka

2010

Katka

2010
6.2
“You bet on someone in the beginning of the process and then you wait and see what life does with them.” This is how Czech director Helena Trestikova explains her long-term documentaries. Following on from the European Film Academy Award winning RENE (2008), Trestikova brings us KATKA – 14 years in the life of a drug addict. KATKA is an extraordinarily raw and uncensored character portrait of a troubled young woman living on the edge of human existence, desperately searching for love and salvation. Will she find it in the rehab? Will she find it in the arms of the man she loves? Or in the first cry of her long-desired baby? Tagging along with her through the back streets and squalors of Prague, Trestikova gets deep under the skin of a person most of us would cross the road to avoid, and shows us Katka’s profoundly human face. You might be angry with Katka, or your heart may go out to her. One thing is certain – you will never forget her.
Uncovered: The War on Iraq

2004

Uncovered: The War on Iraq

2004
7.9
The feature-length version of producer/director Robert's Greenwald's short documentary phenomenon "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About The Iraq War." The film deconstructs the current American administration's case for war in Iraq through interviews with U.S. intelligence professionals, diplomats and former Pentagon officials, including a former director of the C.I.A., two former Secretaries of Defense, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and even President Bush's former Secretary of the Army.
Circo

2011

Circo

2011
7.1
Tino Ponce operates Circo Mexico, which journeys across the Mexican countryside in search of paying customers. Wanting to please his father and continue the family business, Ponce has recruited his young children as performers while laboring night and day to maintain the circus's faltering financial fortunes. But a growing resentment brewing within his wife about their hardscrabble existence suggests troubles on the horizon. While documenting the brutal regimen of circus life, Circo also peels back the curtain on the Ponce family's inner dynamics, revealing generational divides and money worries that threaten to tear apart a marriage. Buttressed by indie-rock band Calexico's evocative score, Schock's film observes this family drama with a sympathetic but clear-eyed view of a vanishing way of life. And because Circo refuses to be sentimental in its handling of the material, the story's twists become all the more poignant
Protagonist

2007

Protagonist

2007
6.9
Jessica Yu's documentary explores the relationship between human life and Euripidean dramatic structure by weaving together the stories of four men: German terrorist, a bank robber, an "ex-gay" evangelist, and a martial arts student.
Cracking the Da Vinci Code

2004

Cracking the Da Vinci Code

2004
3.8
Host and author of international best-seller Cracking The Da Vinci Code, Simon Cox, takes you on an in depth journey through the heart of the mysteries behind Dan Brown's best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code. This comprehensive documentary cuts through the confusion, ultimately cracking Da Vinci's code and revealing the remarkable truth behind the legend of the Holy Grail.
Our Daily Poison

2011

Our Daily Poison

2011
6.2
Extensive investigation about the different "poisons" the food industry leaves or puts in our food, as well as the passivity of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
Charles Manson Superstar

1989

Charles Manson Superstar

1989
5.1
For forty years, Charles Manson has survived most of his life in what he calls 'the hallways of the all ways,' the reform schools, jails and prisons that have been his home and tomb. His thought was born in the hole of solitary confinement, apart from time and beyond the grasp of society. In his cell, he created his own world and speaks his own language: he has concluded that there is only the mind. From convincing his followers to move into the desert to train for the apocalypse, to leading a murderous crew through a string of devilish murders, you will see and hear from Manson himself of how he created a preconceived terror based on his philosophy of life. Manson claims that the so-called 'straight' world outside of prison is but an inverted reflection of the underworld in which he has lived. To him, the reality that presidents and law-abiding citizens accept begins in the hermetic alternate universe of criminals, cons and outlaws.
Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y

1997

Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y

1997
6.9
An acclaimed hijacking documentary that eerily foreshadowed 9/11. We meet the romantic skyjackers who fought their revolutions and won airtime on the passenger planes of the 1960s and '70s. By the 1990s, such characters were apparently no more, replaced on our TV screens by stories of anonymous bombs in suitcases. Director Johan Grimonprez investigates the politics behind this change, at the same time unwrapping our own complicity in the urge for ultimate disaster.
Double Take

2009

Double Take

2009
5.8
Director Johan Grimonprez casts Alfred Hitchcock as a paranoid history professor, unwittingly caught up in a double take on the cold war period. Subverting a meticulous array of TV footage and using 'The Birds' as an essential metaphor, DOUBLE TAKE traces catastrophe culture's relentless assault on the home, from moving images' inception to the present day.
The End of Poverty?

2008

The End of Poverty?

2008
7.9
The End of Poverty? asks if the true causes of poverty today stem from a deliberate orchestration since colonial times which has evolved into our modern system whereby wealthy nations exploit the poor. People living and fighting against poverty answer condemning colonialism and its consequences; land grab, exploitation of natural resources, debt, free markets, demand for corporate profits and the evolution of an economic system in in which 25% of the world's population consumes 85% of its wealth. Featuring Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz, authors/activist Susan George, Eric Toussaint, Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera and more.
Top Fighter

1995

Top Fighter

1995
6.4
Welcome to the world of the martial arts. A voyage for the times of the martial arts cinema, from the beginning in China in the 6th Century A.C. by a Buddhist monk, Bodhidharma, until the actual time and the influence in the world, with interviews to actors and historians, and a review to the most important movies of all times and to the most famous action movies actors. A magnificent jewel of this genre what nobody wouldn't lose.
Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields

2011

Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields

2011
6.7
Ten years in the making, Strange Powers is an intimate documentary portrait of songwriter Stephin Merritt and his band the Magnetic Fields. With his unique gift for memorable melodies, lovelorn lyrics and wry musical stylings that blend classic Tin Pan Alley with modern sounds, Stephin Merritt has distinguished himself as one of contemporary pop's most beloved and influential artists.