Top Rated Documentary Movies on Free Services - Page 473

The Garifuna Journey

1998

The Garifuna Journey

1998
A celebratory documentary, with engaging scenes of fishing, cooking, dancing, cassava preparation, thatching a temple, spiritual ritual, music and dance all demonstrating the Garifuna link to the Carib-African past. Descendants of African and Carib-Indian ancestors, the Garifuna fought to maintain their homeland and resisted slavery. For this love of freedom, they were exiled from St. Vincent in the Caribbean by the British in 1797. Despite exile and subsequent Diaspora, their traditional culture survives today. It is a little known story that deserves its place in the annals of the African Diaspora. In first person Garifuna voices, this documentary presents the history, the language, food, music, dance and spirituality of the Garifuna culture.
Stambali

1999

Stambali

1999
In Tunisia, the history of stambali goes back to the arrival of the first enslaved Africans from Mali, Timbuktu specifically. Practicing their music and worship in the house of their masters, the enslaved and their musical traditions survive to this day. Stambali is a religious ritual in Tunisia, a journey with the rhythm of the "gombri" and "chkackek," traces an individual and collective hypnosis, an annual tribute that the disciples of Sidi Saad pay to their master during an initiatory journey and rite of purification that lasts three days. In "Stambali," the camera, video and film follow the rhythm of the possession, dances, and goes into a trance, in the cemetery, in an open space of grass, trees, dust and sand, in the eroticism that is released by this physical and spiritual representation.
Mammy Water: In Search of the Water Spirits in Nigeria

1983

Mammy Water: In Search of the Water Spirits in Nigeria

1983
Mammy Water is a pidgin English name for a local water goddess worshipped by the Ibibio, Ijaw, and Igbo speaking peoples of southeastern Nigeria. The water goddess traditionally gives wealth and children, compensates for hardships, and is sought in times of illness and need, especially by women. Her various cults are led, predominantly, by priestesses.
Rudy! A Documusical

2022

Rudy! A Documusical

2022
The definitive Rudy Giuliani documentary, charting his fall from the cover of Time Magazine to the parking lot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping.
Commitment to Life

2023

Commitment to Life

2023
Against a rich Hollywood backdrop, "Commitment to Life" documents the true story of the fight against HIV/AIDS in Los Angeles - and how an intrepid group of people living with HIV/AIDS, doctors, movie stars, studio moguls and activists changed the course of the epidemic.
Gringo Favelado

2016

Gringo Favelado

2016
An Artist, a Musician and a Dreamer, all of them British, have moved to Rio's notorious favela communities where they build their lives in perilously-shifting political sands.
Fishers of Dar

2001

Fishers of Dar

2001
Samaki wa Dar es Salaam/Fishers of Dar is an ethnographic film about the fishermen and women of downtown Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It explores the continuity and integrity of traditional fishing practices in new, contemporary settings
Liquor Store Dreams

2022

Liquor Store Dreams

2022
So Yun Um’s debut feature is a moving portrait of two Korean American children of liquor store owners reconciling their dreams with those of their immigrant parents, against the backdrop of struggles for racial equity in Los Angeles.
Nazi Manhunt

0000

Nazi Manhunt

0000
Thousands of Nazi officers try to flee the country, believing they will find sympathy and evade justice. Rudolf Höss. Adolf Eichmann. Josef Mengele. Three men who committed some of the worst crimes under the Nazi regime were now being hunted.
Our Words Collide

2022

Our Words Collide

2022
A feature documentary following the lives of five teenage spoken word poets in Los Angeles.
Chasing 400

2022

Chasing 400

2022
As an avid endurance athlete and someone who is always seeking the next challenge, Justin Kinner was naturally drawn to the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning. The "Slam" is a series of four of the oldest 100-mile foot races in the United States. The Slam starts in Virginia at the Old Dominion 100, followed by the world-renowned Western States 100, just 21 days later in California.
Century of Queen Mother - 100 Years in 100 Minutes: A Celebration

2000

Century of Queen Mother - 100 Years in 100 Minutes: A Celebration

2000
Provides a thorough glimpse of the life of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mother. Interesting historic archive footage of Elizabeth and King George with President Franklin D. and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, christening Cunard's QE ship, and in the ruins of Buckingham Palace during WW2.
Unity Through Culture

2011

Unity Through Culture

2011
Soanin Kilangit is determined to unite the people and attract international tourism through the revival of culture on Baluan Island in the South Pacific. He organizes the largest cultural festival ever held on the island, but some traditional leaders argue that Baluan never had culture and that culture comes from the white man and is now destroying their old tradition. Others, however, take the festival as a welcome opportunity to revolt against '70 years of cultural oppression' by Christianity. A struggle to define the past, present and future of Baluan culture erupts to the sound of thundering log drum rhythms.
The Wood and the Calabash

2002

The Wood and the Calabash

2002
Among the Senufo people of northern Côte d'Ivoire, the balafon (xylophone with calabash resonators) is an emblematic musical instrument. Balafon makers are all musicians, but a balafon player isn't necessarily an instrument maker. The film shows in detail the manufacture of this musical instrument, an indispensable element in the life of the Senufo people. Each step is shown, from the initial prayer to the genies of the balafon before felling a tree, through the cutting and tuning of the keys and the resonators, to the fixing of the buzzing membranes, which give this instrument its very characteristic timbre. Nanga, the balafon maker, talks about his work and discusses different aspects with friends during a meal.
The Joy of Youth

2002

The Joy of Youth

2002
Among the Senufo people of northern Côte d'Ivoire, the balafon (xylophone with calabash resonators) is an emblematic musical instrument. The music of the balafon is a source of joy while the young men are doing collective work in the fields, at age-group ceremonies, for the poro initiatory society, for the catholic mass and during young people's dance evenings. Musicians and non-musicians, young and old, talk about the different occasions for which this instrument is an indispensable presence marking the rhythms of life for this agricultural people. Traditional balafon music is far from dying out, and its extraordinary vitality and importance are evident in the activities of the younger generations.
We Know How to Do These Things: Birth In a Newar Village

1997

We Know How to Do These Things: Birth In a Newar Village

1997
For these villagers, giving birth is a family affair; while a young girl is in labor, the birth attendant, mother and mother-in-law alternate between lending a hand and storytelling. Barbara Johnson studied documentary film and photography with Jerry Liebling and Elaine Mayes at Hampshire College from 1970-1974. She began working for the Smithsonian's newly formed National Anthropological Film Center in 1975. She was sent to Nepal to document early childhood socialization and daily life in a large farming village in the Kathmandu Valley.
The House-Opening

1980

The House-Opening

1980
When Geraldine Kawanka’s husband died, she and her children left their house at Aurukun on Cape York Peninsula. In earlier times a bark house would have been burnt, but today a ‘house-opening’ ceremony — creatively mingling Aboriginal, Torres Strait and European elements — has evolved to deal with death in the midst of new living patterns. Although sometimes suggesting a party, its underlying purpose is serious. This film records the opening of the house and Geraldine’s feelings about it in her informative and personal commentary.
Fate of the Lhapa

2007

Fate of the Lhapa

2007
Fate of the Lhapa is a feature-length documentary about the last three Tibetan shamans living in a Tibetan refugee camp in Nepal. Each lhapa requested that their story be filmed. Their fear was that the next heir might not appear until after their own deaths. Subsequently, with no lhapa alive to mentor the children, the documentary would be used to transmit the knowledge to the next generation. Their tales of nomadic childhoods, shamanic callings and apprenticeships, cosmologies of disease and treatments, and of their flight from Tibet during the Chinese occupation in the late 1950s is be juxtaposed with images of present-day life in the camp, current healing practices and shared concerns of the future and the fate of their tradition.
Pony Boys

2022

Pony Boys

2022
Summer 1967. Two little boys, 9 and 11, drive a pony cart from Needham, Mass. to Montreal on their own—325 miles—to visit the Expo ’67—the World’s Fair.
Burma Diary

1997

Burma Diary

1997
This acclaimed documentary explores the revolutionary movement fighting for democracy in Burma and depicts how young people, in particular, are affected by the human rights abuses of Burma’s military government. Burma Diary focuses on the story of Tint Aung, a young Burmese man who was actively involved in the protest movement while in college. He is forced to flee from his home and take refuge in the jungles of the Burmese-Thailand border along with his wife and his two young daughters. As the film chronicles four harsh years of Tint Aung’s struggle to survive, it provides a passionate and at times heartbreaking study of the hopes of and the obstacles facing the Burmese democracy movement.