Top Rated Documentary Movies on Kanopy - Page 180

JFK & LBJ: A Time for Greatness

2015

JFK & LBJ: A Time for Greatness

2015
6
How U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson used his political prowess to make the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 happen. The story is told using rarely-seen footage, interviews and secret White House tapes.
Imitating Life - The Audacity of Suzanne Heintz

2019

Imitating Life - The Audacity of Suzanne Heintz

2019
10
Satirical artist and art director, Suzanne Heintz, adopted her fake family more than 15 years ago to challenge persisting stereotypes about women's lives.
The Inheritance

2020

The Inheritance

2020
6
Based on real events, the film’s protagonist inherits a house in West Philadelphia that becomes home to an urban collective for activists of color. The increasingly claustrophobic drama unfolds as the group attempts to live together and find consensus through Black political discourse and social philosophy.
Stop Filming Us

2020

Stop Filming Us

2020
7
Based on the struggle of young people in Goma (Northeastern Congo) against the prevailing Western reporting about war and misery, Stop Filming Us investigates how these Western stereotypes are the result of a skewed balance of power. Stop Filming Us creates a cinematic dialogue between Western perceptions and the Congolese experience of reality. While the Congolese perspective becomes increasingly clearer in the film, questions arise about the perspective of the film itself; is a white director able to make a film about the new Congolese image or is it primarily a story created by his own Western perspective?
Sex Trafficking in America

2019

Sex Trafficking in America

2019
10
Exposing the hidden reality of sex trafficking, inside a police unit and a victim s harrowing story. Filmed over three years, a look at how victims are groomed and sold and innovative ways undercover police target traffickers and buyers.
McCain

2018

McCain

2018
5.5
Senator John McCain's complicated relationship with President Trump and his own Republican party. A look at McCain's life and politics, from POW in Vietnam, to choosing Sarah Palin as running mate, to his dramatic vote against the GOP's health care bill.
Orchard House: Home of Little Women

2018

Orchard House: Home of Little Women

2018
8
Emmy Award-winning chronicle of the history of Orchard House, the home in Concord, Massachusetts where Louisa May Alcott wrote and set Little Women.
Other People's Footage: Copyright & Fair Use

2016

Other People's Footage: Copyright & Fair Use

2016
7
“Other People’s Footage: Copyright & Fair Use” uses on-camera interviews with 19 noted documentarians including Haskell Wexler, Tia Lessin, Carl Deal, and Scott Hamilton Kennedy along with several legal experts to examine the three questions crucial to determining fair use exemptions for documentary filmmakers. The documentary presents illustrative examples from nonfiction films that use pre-existing footage, music and sound from other individuals' creations—without permission or paying fees.
Fidelandia: Behind the Curtain of Cuban's Revolution

2017

Fidelandia: Behind the Curtain of Cuban's Revolution

2017
6
There was a historical reason for the Cuban revolution. After all these years, there might be some who still think it a great thing, but it doesn't work for everyone. This film is the story of those people who it doesn't work for. The youth fights for an opportunity to experience "Western freedom", the elderly express their sadness, anger, frustrations, and hopes of a Cuba they fear will never come.
A Colombian Family

2020

A Colombian Family

2020
2
When a peace agreement between the FARC rebel movement and the Colombian government looks like it will put an end to half a century of conflicts, 30-year-old Yira visits her mother in Colombia after spending 10 years in exile in Cuba. Yira has herself become a mother and wants to give her daughter the family she never had. She confronts her mother, Ruby, with a neglected childhood in the shadow of her parents' political struggles and persecution. She wants her mother to join her in exile in Canada, so that they can finally be together in safety. But Ruby can't let go of her political ideals and choose her family instead. It is not just Yira's childhood that has been sacrificed. She has also sacrificed her own life and safety to such an extent that she has to drive around in an armoured car, constantly protected by armed guards. As the peacetime death toll continues to rise, Ruby is faced with a difficult dilemma. If she chooses her daughter, she gives up on her people.
Down a Dark Stairwell

2020

Down a Dark Stairwell

2020
8
Set in motion by a tragic police-involved shooting, two communities of color navigate fraught perceptions of injustice, inequality, and discrimination in the eyes of the law.
Code of the Freaks

2020

Code of the Freaks

2020
8
Taking its title from Tod Browning’s classic film, this radical reframing of how characters with disabilities are represented looks at a century of Hollywood favorites with a fresh perspective. Disability activists imagine a cinematic landscape that takes people with disabilities seriously.
International Sweethearts of Rhythm

1986

International Sweethearts of Rhythm

1986
5
From the Piney Woods School in the Mississippi Delta to the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York City, this toe-tapping music film tells the story of the swinging, multi-racial all-women jazz band of the 1940s.
Flint

2020

Flint

2020
6
In 2014, the authorities in Flint, Michigan chose to cut costs and change the city’s domestic water supply from the great Lakes to the Flint River. Soon tap water was running brown, people were falling ill and it was clear that something was seriously wrong. Anthony Baxter (You’ve Been Trumped) has followed the situation over six years of denial, evasion, betrayal and hypocrisy in which the city’s poorest residents have suffered the most. The result is shocking and sad as it illuminates the inequalities of the modern world and celebrates the solidarity of ordinary people.
Good Ol Girl

2021

Good Ol Girl

2021
1
Follows three young Texas cowgirls tasked with carrying on their families' legacies amidst a volatile landscape and industry. The film explores the modern West: a place where the male cowboy mythology must answer to a new, honest, and some would say subversive, female story. The jarring transition between generations illuminates the weight of heritage and tradition. As the old guard wanes, these three women stand amidst the vast ranchlands of Texas. Who has the authority to claim our traditions when only those who have been overlooked are left to carry them on?
Viral: Antisemitism in Four Mutations

2020

Viral: Antisemitism in Four Mutations

2020
2
Antisemitism in the US and Europe is spreading and is seemingly unstoppable. Andrew Goldberg examines its rise traveling through four countries to follow antisemitism and their victims, along with experts, politicians and locals.
The Final Journey of the Romanovs

2017

The Final Journey of the Romanovs

2017
7
Red Heaven

2020

Red Heaven

2020
8
Six people live for a year on “Mars” in a NASA experiment studying what happens to humans when they are isolated from Earth. Shot by the subjects themselves over the course of the mission, Red Heaven vividly captures six people pushed to their limits in an exploration of our most fundamental needs as human beings.
Kenny Scharf: When Worlds Collide

2020

Kenny Scharf: When Worlds Collide

2020
7
When Kenny Scharf arrived in NYC in the early 1980’s, he quickly met and befriended Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat; There, amongst the fervent creative bustle of a depressed downtown scene the trio would soon change the way we think about art, the world, and ourselves. But unlike Haring and Basquiat, who both died tragically young, Kenny lived through cataclysmic shifts in the East Village as well as the ravages of AIDS and economic depression. 'When Worlds Collide' is about the art of fun, about living life out loud, despite setbacks, and about Kenny Scharf’s particular do-it- yourself, high-tone, technicolor artistic vision.
Dope Is Death

2020

Dope Is Death

2020
8
The story of how Dr. Mutulu Shakur, stepfather of Tupac Shakur, along with the Black Panthers and the Young Lords, combined community health with radical politics to create the first acupuncture detoxification program in America in 1973 — a visionary project eventually deemed too dangerous to exist in America.