Top Rated Documentary Movies on Kanopy - Page 229

Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness

2009

Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness

2009
A documentary on what is it that makes us who we are: an African an African, a Jew a Jew, an Arab an Arab, a white person white -and what do we make of our apparent differences? Not so long ago, all human cultures assumed a natural and unassailable hierarchy - Europeans on the top, blacks on the bottom and everybody else in the middle. The work of the anthropologist Melville Jean Herskovits helped upend many of these assumptions. Herskovits: A Jew at the Heart of Blackness is the journey of a man into international race politics and its consequences for him -and us- in the first half of 20th century, when the battleground in the earliest "culture wars" was newspapers, radio shows, movies and cartoon, all infused with propaganda that explained why Caucasians dominated the world and other peoples as part of life's natural and inevitable order.
Kisho Kurokawa From Metabolism to Symbiosis

1993

Kisho Kurokawa From Metabolism to Symbiosis

1993
A portrait of the internationally acclaimed Japanese architect who employs Buddhist ideas and western modernism to achieve intercultural architecture.
Ininnawa: An Island Calling

2023

Ininnawa: An Island Calling

2023
“Rabiah and Mimi” explores the story of a family who have dedicated their lives to providing healthcare in the remote islands of the Flores Sea.
Hiding in the Walls

2022

Hiding in the Walls

2022
Hiding in the Walls unwinds the fraught history of lead poisoning in Baltimore and follows the adult survivors who are on a mission to reclaim the narrative.
Kamala and Raji

1989

Kamala and Raji

1989
The textures and complexities of everyday life in India unfold in Michael Camerini's richly observed story of two poor women and their efforts to improve their lives.
Satya: A Prayer for the Enemy

1995

Satya: A Prayer for the Enemy

1995
The personal testimonies of the courageous Buddhist nuns who have led the nonviolent resistance against the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
School Prayer: A Community at War

1999

School Prayer: A Community at War

1999
Lisa Herdahl, a Mississippi mother of six, is forced to sue her public school district in order to have The Bible removed from her childrens' classrooms.
Fenceline

2002

Fenceline

2002
African-American residents in Norco, Louisiana, who believe that increasing pollution is negatively impacting their health, demand to be relocated from under the shadow of a Shell oil refinery.
Escuela

2002

Escuela

2002
A clear-eyed view into the lives of contemporary Mexican American migrants and their struggles to educate their children while obtaining employment.
State of Denial

2003

State of Denial

2003
An unprecedented and unflinching look at how the citizens of South Africa are living with the AIDS epidemic, given the climate of governmental confusion and neglect.
Drokpa: Nomads of Tibet

2016

Drokpa: Nomads of Tibet

2016
Set in the high plateau of eastern Tibet, DROKPA is an intimate portrait of the lives and struggles of Tibetan nomads whose life is on the cusp of irreversible change as once lush grasslands are rapidly turning into deserts. The grasslands of the Tibetan plateau are home to the source of Asia’s major rivers. Nearly half of humanity depends on this water for survival. Tibetan nomads, known as DROKPA have roamed on this land for thousands of years.
Yucatec Maya Deaf Sign

1977

Yucatec Maya Deaf Sign

1977
In 1976, Hubert Smith set out with a group of researchers to visually document Yucatec Maya society within the village of Chican. This project resulted in the 4-part series, The Living Maya. During filming, however, it was impossible to ignore the use of sign language in the village. Smith and his team saw a lot of the deaf residents, filmed them often, and went back to have these sign exchanges translated. Now it is time to share a story solely about them.
Traded

2021

Traded

2021
The film exposes the life of women who have been trafficked in various parts of India. Some of them have been trafficked because of debt bondage and some for sexual exploitation.
Wild Window: Whales

2015

Wild Window: Whales

2015
Whales features the most majestic creatures in the ocean. This wild window contains spectacular images of Humpback Whales, Sperm Whales and Blue Whales. There is no narration, just ambient sounds of whales and water along with a calming and relaxing soundtrack.
Vincent van Gogh: A Stroke of Genius

1997

Vincent van Gogh: A Stroke of Genius

1997
The tragic story of the immortal artist whose works are among the world's most treasured masterpieces today, but who was almost completely ignored in his own lifetime.
James Hemings: Ghost in America's Kitchen

2021

James Hemings: Ghost in America's Kitchen

2021
If you've ever eaten macaroni and cheese, French fries or ice cream, you've enjoyed the contributions of America's unknown culinary founding father, James Hemings. James Hemings was the first American trained as a master chef; he was also the brother-in-law and enslaved property of Thomas Jefferson.
White Balls on Walls

2023

White Balls on Walls

2023
The slogan “Meet the icons of modern art” needs to be scraped off the glass wall of the Stedelijk, Amsterdam’s modern art museum. Because precisely who the icons of modern art are is very much the question. Who gets to decide? And who loses out? In 2019, as director Sarah Vos started shooting her documentary, more than 90 percent of art at the Stedelijk was made by white men. That’s got to change, the museum’s director Rein Wolfs believes. But this is easier said than done—so much becomes clear when Vos follows Wolfs and his team as they strive for greater diversity in the collection, as well as among their staff.
Racist Trees

2022

Racist Trees

2022
Can a tree be racist? A few years ago, debate on this issue reached as far as Fox News. The focus was a row of tamarisk trees along a huge golf course in Palm Springs, which screened off the neighborhood of Crossley Tract. This is a historically Black neighborhood, named after its founder Lawrence Crossley, who was one of the first Black residents to settle in the largely white tourist paradise, established on indigenous land over a century ago.
Robert Irwin: A Desert of Pure Feeling

2022

Robert Irwin: A Desert of Pure Feeling

2022
An in-depth look at the career of iconoclastic artist Robert Irwin, whose investigations into the nature of perception have radically expanded the possibilities of what art can be.
Shangri-La (Paradise Under Construction)

2023

Shangri-La (Paradise Under Construction)

2023
Does Shangri-La really exist? Mirka Duijn goes in search of the answer in this travelogue-cum-investigation. She travels to the mountains of Tibetan China and digs into the archives to unravel the history of this mythical place. At first sight, the answer is obvious: British author James Hilton invented Shangri-La for his 1933 novel Lost Horizon, in which four characters crash land in the Kunlun Mountains and later find a magnificent monastery—a paradise on earth.