Top Rated Documentary Movies on Kanopy - Page 242

Tania Libre

2017

Tania Libre

2017
In 2015 reknown Cuban artist Tania Bruguera was imprisoned in Havana after advocating for freedom of expression. Shortly after her release she returned to the United States and located Dr. Frank M. Ochberg, the founding father of trauma therapy, particularly PTSD and Stockholm Syndrome. The filmed therapy sessions between them exposes an intimate yet profound analysis of Cuba, surveillance and the politics in of repression embedded in government and family structures.
19 Days

2016

19 Days

2016
This short documentary follows several refugee families during their first 19 days in Canada, as they navigate an unfamiliar terrain that has suddenly become their home. Located in the quiet Calgary neighbourhood of Bridgeland, the Margaret Chisholm Resettlement Centre is the starting point for government-assisted refugees who arrive in the city. During the 19-day timeline established by the federal government, an initial assessment is done and refugees are assisted with everything from airport reception and orientation to referrals, documents, and counselling. 19 Days reveals the human side of the refugee resettlement process. A unique look at the global migration crisis and one particular stage of asylum, it lays plain the realities faced on the difficult road towards integration.
Vince Giordano: There's a Future in the Past

2017

Vince Giordano: There's a Future in the Past

2017
Bandleader Vince Giordano keeps the Jazz Age alive with his 11-member band The Nighthawks, vintage musical instruments, and a collection of more than 60,000 original arrangements from the 1920s and '30s.
How to Prepare for Prison

2016

How to Prepare for Prison

2016
Through stories fuelled by fear, regret, defiance and redemption, How To Prepare For Prison takes a unique and intimate look at people caught in the legal system and facing prison for the first time.
Bogalusa Charm

2017

Bogalusa Charm

2017
A contemporary portrait of a small Louisiana town created at the site of the world’s largest lumber mill. Captured here in its last days after thirty years, Miss Dixie Gallaspy conducts a charm school for girls in order to teach the young women of Bogalusa the social graces and skills that would guide them into “Ladyhood”. Dixie’s week long school, in a town confronted with many challenges (including a legacy of racial conflict and financial dissipation) preserves fragments of a world that may already be lost.
From Business to Being

2017

From Business to Being

2017
These days, employees find themselves under enormous pressure. Disorders such as burn-out and depression are not uncommon. A manager, a mediation coach and a quantum physicist offer their approaches to counteract this trend.
Sanctuary

2017

Sanctuary

2017
Donkeys inhabit and communicate with each other - and the filmmakers - in a Sanctuary.
Horst

1988

Horst

1988
We enter the life of Horst, and see the world of fashion photography evolve from the 1930s to the 1980s through his work and stories.
With God on Our Side: George W. Bush and the Rise of the Religious Right in America

2004

With God on Our Side: George W. Bush and the Rise of the Religious Right in America

2004
With God on Our Side… is an excessive title about Christian church fundamentalism and how, like the Taliban, religious groups feel a God given right to institute a society of specific religious beliefs that not everyone shares.
Gray Matters

2016

Gray Matters

2016
Gray Matters explores the long, fascinating life and complicated career of architect and designer Eileen Gray, whose uncompromising vision defined and defied the practice of modernism in decoration, design and architecture. Making a reputation with her traditional lacquer work in the first decade of the 20th century, she became a critically acclaimed and sought after designer and decorator in the next before reinventing herself as an architect, a field in which she laboured largely in obscurity. Apart from the accolades that greeted her first building –persistently and perversely credited to her mentor–her pioneering work was done quietly, privately and to her own specifications. But she lived long enough (98) to be re-discovered and acclaimed. Today, with her work commanding extraordinary prices and attention, her legacy, like its creator, remains elusive, contested and compelling.
Jean Genet: An Interview with Antoine Bourseiller

1981

Jean Genet: An Interview with Antoine Bourseiller

1981
An interview with artist, playwright, and political activist Jean Genet.
The First Silent Night: The Christmas Carol That United the World

2014

The First Silent Night: The Christmas Carol That United the World

2014
Join renowned actor Simon Callow as he uncovers the moving origins of the song Silent Night that has been 200 years in the making. A story that begins in humble circumstances, ends with the world's most popular carol. Simon journeys to the Austrian village of Oberndorf as well as the city of Salzburg, where the story of the world's favourite carol had its origins. The First Silent Night introduces us to two impoverished children - Joseph Mohr and Franz Gruber - who grew up in Austria's cobbled streets and wooded villages. The hard years that shaped them would also destine them to meet one day in a poor country church to unite Gruber's music and Mohr's text into this classic carol about the birth of a third poor boy on a quiet night in ancient Palestine. Silent Night would speak a message of hope to their country, recovering from the harsh Napoleonic wars that had devastated their cities and villages. The guns would fall silent at last, replaced by the gentle strains of music.
What Was Ours

2016

What Was Ours

2016
Like millions of indigenous people, many Native American tribes do not control their own material history and culture. For the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes living on the isolated Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, new contact with lost artifacts risks opening old wounds but also offers the possibility for healing. What Was Ours is the story of how a young journalist and a teenage powwow princess, both of the Arapaho tribe, travelled together with a Shoshone elder in search of missing artifacts in the vast archives of Chicago’s Field Museum. There they discover a treasure trove of ancestral objects, setting them on a journey to recover what has been lost and build hope for the future.
Hey, Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill a Mockingbird

2011

Hey, Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill a Mockingbird

2011
In this full-length documentary, Mary Murphy explores the enduring power, popularity & mystery that is Harper Lee. She interviews Oprah Winfrey, Wally Lamb Anna Quindlen, James McBride and others, and with rare cooperation from Harper Lee’s family and friends tells the story of a novel that became an American classic. In the newest edition of the film, Harper Lee from Mockingbird to Watchman, Murphy examines the rediscovered novel and its place alongside To Kill A Mockingbird.
Fully Awake: Black Mountain College

2008

Fully Awake: Black Mountain College

2008
Documentary about the history and ideas of Black Mountain College.
Special Blood

2016

Special Blood

2016
Failed by a healthcare system that is largely ignorant of their existence, four patients with a life-threatening, rare disease learn to find strength in each other and their small, but strong community.
The Other Side of Home

2016

The Other Side of Home

2016
In 1915, estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Turks, during the Armenian Genocide. In 2015, a Turkish woman named Maya discovers that her great grandmother was survivor of the Armenian genocide. Maya embodies the conflict as she has two enemies living in her body: one side that suffers and the other side that denies. The documentary follows Maya as she decides to go to Armenia to take part in the 100th commemoration of the genocide and to explore her conflicted identity. This film is a universal story of identity, denial, and how the experience of genocide creates a ripple effect for future generations on both sides.
Voices of Transition

2012

Voices of Transition

2012
Voices of the Transition is an enthusiastic documentary on farmers- and community-led responses to food insecurity in a scenario of climate change and peak oil.
The University

2016

The University

2016
On a NASA research base in Silicon Valley, there's an organization that's changing the world ... Singularity University (SU). Created by renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil and entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, with support from NASA, Google, and others, the university brings in some of the smartest students from around the world, and gives them a crash course in the most powerful exponential technologies on the planet. The students are then given a challenge: create companies that will impact a billion people within ten years. The film follows the students and their companies over five years, as they use the support of scientists, astronauts and billionaires in their attempt to make a dent in the universe.
Smokin' Fish

2011

Smokin' Fish

2011
Cory Mann is a quirky Tlingit businessman hustling to earn a living in Juneau, Alaska. He gets hungry for smoked salmon, nostalgic for his childhood and decides to spend a summer smoking fish at his family's traditional fish camp. The unusual story of his life and the untold history of his people interweave with the process of preparing traditional food as he struggles to pay his bills, keep the IRS off his back, and keep his business afloat. By turns tragic, bizarre, or just plain ridiculous, Smokin' Fish tells the story of one man's attempt to navigate the messy zone of collision between the modern world and an ancient culture.