Top Rated Documentary Movies on Kanopy - Page 255

Women's Territory

2021

Women's Territory

2021
The ancient city of Soligalich, as if frozen in space and time…The city is an open-air museum, with a beautiful and majestic temple architecture fading into oblivion. There is still no gas heating in the city, and the smell of clean snow and stove smoke is in the streets. In the sapogo-katalny shop, which stands on the site of the former temple, women manually create felt boots. They work hard and hard, give birth and raise children! And each has its own destiny…Unique Russian women, worthy of the brush of the best artists, the guardians of the ancient craft, the ancient tradition. The backbone of our country, its essence and salt.
Future People: The Family of Donor 5114

2021

Future People: The Family of Donor 5114

2021
Filmed over eight years, Rothman follows a group of adolescents who discover that they were conceived from the same sperm donor, forming an unlikely family of familiar strangers. There are presently 37 half-siblings, and counting. This documentary explores the complexities of alternative conception while defining a new realm of modern family.
Room Without a View

2021

Room Without a View

2021
Slavery has never ended. It has just assumed other names and ways to conceal itself. Roser Corella’s film zooms in on Beirut, where the upper class on a large scale hires maids from countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya and the Philippines through agencies that advise people how to cheat and manipulate the young women to work full-time (literally) for meagre wages. An upsetting revelation, but Corella keeps a cool head and tears the inhuman ‘kafala’ system apart piece by piece. She analyses the situation in both words and images, but it is the underpaid maids themselves who provide the conclusion in the form of demonstrations, protests and demands for proper working conditions. ‘Room without a View’, the title of which describes the rooms made available to the women, combines an artistic and an investigative approach to its exposition of the abominable monster that is modern slavery. A film that is highly topical in all parts of the world - unfortunately.
Hollywood Harems

1999

Hollywood Harems

1999
A documentary taking critical aim at Hollywood's abiding fascination with and fantasies about all things eastern. Juxtaposing film clips from the 20s through the 80s, HOLLYWOOD HAREMS explores the organization of gender, race, and sexuality in Hollywood's portrayal of the exotic east an indiscriminate fusion of things Arab, Persian, Chinese and Indian. In abridging cultural plurality and difference, these technicolor fantasies have worked both to shape and reinforce often derogative assumptions about peoples of the east while at the same time reinscribing the moral, spiritual, and cultural supremacy of the Anglo-European west.
Cuba's Cancer Hope

2020

Cuba's Cancer Hope

2020
When the U.S. trade embargo left Cuba isolated from medical resources, Cuban scientists were forced to get creative. Now they've developed lung cancer vaccines that show so much promise, some Americans are defying the embargo and traveling to Cuba for treatment. In an unprecedented move, Cuban researchers are working with U.S. partners to make the medicines more widely available.
J.W. Marriott: Host to the World

1998

J.W. Marriott: Host to the World

1998
J.W. Marriott features informative interviews with his sons J.W. Marriott, Jr. and Richard Marriott, granddaughter Debbie Harrison, friends the Reverend Billy Graham and Sterling Colton, a former employee and others.
The Astors: High Society

1996

The Astors: High Society

1996
The very name conjures up images of the good life black tie affairs and high society balls. Yet their long saga proves that money is no guarantee of happiness or stability. John Jacob Astor built an empire by parlaying a job in the fur business into a real estate empire so vast he became the richest man in the world. Follow the fortunes of five generations of Astors in this special BIOGRAPHY. From John's son William, who doubled the family fortune and earned the nickname "the landlord of New York," to the astounding charitable contributions of the Astor Foundation, the incredible story of the famed family comes to life through interviews with family members, archival footage and period accounts. Trace the feud and reconciliation that led to the creation of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, and find out how the Titanic disaster forever transformed the Astors and their reputation.
The Blinding of Isaac Woodard

2021

The Blinding of Isaac Woodard

2021
In 1946, Isaac Woodard, a Black army sergeant on his way home to South Carolina after serving in WWII, was pulled from a bus for arguing with the driver. The local chief of police savagely beat him, leaving him unconscious and permanently blind. The shocking incident made national headlines and, when the police chief was acquitted by an all-white jury, the blatant injustice would change the course of American history. Based on Richard Gergel’s book Unexampled Courage, the film details how the crime led to the racial awakening of President Harry Truman, who desegregated federal offices and the military two years later. The event also ultimately set the stage for the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which finally outlawed segregation in public schools and jumpstarted the modern civil rights movement.
Clean Slate

2021

Clean Slate

2021
Two friends in a Southern drug recovery program struggle to come to terms with their addiction and mental illness by making a short film about the pain they've caused their families.
What is Minimalism? : The American Perspective 1958-1968

2004

What is Minimalism? : The American Perspective 1958-1968

2004
Featuring notable Minimalist artists such as Bride Marden, Claes Oldenburg, and Donald Judd, What is Minimalism: The American Perspective 1958-1968 explores the movement during an explorative exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Los Angeles. Exhibition curator, Ann Goldstein, walks us through multiple rooms of the exhibit and offers her insight on Minimalism and its role in our society, stating that "It marked a fundamental, and critical and pivotal and irrevocable change in the course of art history," (Ann Goldstein). This film observes and analyzes the compelling creative choices behind some of the featured artists most applauded works of art.
Medicine Woman

2016

Medicine Woman

2016
America's first Native doctor, Susan La Flesche Picotte (1865-1915) studied medicine at a time when few women dared. She graduated first in her class and returned home to serve as doctor to her Omaha tribe. During this heartbreaking and violent time she never gave up hope. The reverberations from her shattered world continue today as Native Americans suffer from alarming rates of disease, suicide and mental illness. Like Susan, these modern day medicine women from the Omaha, Lakota and Navajo tribes are fighting a war and sharing a confident, even joyful, approach to the work of healing.
Alaskan Nets

2021

Alaskan Nets

2021
In Alaska's last native reserve, two cousins lead their local basketball team to its first state championship in more than thirty years. That quest is the only thing that will bring life back to a remote island that has been rocked by tragedy.
Battered

1989

Battered

1989
Lee Grant's acclaimed 1989 investigation of domestic violence in American Homes. Battered is the powerful, if harrowing portrait of a life lived in constant fear of the people closest to you. Intimate interviews with the victims and children of the cycle are combined with the eye opening and heart breaking stories of the abusers themselves to take you deeper into every facet of these American lives.
Green Warriors: South Africa's Toxic Townships

2018

Green Warriors: South Africa's Toxic Townships

2018
Johannesburg is considered the most uranium-contaminated city in the world. Waste dumps from around 600 abandoned mines sit next to residential communities, blowing polluted dust into homes and contaminating the soil and water supplies. To get a sense of the sheer extent of the problem, Martin Boudot and his team of researchers investigate. Equipped with a Geiger counter, they uncover some dangerous realities...
The Cost of Living

2020

The Cost of Living

2020
THE COST OF LIVING is a documentary that explores the current socio-economic state of Britain and considers how the idea of a basic income could minimize poverty and the sociological toll of a growing precarious class. The film focuses on the feasibility of a basic income, John Rawls' theory of justice, automation and ultimately asks should there still be a cost attributed to survival?
Invisible Valley

2021

Invisible Valley

2021
Documentary profiles the lives of people who live in California's Coachella Valley.
Alone No Love

2007

Alone No Love

2007
ALONE NO LOVE sheds light on child sex abuse in America. Through the work of the Chicago ChildrenaEU(tm)s Advocacy Center (CCAC), one of the nationaEU(tm)s largest and most progressive centers for sexually abused children, we can observe firsthand the challenging work of a multidisciplinary team of doctors, stateaEU(tm)s attorneys, police officers and social workers whose tireless efforts continue to provide refuge for sexually abused kids in Chicago.
Sealab

2019

Sealab

2019
The Sealab project, launched in 1969 off the shore of northern California, was the brainchild of a country doctor turned naval pioneer who dreamed of pushing the limits of ocean exploration like NASA did space exploration. The massive, 300-ton tubular structure was a pressurized underwater habitat, complete with science labs and living quarters for divers who would live and work there on the ocean floor for days or even months at a time. During the height of the Space Race, this daring program also tested the limits of human endurance and revolutionized the way humans explore the ocean.
Benny and The Dreamers

1992

Benny and The Dreamers

1992
A small group of Pintupi living in west Central Australia today can remember their first meeting with a white man, their first impressions of the white man's world and their expectations of what the white world had to offer.
Collum Calling Canberra

1981

Collum Calling Canberra

1981
Gordon Smith, head of the Collum Collum Aboriginal Co-operative which operates a cattle station in northern New South Wales, and Sunny Bancroft, the station manager, are negotiating with the Aboriginal Development Corporation in Canberra for a loan. Finance is needed to stock the property with breeding cattle so that the station can become financially independent.