Biography
see all genres ›Portraits of the famous, the brilliant, the bizarre, the beloved and the notorious prove that a life well-lived (or a life lived badly, for that matter) can be perfect fodder for cinematic scrutiny.
Discover Biography Films
Genres / Documentary / Biography
-
About Jenny Holzer
An artist whose medium is language. For more than thirty years, Jenny Holzer’s name has stood for a conceptual art that questions our perceptions and the way we are influenced by media and politics. Holzer has made LED signs (typically identified with advertising) her trademark. These blinking, flickering...Start your free trial to watch -
Accelerated Under-Development
What is a filmmaker? It is this vague, perhaps vain question that Travis Wilkerson hoped to answer clearly when he went to Cuba to question Santiago Alvarez, a legend of militant cinema. Although he had seen none of his films, Wilkerson did an interview with the master that quickly became something of a...Start your free trial to watch
-
The Advocate for Fagdom
At turns a transgressive artist, the spiritual son of Kenneth Anger and John Waters or leader of the Queercore movement, one thing is certain: Bruce LaBruce makes small budget movies full of hardcore sex and political messages in which he happily crushes any gay attitude clichés, mocks dramatic set ups and...Start your free trial to watch -
aka Tommy Chong
At the height of the Bush administration, Tommy Chong of Cheech and Chong was charged with selling bongs over the internet and sentenced to nine months in federal prison. As part of the government's $12 million 'Operation Pipe Dreams' drug paraphernalia sting operation, Chong, a vocal opponent of Bush's handling of the War on...Start your free trial to watch -
Alfred Eisenstaedt: Photographer
This is the behind-the-scenes look at the character and the style of one of the most important photojournalists of the 20th century, the premier LIFE magazine photographer, Alfred Eisenstaedt. This film reveals a rare view of "Eisey" as he returns to Germany to photograph his homeland for his book,...Start your free trial to watch
-
American
Bill Hicks was and still is an inspiration to millions. His timeless comedy tackled the contradictions of America and modern life head on. Like many who have a strong sense of their place in history and die too soon, Hicks left a large unseen legacy: his collection of video recordings and hundreds of photographs that became...Start your free trial to watch -
An American Journey
Robert Frank’s "The Americans" (1958) transformed the landscape of contemporary photography. An exile from Europe, Frank criss-crossed the United States with his camera, searching for the uncomfortable truths of his adopted home. The resulting book was the defining work of photographic art in the 20th...Start your free trial to watch -
American Radical
A devoted son of Holocaust survivors and ardent critic of Israeli foreign policy, the polarizing American political scientist and author Norman Finkelstein has been called a lunatic and self-hating Jew by some, and an inspirational revolutionary by others. Exploring the deeply complex issues at the heart...Start your free trial to watch
-
Anne Perry: Interiors
Anne Perry is one of the leading authors of our time. She specializes in crime novels and is famous worldwide but her books hide a very real tale of murder and everlasting regret. Since she was 15 years old, Anne has carried an awful secret, a story of a young murderer forever trying to get beyond her...Start your free trial to watch -
Ballets Russes
Unearthing a treasure trove of archival footage, filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine have fashioned a dazzling and entrancing ode to the revolutionary 20th-century dance troupes that performed under the Ballets Russes banner. BALLETS RUSSES maps the Diaghilev-era beginnings in turn-of-the-century Paris, when artists such...Start your free trial to watch
-
Be Like an Ant
Post-Vietnam, Paul bought a trailer for his family to live in. Annoyed by how bad living inside a mobile home during winter could be, he took matters into his own hands and started to build a house around the trailer. He never made any blueprints. As the house took shape, he would take a part of the trailer apart, carry it...Start your free trial to watch -
The Beaches of Agnès
A reflection on art, life and the movies, THE BEACHES OF AGNES is a magnificent film from the great Agnes Varda, director of CLEO FROM 5 TO 7, a richly cinematic self portrait that touches on everything from the feminist movement and the Black Panthers to the films of husband Jacques Demy (THE UMBRELLAS OF...Start your free trial to watch -
Before the Nickelodeon
Noted film historian Charles Musser (author of "The Emergence of Cinema") co-wrote and directed this definitive tribute to Edwin S. Porter, Thomas Edison’s mechanic and cameraman, who is now recognized as America’s first important filmmaker and a major contributor to the evolution of film structure. Porter...Start your free trial to watch
-
The Best Pilot in the World
Uri Gil is a Guinness World Record holder. At 61, he’s the oldest active fighter pilot and he's waged battle in the skies for decades as he's pressed home Israel's military agenda. A passionate painter as well as a soldier, Uri talks with surprising candor about his values and life in the Air Force. We...Start your free trial to watch -
Blue
In his final and most daring cinematic statement, Derek Jarman the romantic meets Jarman the iconoclast in a lush soundscape pulsing against a purely blue screen. Laying bare his physical and spiritual state in a narration about his life, his struggle with AIDS and his encroaching blindness, BLUE is by turns poignant,...Start your free trial to watch -
The Bolivian Diary
Over 40 years ago, on October 9, 1967, Ernesto Che Guevara was executed by the Bolivian army, aided by the CIA. Guevara’s diary, a detailed, personal account of his futile eleven-month attempt to foment revolution in Bolivia, is the basis of this moving portrait. Che’s relationship with the mysterious...Start your free trial to watch




