Classic Documentary
see all genres ›There's no truth like old truth. These globe-trotting slices of verite cinematic life offer windows onto the past more piercingly insightful and real than fictional narrative could ever afford.
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Genres / Classic / Classic Documentary
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Seven Wonders of the World
Of the seven sites the ancient Greeks named the "wonders of the world," only one remains. SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD is a round-the-world adventure that picks up where the Greeks of antiquity left off. Released in 1956, this Cinerama spectacle follows 20th century adventurer...Watch Movie
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Search for Paradise
"Join Lowell Thomas and follow in the footsteps of Marco Polo" in this new, digital restoration of SEARCH FOR PARADISE, the fourth of the original, three-panel Cinerama travelogues. Released in 1957, the motion picture takes you to the "Roof of the World," the Himalayas and...Watch Movie
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Rudolph Valentino
This Astor Pictures newsreel covers the brief career (but mostly the sudden death) of silent film star Rudolph Valentino. Footage from Valentino classics THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, THE SHEIK and A SAINTED DEVIL are featured, as well as film taken during Valentino's...Watch Movie
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Round About Hollywood
ROUND ABOUT HOLLYWOOD provides a rare peek at Los Angeles in general and Hollywood in particular as the ordinary citizen might have seen it in 1931. We see typical bungalows and apartment buildings as well as luxury homes (which still look pretty modest by subsequent...Watch Movie
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The Sacred Art of Tibet
"The making of THE SACRED ART OF TIBET was a long and arduous process. And, it made a deep impression in my life. The film culminated a long period of research into Northern Buddhist philosophy. I met an extraordinary lama from a land that has caused Westerners so much...Watch Movie
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The Ossuary
Though best known for his surreal animated films, this live action short is one of Jan Svankmajer’s most disquieting visions of death and decay. The film explores the elaborate ossuary at Sedlec Monastery. On the soundtrack (unlike the alternate version with a remarkable score by Zdeněk Liška), a...Watch Movie
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With the Marines at Tarawa
Directed by Brit-born actor Louis Hayward (who enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps just after assuming American citizenship), this is a powerful historical record of the Marines' high-casualty fight to capture a tiny Pacific island that had become a Japanese stronghold in late...Watch Movie
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This is Cinerama
On the evening of September 30, 1952, the shape and sound of movies changed forever with the introduction of Cinerama. This unique widescreen process was launched when television was deemed as a major threat to U.S. film exhibition. Fred Waller, Cinerama's creator, had indeed...Watch Movie
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Double-Headed Eagle
Rather than offering a contemporary interpretation of history through narration and interviews, filmmaker Lutz Becker allows the disturbing saga of German fascism to unfold on its own terms. The rise of the National Socialist Party is depicted almost exclusively in newsreel...Watch Movie
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Beneath Our Feet
"Literal forests" of life in the grass beneath us are explored via a microscopic camera in this instructive short. We see how an ant drinks from a dewdrop without bursting it and how crickets court (hint: it's noisy). It is an eat-or-be-eaten world as we watch aphids consumed...Watch Movie
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Know Your Enemy: Japan
This U.S. War Department propaganda film was little seen for decades, its production so dogged by conflict that by the time of its completion World War II had ended. Famed Hollywood director Frank Capra (IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE) assigned Dutch-born documentarian Joris Ivens in...Watch Movie
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The Battle of San Pietro
Starting with an unusually romantic depiction of the region that became key to the Allies' capture of Italian territory from German forces, this was director/narrator John Huston's government-produced chronicle of the late 1943 battle. His film crew shot right alongside U.S....Watch Movie
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Daguerréotypes
A classic documentary from Agnes Varda, DAGUERREOTYPES is a wonderfully intimate portrait of the small shops and shopkeepers on a short stretch of the Rue Daguerre, a picturesque street that has been the filmmaker's home for more than 50 years. As in her films THE BEACHES OF AGNES and THE...Watch Movie
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Salut les Cubains
The final film in the CINEVARDAPHOTO triptych is the oldest, SALUT LES CUBAINS. In 1963, Varda thoughtfully gave order to 1,800 photos that she had recently taken on a trip to Cuba. In just 30 minutes, the photographer/filmmaker achieves a sprawling depiction of the country,...Watch Movie
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The Eleanor Roosevelt Story
Richard Kaplan’s lively documentary reveals the human face behind the American icon, beginning with the emotional deprivation suffered by this plain, awkward little girl born into a socially prominent and powerful family. Though she would eventually marry a man who would look...Watch Movie
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This is Korea
A conflict that American history soon forgot (the subsequent M*A*S*H movie and TV series aside), the Korean War was nonetheless very immediate to the over 300,000 U.S. soldiers deployed, let alone to citizens of the land militarily occupied for three long years. This short 1951 feature produced...Watch Movie
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Report from the Aleutians
Still stirring, this U.S. Army-produced propagandistic featurette chronicles the Allied campaign against Japanese occupying forces in the Aleutian Islands that stretched across the Northern Pacific from Alaska. Directed and narrated by John Huston (post-MALTESE FALCON,...Watch Movie
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South Seas Adventure
Five separate stories are dramatized, woven out of a series of theoretical, island-hopping voyages that start en route to Hawaii, and after traversing the South Seas as far as Australia, end up flying back home from Honolulu. In between, through both an adventurous shipboard...Watch Movie
