History
see all genres ›All film is history: it is the record of something that happened before we got to see it. But these documentaries actually probe the past (though it might not have been the past when it was shot) to explain who we are and how we got there.
Watch History Films
Genres / Documentary / History
-
Heavy Metal Parking Lot
Hailed by Cameron Crowe as "one of the greatest rock movies ever made," HEAVY METAL PARKING LOT documents the parking lot tailgating at Capital Centre in Largo, Maryland, in the hours before (and the moments after) a Judas Priest concert in May 31, 1986 (the "JUN 23 1995"...Watch Movie
-
The Vanishing City
Global trends in major cities around the world have changed rapidly in the last several decades. These trends are perhaps best exemplified in the city of New York. Told through the eyes of city planners, developers, politicians, small business owners, landlords and tenants,...Watch Movie
-
A Film Unfinished
At the end of WWII, 60 minutes of raw film, having sat undisturbed in an East German archive, was discovered. Shot by the Nazis in Warsaw in May 1942, and labeled simply "Ghetto," this footage quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record of the Warsaw...Watch Movie
-
The Double Life of Paul Henreid
Paul Henreid, perhaps most famous for his roles in CASABLANCA and NOW, VOYAGER became a star at Warner Brothers during World War II, as the exotic lead with the European accent. After the war, his contract was cancelled and he was left to his own devices. He continued acting...Watch Movie
-
Sex and Broadcasting
SEX AND BROADCASTING is a human and humorous look at New Jersey's WFMU, a radio station that refuses any programming boundaries. Most of its disc jockeys are unpaid volunteers, working for their love of surprising, spontaneous radio. They play everything from flat-out...Watch Movie
-
Human Remains
HUMAN REMAINS is a haunting documentary which illustrates the banality of evil by creating intimate portraits of five of the 20th century's most reviled dictators. The film unveils the personal lives of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco and Mao Tse Tung. We learn the...Watch Movie
-
Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child
In his short career, Jean-Michel Basquiat was a phenomenon. He became notorious for his graffiti art under the moniker Samo in the late 1970s on the Lower East Side scene, sold his first painting to Deborah Harry for two hundred dollars and became best friends with Andy...Watch Movie
-
Jerry's Deli
JERRY'S DELI is a testament to a bygone era when shrieking lunatics could run successful (even popular) businesses. Shot on film-stock leftover from television cameramen, Tom Palazzolo's portrait of Jerry Meyer offsets sequences of the tyrannical deli owner (seen berating his employees and...Watch Movie
-
The Beaches of Agnès
Agnès Varda takes a cinematic stroll through her career—and the history of French film—in this jovial first-person documentary that "walks backwards" across the beaches, landscapes, and movie sets of her life and times. For some, turning eighty may mean settling down, but for...Watch Movie
-
The Weather Underground
Thirty years ago, with these words, a group of young American radicals announced their intention to overthrow the U.S. government. Fueled by outrage over the Vietnam War and racism in America, they went underground during the 1970s, bombing targets across the country that they...Watch Movie
-
Korla
KORLA is the amazing story of John Roland Redd, an African-American from Columbia, Missouri who migrated to Hollywood in 1939 and reinvented himself as a musician from India. He played the piano and organ, wore a jeweled turban, had a hypnotic gaze and never spoke a word while performing on his...Watch Movie
-
The Pearl Button
The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds the voices of the Earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of a mysterious...Watch Movie
-
On the Bowery
ON THE BOWERY chronicles three days in the drinking life of Ray Salyer, a part-time railroad worker adrift on New York's skid row, the Bowery. When the film first opened it 1956, it exploded on the screen, burning away years of Hollywood artifice, jump-starting the post-war American independent...Watch Movie
-
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
THE PRUITT-IGOE tells the story of the transformation of the American city in the decades after World War II, through the lens of the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing development and the St. Louis residents who called it home. It began as a housing marvel. Built in 1956,...Watch Movie
-
Resistance
RESISTANCE is the first major look at the complex subject of Jewish efforts to fight back against the Nazis and their collaborators in Eastern Europe. Told by the partisans themselves, without a narrator, and filmed in Lithuania, Poland and Israel, the film uses striking black-and-white imagery...Watch Movie
-
Blank City
BLANK CITY is an "absorbing snapshot of a daring time" (Los Angeles Times) when a disparate crew of renegade filmmakers emerged from an economically bankrupt and dangerous moment in New York history. From the late 1970s through the mid-'80s, when the East Village was still a wasteland of cheap...Watch Movie
-
Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies
Produced by Martin Scorsese and Robert Greenhut and directed by Arne Glimcher, PICASSO AND BRAQUE GO TO THE MOVIES is a cinematic tour through the effects of the technological revolution, specifically the invention of aviation, the creation of cinema and their interdependent...Watch Movie
-
Tribulation 99
Upon its release in 1991, TRIBULATION 99 became an instant counter-culture classic. Craig Baldwin’s “pseudo-pseudodocumentary” presents a factual chronicle of U.S. intervention in Latin America in the form of the ultimate far-right conspiracy theory, combining covert action, environmental...Watch Movie
