Political
see all genres ›Politics as usual and politics as “unusual” offer great source material for documentary filmmakers who've mined scandal, personality and the search for the public “good” in creating films on public service and the political process.
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Genres / Documentary / Political
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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
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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
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Boy 23
Investigating a period that Brazil is now trying to forget, this documentary reveals that, going much beyond theoretical support, Brazil was once the stage for eugenic experiments that scarred their victims forever. This documentary explores how a racially mixed nation absorbed eugenic ideas to...Watch Movie
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Zizek!
The author of works on subjects as wide-ranging as Alfred Hitchcock, 9/11, opera, Christianity, Lenin and David Lynch, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek is one of the most important and outrageous cultural theorists working today. This captivating, erudite documentary explores the eccentric...Watch Movie
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Los Sures
Diego Echeverria's film skillfully represents the challenges residents of the Southside faced: poverty, drugs, gang violence, crime, abandoned real estate, racial tension, single-parent homes, and inadequate local resources. The complex portrait also celebrates the vitality of this largely Puerto...Watch Movie
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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
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Before Stonewall
In 1969 the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village, leading to three nights of rioting by the city's gay community. With this outpouring of courage and unity the Gay Liberation Movement had begun. BEFORE STONEWALL pries open the closet...Watch Movie
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Black Wax
BLACK WAX is a musical-political entertainment film produced and directed by Robert Mugge in 1982. It was the first American film to be fully funded by Britain's then-brand-new Channel 4 Television and also likely the first film to use Steadicam from first frame to last. BLACK WAX centers on the...Watch Movie
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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
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Gone
Kathy Gilleran is a twenty-year veteran police officer from Cortland, New York, just south of Syracuse. Her son, Aeryn Gillern, is a researcher working at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in Vienna and a former Mr. Gay Austria. On October 31st, 2007, Kathy receives a call...Watch Movie
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Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune
As our country continues to embroil itself in foreign wars and once again pins its hopes on a new leader's promise for change, the feature length documentary, PHIL OCHS: THERE BUT FOR FORTUNE is a timely tribute to an unlikely American hero. Phil Ochs, a folk singing legend,...Watch Movie
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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
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Human Failure
The expropriation of assets from German Jews during the Third Reich benefited virtually every German citizen. It was not only the Gestapo who invaded Jewish residences to confiscate all property, from bank accounts to the last item of clothing, it was the German tax officials. A competition...Watch Movie
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Double-Headed Eagle
THE DOUBLE HEADED EAGLE Hitler's Rise to Power 1918-1933, the classic documentary by Lutz Becker. A fascinating experiment in documentary filmmaking, THE DOUBLE HEADED EAGLE charts the stealthy rise of the Nazi party in the wake of World War I, as witnessed from the...Watch Movie
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Nostalgia For the Light
For his new film master director Patricio Guzmán, famed for his political documentaries travels ten thousand feet above sea level to the driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert, where atop the mountains astronomers from all over the world gather to observe the stars. The sky...Watch Movie
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The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years Without Images
Mixing personal stories, political history, revolutionary propaganda and film theory, renowned artist Eric Baudelaire illuminates the idealism and radicalism of left-wing extremist movements in the 1970s by connecting the stories of two of its protagonists: May Shigenobu,...Watch Movie
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The Case of the Grinning Cat
In his newest film, French documentarian and cinema-essayist Chris Marker reflects on French and international politics, art and culture at the start of the new millennium. In November 2001, the filmmaker became intrigued, as did many other Parisians, by the sudden appearance...Watch Movie
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Payback
Margaret Atwood's visionary non-fiction work "Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth" is the basis for this riveting and poetic documentary on "debt" in its various forms: societal, personal, environmental, spiritual, criminal and, of course, economic. Filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal...Watch Movie
