Documentary
see all genres ›Nonfiction cinema has always existed largely outside the mainstream film industry. Perhaps the time and dedication often required to make an in-depth documentary on a difficult subject seldom shares much commonality with a purely commercial mindset.
Watch Documentary Films
Genres / Independent / Documentary
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The Cult of JT LeRoy
Ethically charged, controversial and confusing, JT's life and death sprang open a Pandora's box of powerful questions about literature and culture, identity and celebrity and the reality of the society we live in. Fraud? Art? Sociopathy? Complicity? THE CULT OF JT LEROY is a...Watch Movie
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Debra Paget, For Example
Debra Paget was a contract player for 20th-Century Fox, whom they groomed and coached for stardom. But she never quite caught on. Maybe the movies weren't interesting enough. Or maybe she didn’t stand out from the rest of the pack. Or the studio didn’t take enough care in...Watch Movie
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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
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Becoming Anita Ekberg
BECOMING ANITA EKBERG is an exploration of how the construct of "Anita Ekberg" became an internationally famous sex goddess as a result of the careful cultivation of her image in various movies, both in Hollywood, by Frank Tashlin, and in Europe, by Federico Fellini. It's an...Watch Movie
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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
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The Vanity Tables of Douglas Sirk
A video essay exploring the frequency and meaning of that particular prop in a wide variety of Sirk movies. Is it a device that traps and keeps women in an artificial world with a limited point of view? Or is it a gateway to the past and the future, and a distorted but...Watch Movie
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John Garfield
Mark Rappaport completed his concise portrait of the legendary John Garfield in 2002, comprised (like much of his filmed essays) from existing film footage of the actor. Exceptionally engaging, Rappaport's extraordinary short contains more insightful observations of its subject than many...Watch Movie
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The Woodmans
The tragic story of Francesca Woodman, a young photographer renowned for her extraordinary self-portraits, is also the story of her brilliantly artistic family. With THE WOODMANS, director C. Scott Willis shows how the struggle for fame in the high-stakes world of art resulted in tragedy and then...Watch Movie
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The Circle Closes
An examination of four different films, which to varying degrees, center on a prop or an object or an item that crosses various characters lives and passes from hand to hand in THE CIRCLE CLOSES. The story in each film is, to a certain extent, told from the point of view of...Watch Movie
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Our Stars
Stars of the 1940s and 1950s, were they cast for their mutual affinities or for their commercial appeal? If and when they were re-starred years later, did the magic still work? Did sparks still fly? The movie business, a machine that manufactured romance and desire at the same time that it...Watch Movie
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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
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Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters
An acclaimed photographer with the eye of a filmmaker, Gregory Crewdson has created some of the most gorgeously haunting pictures in the history of the medium. His meticulously composed, large-scale images are stunning narratives of small-town American life (moviescapes...Watch Movie
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Marwencol
Outside a small bar in Kingston, New York, Mark Hogancamp was beaten nearly to death, his memories wiped away. Seeking recovery, he builds Marwencol, a miniature World War II-era town filled with doll versions of his friends, fantasies and even his attackers. As he documents the town’s dramas...Watch Movie
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I am Comic
Through candid interviews and unprecedented backstage access, this documentary explores the world of the working comedian and reveals a funny psychological profile of its practitioners. Also, we follow a retired comic's attempt to get back on stage after a thirteen-year absence. Ritch Shydner, at...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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Meaning of Robots
This short film profiles the benevolent Mike Sullivan, who has been in the process of shooting a stop-motion robot mating film in his New York City apartment for the last ten years. Obsessed with the meticulous construction of the miniature robot stars, his apartment now...Watch Movie
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The Polymath
A cinematic portrait of the larger than life Samuel R. Delany, a visionary and subversive novelist and one of the most important and innovative writers of the last fifty years. Delany, the grandson of a slave, is an award-winning author, gay activist, cultural and social historian, professor,...Watch Movie
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Salad Days
An examination of the early DIY punk scene in the Nation's Capital. It was a decade when seminal bands like Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Government Issue, Scream, Void, Faith, Rites of Spring, Marginal Man, Fugazi and others released their own records and booked their own shows-without major record...Watch Movie
