Browse Movies : Documentary

Twelve years in the making, Shoah is a nine hour epic on the Holocaust feauting interviews with survivors, bystanders and perpetrators in 14 countries.

"The Kid Stays in the Picture" traces the meteoric rise, fall, and rise again of legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans. Adapted from Mr. Evans's tell-all autobiography, the movie takes the audience on an intimate journey into the mind of this Hollywood legend.

With his trademark charm and wit, Michael Moore sets off on a journey to the heart of the country hoping to discover why the American pursuit of happiness is so riddled with violence. From a look at the Columbine High School security camera tapes to the home of NRA President Charlton Heston, from a young man who makes homemade napalm with "The Anarchist's Cookbook" to the murder of a six-year-old girl by another six-year-old, this is an alternately humorous and horrifying look at firearms abuse, destined to leave audiences dreading - but expecting - the next breaking news report about a homegrown assassin with a constitutionally-protected Uzi.

Filmed with a digital camera over the course of 18 months, from 1999 to 2001, this documentary follows comedian Jerry Seinfeld as he heads out on the road, testing new material he wrote after his marriage, the end of his eponymous TV show, and the birth of his first child. It's not a traditional concert film; most of the footage is filmed behind the scenes and traces the creative process.

Their music is famous around the world, though their names are not. Known as the Funk Brothers, they put the backbeat - the soul - into the hits of Motown Records, for such legendary performers as Diana Ross and the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and many others. Creating music that helped to define the era of the 1960s and has remained a vital influence to this day, these musicians played on more #1 records than the Beatles, the Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones and Elvis Presley combined. Now the new documentary "Standing In The Shadows of Motown" tells their story, combining exclusive interviews, archival footage, re-enactments, reminiscences, and thrilling new performances by the reunited Funk Brothers.

This documentary presents 90 minutes of interview footage (edited down from more than ten hours) with Traudl Junge (1920-2002), who from 1942 to 1945 was one of three personal secretaries of Adolf Hitler, whom she describes as a "pleasant boss and fatherly friend". Ms. Junge describes first-hand experiences of what life was like within the most inner circles of the Third Reich, including those chilling last days for Hitler, Goebbels and Eva Braun in the bunker, where she transcribed Hitler's last will and testament before he and the others committed suicide.

Avery has finally gotten his life back on track. A competitive swimmer, he had to drop out of college to support his girlfriend, Krista, and their son, Jordan. He's back on the swim meet circuit, and starting to have some success. When he's approached by a college scout after winning his latest race, he goes out to celebrate with his friends, Cashmere and Dre. In an instant, Avery's luck is about to run out...

Through a chronological history of the liberation struggle in South Africa, the documentary cites examples of the way music was used in the fight for freedom. Songs united those being oppressed and gave those fighting a way to express their plight. The music consoled the incarcerated and created an effective underground form of communication inside the prisons.

Steve James's new film takes a deeply personal turn as he returns to the town where 10 years earlier he was a "big brother" to a troubled young boy named Stevie. As he resumes his connection with this emotionally and socially challenged man after so many years, we get a glimpse into the difficulties Stevie faced as a product of his environment. Abandoned by his mother at a young age, he bounced from foster home to foster home, abused and neglected. He soon found his way into trouble with the law, which complicated his strained relationships with what little family he had.

This comedy concert movie will see Eddie Griffin following in the footsteps of other black comedians like Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence. What makes this movie stand out, however, is that it is a combination of Griffin's stand-up routines with footage of Griffin's Kansas City family, including some of his eccentric uncles, like Uncle Buckey who's a former pimp, and Uncle Curtis, who has an extensive porn collection, much of which he filmed himself.

A moving documentary from director Jennifer Dworkin, "Love and Diane" tells the hard tale of Diane, whose crack cocaine drug addiction in the 1980s resulted in social services taking each of her six children out of her care for more stable lives in foster homes and group homes. Now Diane is clean, and the oldest of her children, Love, is 18-years-old, HIV positive, and has a baby boy. Diane tries to reunite the family, which consists of five teenagers (one of her sons died), but life for them is not easy. At the beginning of the film they are all living together in a Brooklyn, New York apartment. But slowly things go awry. Diane and Love quarrel and social services comes to take the baby away. Neglect charges are filed against Love and social services separates her sisters into another living situation. Their younger brother stops going to school and then also leaves the apartment, no longer interested in living with his mother or with his family. A moving and emotional look at a family struggling against difficult odds to do what's best, LOVE & DIANE is mostly made up of conversations between Diane, Love, and the family. They talk about the hardships they've endured, how they got through difficult times, and how they pray for a brighter future. All combined, it is a truly affecting portrait of a family trying to keep together.

The 1970s was an extraordinary time of rebellion, of questioning every accepted idea: political activism, hedonism, protests, the sexual revolution, the women's movement, the civil rights movement, the music revolution, rage and liberation. Every standard by which we set our social and cultural clocks was either turned inside out or thrown away completely and reinvented. For American cinema, the 1970s was an era during which a new generation of filmmakers created work for a new kind of audience--moviegoers who were hungry for stories that reflected their own experiences and who were turning their backs on aged old studio formulas. As a result, emerging filmmakers influenced by foreign directors such as Godard, Kurasowa and Fellini coupled with the social climate and a struggling studio system, converged to create a new kind of moviemaking. Through their choice of material, filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Peter Bogdonovich, William Friedkin, Roger Corman and Paul Schrader revolutionized mainstream movies and for the first time personal visions were coming out of the studio system.

The hottest trend in America comes to the big screen with The Real Cancun. Casting was done at colleges across the country to assemble a unique cast of real people ready to explore reality's barriers beyond the limits of television while on the ultimate Spring Break vacation in Cancun, Mexico, with surprising and electric results.

This documentary follows eight children of various ages as they compete their ways through regional finals, with their eyes on going to the 1999 Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., and hopefully, winning. Nine million kids try each year, but only 250 make it to the Nationals. The kids seen in this movie come from vastly different backgrounds, from families ranging from the affluent to the struggling (and some in-between).

This documentary examines the careers of the 1950s-1970s Stax Records and Motown soul and R&B singers who "kept on keeping on" right through (and after) the disco scene into today, through the use of interviews with and performance footage by such Motown luminaries as Isaac Hayes, the Chi-Lites, Sam Moore (of Sam and Dave), Mary Wilson (of the Supremes) and others. The focus of the film is how these performers managed to keep thriving through the 30 years of change in the music industry since the heydays of classic R&B.

"Step Into Liquid" is a personal glimpse into the world of surfing from the original family of surf films. It's a film for surfers as well as non-surfers alike because it is a film about people with a passion for life. "Step Into Liquid" is a collection of stories about people who live for surfing. The cross-section of characters featured in this film come from many walks of life, but share one thing in common, the need to surf. For many of them, surfing is merely a hobby. For others, surfing is an identity and maybe even a lifestyle. For a fortunate and talented few, it is a profession. And, for one, it is a salvation.

At Dominquez High School in Compton, California, basketball is valued above all else. The end of the year is marked by a traditional cycle of proms, riots and graduation. And there hasn't been a play at the school in over twenty years. In an effort to make a change, English teacher Catherine Borek attempts to mount a theatrical production of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town,"the classic American play about the classic American town of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. In the process she takes her fledgling students on a journey of self discovery. With no budget and no stage, Ms. Borek chooses "Our Town" for its universal and timeless themes of community, family, love and loss, life and death, with the hope that her students might see themselves reflected in the roles they play.

This documentary, filmed over six years (1996-2002), is about Mark "Gator" Rogowski, a pro skateboarding star in the '80s currently serving a life sentence for the rape and murder of a woman he barely knew. The film mixes old footage of Gator skating and carousing with recent interviews with such skateboarding icons as Tony Hawk and Stacey Peralta. It examines what drove a charming, rich, and famous bad-boy skater to kill.

This documentary explores the lives and worlds of women who explore their masculine sides as "drag kings," using a legendary Drag King Night in New York as a starting point to follow some of the women into their lives, whether their drag persona be an identity they assume part or full-time. Drag kings in London and Zurich are also interviewed, including some who are experimenting with hormones to accelerate their masculinity.

This documentary is an intimate portrayal of several months at a one-room elementary schoolhouse in a small village (Saint-Etienne Sur Usson) in rural France, where a single teacher, Georges Lopez, gives his small class of thirteen students, ages 3-10, the sort of attention that is dwindling in many other schools in France (and elsehwere), where crowded classrooms are the norm.