Browse Movies : Documentary : A

From BAFTA award-winning director Asif Kapadia (SENNA), AMY tells the incredible story of six-time Grammy-winner Amy Winehouse – in her own words. Featuring extensive unseen archive footage and previously unheard tracks, this strikingly modern, moving and vital film shines a light on the world we live in, in a way that very few can. A once-in-a-generation talent, Amy Winehouse was a musician that captured the world’s attention. A pure jazz artist in the most authentic sense – she wrote and sung from the heart using her musical gifts to analyse her own problems. The combination of her raw honesty and supreme talent resulted in some of the most unique and adored songs of the modern era.

Her huge success, however, resulted in relentless and invasive media attention which coupled with Amy’s troubled relationships and precarious lifestyle saw her life tragically begin to unravel. Amy Winehouse died from alcohol poisoning in July 2011 at the age of 27.

The film weaves the science behind the issue of global warming with the former vice president Al Gore's personal history and longtime commitment to communicating the pressing need to reverse the effects of global climate change.

In Anselm, Wim Wenders creates a portrait of Anselm Kiefer, one of the most innovative and important painters and sculptors of our time. Shot in 3D and 6K-resolution, the film presents a cinematic experience of the artist’s work which explores human existence and the cyclical nature of history, inspired by literature, poetry, philosophy, science, mythology and religion.

A community reeling from a fatal shark attack is forced to confront dramatic changes to its environment and its way of life.

A decade after An Inconvenient Truth brought the climate crisis into the heart of popular culture, comes the riveting and rousing follow-up that shows just how close we are to a real energy revolution. Former Vice President Al Gore continues his tireless fight, traveling around the world training an army of climate champions and influencing international climate policy. Cameras follow him behind the scenes – in moments both private and public, funny and poignant -- as he pursues the inspirational idea that while the stakes have never been higher, the perils of climate change can be overcome with human ingenuity and passion.

The film depicts the fortunes of a young male King Penguin, who returns to the place where he was born and raised. Known as Penguin City, this sub-Antarctic island is home to albatrosses, leopard seals and elephant seals—and six million penguins! Somehow our hero must earn his place among the inhabitants and fulfill his destiny by finding a mate and raising a family.

An epic adventure that explores the vast world of the Great North which follows a walrus, Seela and a polar bear, Nanu, on their journey from birth to adolescence to maturity and parenthood in the frozen Arctic wilderness. Once basking in a perpetual winter wonderland of snow and ice, the walrus and the polar bear are losing their beautiful icebound world as it melts from underneath them.

Two cat families in East Africa teach survive on their power and their cunning, while they protect and teach their cubs the ways of the wild.

After Death is a gripping feature film that explores what happens after we die, based on real near-death experiences, conveyed by scientists, authors, and survivors. From the New York Times bestselling authors who brought you titles like 90 Minutes in Heaven, Imagine Heaven, and To Heaven and Back, emerges a cinematic peek beyond the veil that examines the spiritual and scientific dimensions of mortality, inviting us to wonder: Is there life after death?

A documentary made over the course of 15 years telling the story of Victor DeNoble's journey from research scientist to star informant against the tobacco industry.

"American Teen" is the touching and hilarious Sundance hit that follows the lives of five teenagers - a jock, a popular girl, a heartthrob, an artsy girl and a geek – in one small town in Indiana through their senior year of high school. We see the insecurities, the cliques, the jealousies, the first loves and heartbreaks, and the struggle to make profound decisions about the future. Filming daily for ten months, filmmaker Nanette Burstein developed a deep understanding of her subjects. The result is a film that goes beyond the enduring stereotypes of high school to render complex young people trying to find their way into adulthood. Hannah Bailey is smart and beautiful, but a misfit in her high school. She is a liberal, atheist living in a traditional, Christian, conservative town and dreams of moving to California after graduation. Colin Clemens is the star of the high school basketball team - and in Indiana, basketball is everything. Colin is under enormous pressure this year playing not only to make his town, his school, and his father proud, but for a college scholarship. Jake Tusing is considered to be a nerd in high school. Though quite funny and charming one-on-one, he is painfully shy in group situations and crushed with self-doubt. In his senior year he vows that nothing will stand in the way of him finding a girlfriend. Megan Krizmanich is the student council Vice President and the youngest daughter of a prominent local surgeon, anxiously awaiting word from Notre Dame University admissions. Wealthy, pretty, smart and popular, she rules her high school - just don't get on her bad side. When Megan's peers challenge her authority, she can't help but take action, even if it means risking her future. Mitch Reinholdt is an attractive and charming Varsity basketball jock with a soft side. When he puts his social status on the line, avoiding his popular friends for dates with artsy Hannah Bailey, he strains to maintain his reputation while discovering a new side of himself. With extraordinary intimacy and a great deal of humor, "American Teen" captures the pressures of growing up – pressures that come from one's peers, one's parents, and not least, oneself.

Before Bad Brains, the Sex Pistols or even the Ramones, there was a band called Death. Punk before punk existed, three teenage brothers in the early '70s formed a band in their spare bedroom, began playing a few local gigs and even pressed a single in the hopes of getting signed. But this was the era of Motown and emerging disco. Record companies found Death's music—and band name—too intimidating, and the group were never given a fair shot, disbanding before they even completed one album. Equal parts electrifying rockumentary and epic family love story, A Band Called Death chronicles the incredible fairy-tale journey of what happened almost three decades later, when a dusty 1974 demo tape made its way out of the attic and found an audience several generations younger.

Recruited in 1944 as an 18-year-old Harvard undergraduate to be the youngest physicist on the Manhattan Project, Hall didn’t share his colleagues’ elation after the successful detonation of the world’s first atomic bomb. Increasingly concerned during 1944—with Germany clearly losing the war—that a U.S. post-war monopoly on such a powerful weapon could lead to nuclear catastrophe, he decided beginning that October to start passing key information about the bomb’s construction to the Soviet Union. After the war, at the University of Chicago, he met and married Joan, a fellow student with whom he shared a passion for classical music and socialist causes — and the explosive secret of his espionage. Living under a cloud of suspicion and years of FBI surveillance and intimidation, the pair raised a family while Ted refocused his scientific brilliance on groundbreaking biophysics research.

In the 1980s, Corey Pegues was embroiled in a life of crime as a member of New York City’s infamous Supreme Team gang. After a near-death gang confrontation, Pegues flees the city, only to return years later as a rising star in the NYPD. When Pegues speaks publicly in support of police reform, he becomes a target within the department and details of his former life are thrust into the spotlight.

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.

Tracing the historical arc of the professional bowling tour, the film includes archival footage from the sport's glory days in the 1950s and '60s, through its near extinction in 1997. The story takes a twist when newly installed CEO Steve Miller sets about modernizing the PBA. In addition to Miller, the chronicle focuses on four pro bowlers: Pete Weber, bowling bad-boy and son of legendary bowler Dick Weber whose conservative style doesn't jibe with the direction Miller is taking the new PBA. Pete's nemesis is Walter Ray Williams Jr., a straight-laced six-time world horseshoe-pitching champion and, with 36 PBA titles to his name, the dominant player on the tour. Also, there's Chris Barnes, a young father of newborn twins, who must leave his wife and sons at home and hit the road to compete for the winnings that his young family is depending upon. Finally there's Wayne Webb, a 20-time PBA champion who has fallen on hard times and hopes to squeeze one more good season out of his career to stave off bankruptcy.

In A Space Program, internationally acclaimed artist Tom Sachs takes us on an intricately handmade journey to the red planet, providing audiences with an intimate, first person look into his studio and methods. The film is both a piece of art in its own right and a recording of Sachs’ historic piece, Space Program 2.0: MARS, which opened at New York’s Park Avenue Armory in 2012.

For Space Program 2.0: MARS, Tom and his team built an entire space program from scratch. They were guided by the philosophy of bricolage: creating and constructing from available yet limited resources. They ultimately sent two female astronauts to Mars in search of the answer to humankind’s ultimate question… are we alone?

When a-ha's breakthrough hit "Take on Me" shot to #1 on the Billboard charts in 1985, it turned its three young band members into global superstars overnight. While the iconic song and its groundbreaking music video remain ubiquitous to this day, the story of a-ha didn't end there. After 35 years, a deep catalog of 11 studio albums and 55 million units sold – despite controversies and disagreements – a-ha continues to record music and play to packed arenas around the world.

The documentary follows two Indian brothers who've devoted their lives to protecting the black kite, a bird of prey essential to the ecosystem of New Delhi, and caring for them in a makeshift avian basement hospital.

In the fall of 1971, tensions between inmates and guards at the Attica Correctional Facility are at an all-time high. On the morning of September 9, it all comes to a head when inmates erupt into one of the largest U.S. prison riots ever witnessed.