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Thought-Provoking Documentaries

Thought-Provoking Documentaries

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Thought-Provoking Documentaries
  • Everybody Know… Elizabeth Murray

    Movie

    Directed by Kristi Zea • Documentary • 2016 • US • English
    Featuring Meryl Streep, Elizabeth Murray, Chuck Close

    An intimate portrait of the groundbreaking artist Elizabeth Murray, this documentary explores the relationship between Murray’s family life and career as well as her place in contempo...

  • Dying to Know: Ram Dass & Timothy Leary

    Movie

    Directed by Nancy Buirski • Documentary • 2015 • US • English
    Featuring Robert Redford, Ram Dass, Timothy Leary

    Robert Redford narrates this intimate portrait of Harvard psychology professors Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, who began probing the edges of consciousness through psychedelics. Now...

  • Licht-Stockhausen's Legacy

    Movie

    Directed by Oeke Hoogendijk • Documentary • 2022 • Netherlands • English, Dutch with English subtitles
    Featuring Johanna Stephens-Janning, Doris Stockhausen, Julika Stockhausen

    Brilliant...Megalomaniac...Unstageable – these are just some of the words that have been used to describe the mammoth a...

  • Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project

    Movie

    Directed by Matt Wolf • Documentary • 2019 • US • English
    Featuring Marion Stokes, Anne Stokes Hochberg, Frank Hollman

    Matt Wolf’s documentary delves into the strange life of Marion Stokes, who obsessively and privately recorded American television news twenty-four hours a day. A civil rights-e...

  • Say Amen, Somebody

    Movie

    Directed by George T. Nierenberg • Documentary • 1983 • US • English
    Featuring Thomas A. Dorsey, Willie Mae Ford Smith, Delois Barrett Campbell

    One of the most acclaimed music documentaries of all time, "Say Amen, Somebody" is a joyous, funny, and deeply emotional celebration of Gospel music fro...

  • Heartworn Highways Revisited

    Movie

    Directed by Wayne Price • Documentary • 2016 • US • English
    Featuring Guy Clark, David Allan Coe, Justin Townes Earle

    2021 marked the 45th anniversary of the seminal music documentary "Heartworn Highways", a film that captured the nascent roots of the Outlaw Country movement in the mid-70s. Toda...

  • Ornette: Made in America

    Movie

    Directed by Shirley Clarke • Documentary • 1986 • US • English
    Featuring Ornette Coleman, William Burroughs, Yoko Ono

    Ground-breaking filmmaker Shirley Clarke combined forces with Ornette Coleman to create this dazzling window into the life of the great jazz artist and innovator. Documentary foo...

  • Zen for Nothing

    Movie

    Directed by Werner Penzel • Documentary • 2017 • Germany, Japan • English, German, Japanese with English subtitles
    Featuring Sabine Timoteo, The Sangha Community of the Antaiji Zen Monastery of Japan

    A masterly immersion into life at a Japanese Zen monastery that is both simple and beautifully f...

  • A Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China

    Movie

    Directed by Philip Haas • Documentary • 1988 • US • English
    Featuring David Hockney

    Painted by Wang Hui and his assistants, the seventh scroll of "The Kangxi Emperor's Southern Inspection Tour" contains over 72 feet of beautiful and minutely detailed artistry. Director Philip Haas and famed arti...

  • Boatman

    Movie

    Directed by Gianfranco Rosi • Documentary • 1993 • Italy • English, Hindi, Italian with English subtitles

    Academy Award Nominee Gianfranco Rosi has emerged as one of the most awarded and provocative documentarians working today. His observational films artfully and sympathetically depict the liv...

  • Call Her Applebroog

    Movie

    Directed by Beth B • Documentary • 2016 • US • English
    Featuring Ida Applebroog

    This deeply personal portrait of acclaimed New York–based artist Ida Applebroog was shot with mischievous reverence by her filmmaker daughter, Beth B (“Exposed”). Born in the Bronx to Orthodox Jewish émigrés from Po...

  • The War Tapes

    Movie

    Directed by Deborah Scranton • Documentary • 2006 • US • English
    Featuring Zack Bazzi, Duncan Domey, Ben Flanders

    Immediate, raw, and direct, “The War Tapes” is the first film shot by the soldiers themselves, bypassing the embedded reporter filter and providing an intimate front-row look at how ...

  • Hieronymus Bosch: Touched by the Devil

    Movie

    Directed by Pieter van Huystee • Documentary • 2016 • Netherlands • English, Dutch, Spanish, Italian with English subtitles
    Featuring Matthijs Ilsink, Peter Klein, Jos Koldeweij

    Follow a team of Dutch art historians as they crisscross the globe to unravel the secrets of Hieronymus Bosch. In 2016...

  • On the Adamant

    Movie

    Directed by Nicolas Philibert • Documentary • 2023 • France, Japan • French with English subtitles
    Featuring Nicolas Philibert

    Golden Bear winner at the Berlin Film Festival, this affecting documentary from Nicolas Philibert invites viewers aboard the Adamant, a floating refuge on Paris’ Seine R...

  • No Maps on My Taps

    Movie

    Directed by George T. Nierenberg • Documentary • 1978 • US • English
    Featuring Lionel Hampton, Bunny Briggs, Chuck Green

    Featuring performances by tap legends Bunny Briggs, Chuck Green, Howard “Sandman” Sims, along with music by the inimitable Lionel Hampton, George T. Nierenberg’s film vibrates...

  • Godard Cinema

    Movie

    Directed by Cyril Leuthy • Documentary • 2022 • France • French with English subtitles
    Featuring Guillaume Gouix, Cyril Leuthy, Jean-Luc Godard

    Jean-Luc Godard is synonymous with cinema. He arose in the 1960s as a cinematic rebel and symbol for the era's progressive youth. Six decades and 140 fi...

  • Araya

    Movie

    Directed by Margot Benacerraf • Documentary • 1959 • Venezuela, France • Spanish with English subtitles
    Featuring José Ignacio Cabrujas

    Hailed as a masterpiece of poetic filmmaking, director Margot Benacerraf’s documentary captures the stories of three families and their back-breaking work in th...

  • Eldorado

    Movie

    Directed by Markus Imhoof • Documentary • 2018 • Switzerland, Germany • English, German with English subtitles
    Featuring Markus Imhoof, Caterina Genta, Robert Hunger-Buhler

    "Eldorado" is a documentary inspired by director Markus Imhoof’s childhood relationship with an Italian girl just after Wor...

  • Las Sandinistas!

    Movie

    Directed by Jenny Murray • Documentary • 2018 • US • English, Spanish with English subtitles
    Featuring Dora Maria Tellez, Daisy Zemora, Claudia Lopez Alonso

    "Las Sandinistas!" tells the untold stories of Nicaraguan women warriors and social revolutionaries who shattered barriers to lead combat a...

  • Kevin Roche: The Quiet Architect

    Movie

    Directed by Mark Noonan • Documentary • 2017 • Ireland • English
    Featuring Kevin Roche

    "Kevin Roche: The Quiet Architect" is a feature documentary that considers many of the key questions throughout the career of Pritzker Prize winner Kevin Roche, including the relationship between architects an...

  • The Pearl Button

    Movie

    Directed by Patricio Guzmán • Documentary • 2014 • Chile, Spain, France • Spanish with English subtitles
    Featuring Patricio Guzmán

    Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the Berlin Film Festival, "The Pearl Button" explores the supernatural landscape of Chile. With its 2,670 miles of c...

  • Acasa, My Home

    Movie

    Directed by Radu Ciorniciuc • Documentary • 2020 • Romania, Germany • Romanian with English subtitles
    Featuring Gica Enache, Vali Enache, Rica Enache

    Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival, this documentary follows a family with...

  • Out of My Head

    Movie

    Directed by Susanna Styron • Documentary • 2018 • US • English
    Featuring Paul Auster, Joan Didion, John Lewis

    A filmmaker seeking treatment for her daughter's migraine attacks discovers a confounding neurological disease and learns why a devastating condition, afflicting nearly a billion people ...

  • The Mystery of Picasso

    Movie

    Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot • Documentary • 1956 • France • French with English subtitles
    Featuring Pablo Picasso, Henri-Georges Clouzot

    Filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot and the most influential artist of the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso, use experimental and innovative techniques to c...