During a two-day period before and after the University of Alabama integration crisis, the film uses five camera crews to follow President John F. Kennedy, attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, Alabama governor George Wallace, deputy attorney general Nicholas Katzenbach and the students Vivian Malone and James Hood. As Wallace has promised to personally block the two black students from enrolling in the university, the JFK administration discusses the best way to react to it, without rousing the crowd or making Wallace a martyr for the segregationist cause. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 1999.
Mysterious Object at Noon (2000)
A camera crew travels through Thailand asking villagers to invent the next chapter of an ever-growing story.
Sounds of the Desert (NaN)
A visual odyssey of Sun Ra concepts through their followers - Marshall Allen and Abshalom Ben Shlomo. The film follows Sun Ra Arkestra band members and their journey across the desert, a promised land where Sun Ra once created his identity. Navigating through an astro-galactic world of sound, they find a reason to fight racism, injustice and vanity of the modern world - all through inner wisdom of music and sound. It's a story of infinite peace in a troubled world. An utopian planet where Sun Ra and his prophets celebrate the divine wealth of their spirits.
War Department Report (1943)
The first official War Department Report by the Office of Strategic Services using American newsreel footage and footage of film captured from the enemy. Topics include: Gran Sasso aftermath; Japan’s conquered territory; Germany’s troops and provisions; US Military supply logistics; and battle strategy. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.
Beyond Gay: The Politics of Pride (2010)
Over the course of a year, film follows Vancouver Pride Society president Ken Coolen to various international Pride events, including Poland, Hungary, Russia, Sri Lanka and others where there is great opposition to pride parades. In North America, Pride is complicated by commercialization and a sense that the festivals are turning away from their political roots toward tourism, party promotion and entertainment. Christie documents the ways larger, more mainstream Pride events have supported the global Pride movement and how human rights components are being added to more established events. In the New York sequence, leaders organize an alternative Pride parade, the Drag March, set up to protest the corporatization of New York Pride. A parade in São Paulo, the world's largest Pride festival, itself includes a completely empty float, meant to symbolize all those lost to HIV and to anti-gay violence.
Crossfire (2020)
Crossfire is Lauren Southern's third documentary film project focusing on the issues surrounding policing, brutality, race, law and order. A heated debate today which has led to a massive political divide between those supporting officers, those defending reform and even many rioting violently in the streets.
Nefarious: Merchant of Souls (2011)
Travel across four continents, through 19 countries, and into dingy Cambodian karaoke bars, Amsterdam’s infamous red-light district, Moldovan orphanages, legal Nevada brothels, and the street corners and alleyways of metropolises worldwide for more than a glance at the fastest-growing organized crime industry in the world with the groundbreaking, tell-all Nefarious: Merchant of Souls.
Fannie Lou Hamer’s America (2022)
The film explores and celebrates the lesser-known life of a Mississippi sharecropper-turned-human-rights-activist and one of the Civil Rights Movement’s greatest leaders. Throughout the 1960s, Fannie Lou Hamer established a legacy of civil rights and human rights activism that remains relevant to this day – especially among Black youth.
Stamped from the Beginning (2023)
Using innovative animation and expert insights, this documentary based on Ibram X. Kendi's bestseller explores the history of racist ideas in America.
Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1987)
This film recounts the murder of Vincent Chin, an automotive engineer mistaken as Japanese who was slain by an assembly line worker who blamed him for the competition by the Japanese auto makers that were threatening his job. It then recounts how that murderer escaped justice in the court system. Restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation, in association with the Museum of Chinese in America. Restoration funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, with additional support provided by Todd Phillips.
His Big White Self (2006)
A follow-up to "The Leader, His Driver, and the Driver's Wife", about the history of the far-right group AWB and its leader Eugene Terre'Blanche.
Lida (2020)
"LIDA" takes place on the day of Lida's 70th birthday. This already special day is made more unusual by the recent arrival of her grandson, Lev, who had immigrated to the United States with his family in 2001. Returning to Ukraine for the first time as an adult, Lev documents his grandmother as she tends to the small homestead and prepares for the birthday celebration in the rural village in Ukraine. By capturing moments of arduous labor, as well as through personal conversation, Lev inquires into his grandmothers relationship to her home, land - and their family.
Cop It Sweet (1992)
In the winter of 1991 an ABC film crew spent six weeks following Sydney's Redfern police. The inner city patrol of Redfern is predominantly working class with a large aboriginal and migrant population. The police in this film are general duties officers mostly on mobile patrols. At the time of filming 78% of police at Redfern were under the age of 25.
Tua (2020)
Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, a generational football talent, embarks on a journey that began from a childhood family prophecy. Follow Tua as he attempts to overcome a career-threatening injury and rise as one of the most uniquely skilled players in the history of the game.
The Color of Fear (1994)
Diversity trainer Lee Mun Wah assembles a diverse group of eight American men to talk about their experience of race relations in the United States. The exchange is sometimes dramatic as they lay bare the pain that racism in the US has caused them.
Warrendale (1967)
This ground-breaking cinéma-vérité classic documents five weeks in the lives of twelve residents of a home for emotionally disturbed children. It is the first in the form that King later described as actuality drama. All the action is spontaneous and undirected, with neither interviews nor narration. The theme is the outrage of life. The children asked the filmmakers, Why is it that whenever pictures of us are put in the papers, our faces are blacked out. What is so awful about us that we cant be seen? They wanted to be filmed so that they could be seen.
Come On Children (1973)
Five boys and five girls ages 13 to 19 live on a farm for ten weeks, to be filmed, and to see what might emerge for each of them personally.
1964 (2014)
1964 was the year the Beatles came to America, Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, and three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi. It was the year when Berkeley students rose up in protest, African Americans fought back against injustice in Harlem, and Barry Goldwater’s conservative revolution took over the Republican Party. In myriad ways, 1964 was the year when Americans faced choices: between the liberalism of Lyndon Johnson or Barry Goldwater’s grassroots conservatism, between support for the civil rights movement or opposition to it, between an embrace of the emerging counterculture or a defense of traditional values.
Factory (1970)
A cinema verite study of the world of the blue-collar worker and the economic and psychological bind in which he is caught.
Cinéma! Cinéma! The French New Wave (1992)
An intimate window into one of the great movements in film history that brought about an evolution in the art of cinema. The documentary portrays the movement with insight on the lives and works of Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and other principal players in the New Wave.