With the help of more than 10,000 dedicated Zappa fans, this is the long-awaited definitive documentary project of Alex Winter documenting the life and career of enigmatic groundbreaking rock star Frank Zappa. Alex also utilizes in this picture thousands of hours of painstakingly digitized videos, photos, audio, writing, and everything in between from Zappa's private archives. These chronicles have never been brought to a public audience before, until now.
Related Movies
Tinkebell - Who Killed the Blue Bird? (2024)
Artist Katinka Simonse, alias Tinkebell, is a controversial, very mediagenic phenomenon. In her universe there is no distinction between life, art and activism; Tinkebell is her own work of art. Everything she encounters on her life path can become part of her story. Filmmaker Judith de Leeuw was given access to all images about Tinkebell, including her entire private archive. She thus constructed an archive film about how as a human being, living on the ruins of the past, you can be a character in your own story. What is the price you can afford if you continue to believe at any cost?
Sean Connery: Private (1993)
A 1993 TV special and biography of Sean Connery featuring archive footage and appearances by Albert R. Broccoli, Michael Caine, and Michael Feeney Callan.
Salinger (2013)
An in-depth investigation into the private world of the American writer J. D. Salinger (1919-2010), who lived most of his life behind the impenetrable wall of a self-imposed seclusion: how his dramatic experiences during World War II influenced his life and work, his relationships with very young women, his obsessive writing methods, his many literary secrets.
A Young Man Named Engels – A Portrait in Letters (1970)
With the young Friedrich Engel’s letters and drawings from the years between 1838 and 1842, a unique cinematic portrait is created. The viewer thus gets to know the young Engels personally, learning about the significant moments of his development from a bourgeois-liberal upbringing to the theoretical partner of Karl Marx. Later be awarded the Gold Dove at the International Leipzig Documentary and Short Film Week.
David Crosby: Remember My Name (2019)
You thought you knew him. Meet David Crosby now in this portrait of a man with everything but an easy retirement on his mind. With unflinching honesty, self-examination, regret, fear, exuberance and an unshakable belief in family and the transformative nature of music, Crosby shares his often challenging journey.
The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021)
Billie Holiday spent much of her career being adored by fans. In the 1940s, the government targeted Holiday in a growing effort to racialize the war on drugs, ultimately aiming to stop her from singing her controversial ballad, "Strange Fruit."
Tanner Hall Forever (2020)
With seven Winter X-Games gold medals and a career spanning twenty years, Tanner Hall has cemented himself as an icon and legend in the sport of skiing. Now, at age 35, he’s decided to enter the Freeride World Tour; a five-stop competition circuit in which skiers are judged on their ability to descend through rugged, un-groomed terrain. Having never competed in a freeride competition, Tanner embarks on the latest chapter of his career, struggling against the limits of an aging body while confronting the darkest memories of his past.
Jacques Brel, fou de vivre (2017)
Presents archival material as well as interviews with those who were close to Jacques Brel, who died way too young, at age 49. Jacques Brel sings "Madeleine" over the opening credits of this film and immediately the audience is drawn into the intense theatricality of his performance. Left without a choice, they follow his lead, join the chanson and are left sweaty and breathless, just like Brel. Philippe Kohly, a documentary filmmaker who is renowned for profiling artists, created a fascinating portrait of the legendary singer of Flemish descent who became a master of French chanson.
Wonder: The Lives of Anna and Harlan Hubbard (NaN)
What Henry David Thoreau did for two years Anna and Harlan Hubbard did for forty. Anna and Harlan lived life as few people in modern times have and in doing so inspired thousands. Wonder: The Lives of Anna and Harlan Hubbard , a new documentary by Morgan Atkinson, brings to life their adventures. Harlan was an artist, writer and naturalist born in northern Kentucky. Anna, a scholar and librarian from Grand Rapids, MI. They met in Cincinnati and began their life together in the mid-1940's by building a boat, then floating from Cincinnati to New Orleans. Their voyage lasted five years. They then settled on the banks of the Ohio River in rural Kentucky. In a house they built by hand, sustained by food they raised or caught, aided by no electricity or modern convenience, Anna and Harlan, met the world on their own terms and found deep meaning. Wonder considers their astonishing life of freedom and what it says to Americans today.
The Velvet Underground (2021)
Experience the iconic rock band's legacy in the first major documentary to tell their story. Directed with the era’s avant-garde spirit by Todd Haynes, this kaleidoscopic oral history combines exclusive interviews with dazzling archival footage.
Born Racer (2018)
A powerful and inspirational story of dedication, danger, fear, and the rare ‘will’ some of us have to defy all personal limitations. Experience the fastest motorsport on earth through the eyes of five-time champion Scott Dixon and the Chip Ganassi Racing team. Filmed with an access all areas lens, ‘Born Racer’ follows the people who are passionate about the world of auto racing and asks why some individuals feel compelled to face danger and risk their lives in order to win. Both action-packed and highly-intimate, it features an intense blend of up close and personal filming with never-before-seen spectacular, cutting-edge racing footage to explore a sport that defines the very people who inhabit it, and pushes them to the edge in their desire for success.
Nelson Algren: The End Is Nothing, the Road Is All... (2015)
An in-depth feature length documentary of one of America's greatest and least understood authors, Nelson Algren. This never before told compelling life story reveals a unique literary voice through rare interviews, archival footage and the gritty noirish voice of Algren on Algren. Kurt Vonnegut and Studs Terkel, literary giants in their own right, sing songs of praise along with many of his old friends, which makes this film seem like a hymn from the grave. This stylishly produced film embeds us in the 1950's cold war world when Algren worked. Algren's touching love affair with Simone de Beauvoir weaves it's way through the film along with the damaging impact of FBI and CIA surveillance.
Blind Bombing, Filmed by a Bat (2020)
During WWII, the Japanese army developed experimental balloons able to cross the Pacific Ocean and reach the West Coast of North America in 3-6 days. Armed with explosives, they were given the code name fu-go, or fusen bakudan (“fire balloons,” or balloon bombs) in an attempt to instill a culture of fear like that caused by the far more deadly American firebombing of Japanese cities. The U.S. responded by enacting a censorship campaign, requesting newspapers avoid reports of fu-go landings or sightings. Living near the remains of a fu-go launch site in Fukushima Prefecture, Takeuchi mimics their flight take-off using a drone camera, and, traveling to North America, follows their arrival across the shoreline and rural landscapes, using a bat’s echolocation as narrative device to place fu-go and Fukushima as echos across history.
Not Just Passing Through (1994)
A documentary about lesbians preserving their history, with a focus on the work of the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Includes interviews with Joan Nestle, Jewelle Gomez, and Mariana Romo-Carmona, among others. Profiled are Mabel Hampton, Marge McDonald, theater group 5 Lesbian Brothers, and Asian Lesbians of the East Coast.
American Promise (2013)
In 1999, filmmakers Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson turned the camera on themselves and began filming their five-year-old son, Idris, and his best friend, Seun, as they started kindergarten at the prestigious Dalton School just as the private institution was committing to diversify its student body. Their cameras continued to follow both families for another 12 years as the paths of the two boys diverged—one continued private school while the other pursued a very different route through the public education system.
Parapontiy Mazley (1994)
In the film, the outstanding contemporary avant-garde poet Vladimir Ignatiev, the heir of OBERIUT, appeared. He played himself and read his own poetry. The film was shot 25 years ago soon after Vladimir received a serious craniocerebral injury, received as a result of the bandit attack.