7 Inch Cinema - A huge chunk of the moving images being created never get close to your local multiplex or TV screen. 7 inch cinema - based in Birmingham UK - was established as a home for some of this work, whether it be claymation musicals from Ladywood or roller-blading heist films from Paris. Alongside shorts and music videos there are performances, DJs, live soundtracks, installations and slideshows.
9/11 Press for Truth - Adapting Paul Thompson's definitive Complete 9/11 Timeline (published by HarperCollins as 'The Terror Timeline'), the filmmakers collaborate with documentary veterans Globalvision ('WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception', 'Beyond JFK') to stitch together rare overlooked news clips, buried stories, and government press conferences, revealing a pattern of official lies, deception and spin. As a result, a very different picture of 9/11 emerges, one that raises new and more pressing questions.
94 Elements -
There are 94 naturally occuring elements, from hydrogen to plutonium. Together they make up everything in the world. 94 Elements is a global filmmaking project, exploring our lives through the lens of the elements.
A Sea Change - This film follows retired educator and concerned grandfather Sven Huseby back to stunning ancestral sites (Norway, Alaska the Pacific Northwest) where he finds cutting-edge ocean research underway. His journey of self-discovery brings adventure, surprise and revelation to the hard science of acidification.
Aerosol Crimes... (aka Chemtrails) - Clifford Carnicom's riveting documentary about the governments assault on our skies. A 90 minute presentation about chemtrails, their effects on human and other natural life, and their possible devastating military applications. It is an excellent way to give your friends all the information they need to answer the question....why would they do this? Over the years aerosol/chemtrail research has provided some leads but even more questions as to who and why the spraying occurs. It is clear jets are deliberately spraying the sky's and it will not stop until enough people are aware and willing to stand up for the operations exposure and termination. After watching this video, you will never look at the sky the same way again.
America's Defense Monitor Video Catalog - From 1987 until 2000, the weekly television series America's Defense Monitor was broadcast on about 65 PBS and cable stations across the United States. In thirteen seasons, the series presented critical information on the military's impact on the political system, the economy,the environment, and society as a whole. Other topics include foreign policy, international affairs, armed intervention, and nuclear and conventional weapons. Individual episodes of America's Defense Monitor have recieved awards in major film competitions. Search ADM's Video Catalog.
American Blackout - Critically examines the contemporary tactics used to control our democratic process and silence voices of political dissent.
American Casino -
A powerful look at the subprime lending scandal. Presented by Table Rock Films, produced by Leslie and Andrew Cockburn, this film explains how and why over $12 trillion vanished into the "American Casino".
Also see C-SPAN program where the Cockburns talk about the documentary.
American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein -
A cautiously respectful documentary portrait of a political firebrand who presents himself as a beacon of moral truth in the murk of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Norman Finkelstein’s conclusions can be debated, his methods can be deplored, but as American Radical directors Ridgen and Rossier take pains to point out, a man so rigorously committed to putting an end to oppression ought not be so easily dismissed, even if coming to grips with such a challenging figure may be finally as difficult as getting to the bottom of the Arab-Israeli conflict itself.
Amercian Rhetoric - Online speech bank, rhetoric in sound, top 100 US. speeches.
American Ruling Class (John Kirby) - This is the tale of two graduates, "one rich and one poor" as they seek direction in their lives. Does America have a ruling class? If so, of what is it made, and how does it co-exist within our democracy? How does one join it; should one even want to? Director John Kirby experiments with the documentary genre, successfully melding fact, drama, and music. The film is guided by Editor Emeritus for Harper's Magazine, Lewis Lapham. Other real-life luminaries appearing in the film are a range of leaders across the media and political landscape: Kurt Vonnegut, Walter Cronkite, Mike Medavoy, Robert Altman, Barbara Ehrenreich, Vartan Gregorian, Martin Garbus, Bill Bradley, Larry Summers, James Baker, Pete Peterson, Hodding Carter, and the insistent opposition voice of Pete Seeger.
An Inconvenient Truth - With wit, smarts and hope, An Inconvenient Truth ultimately brings home Al Gore's persuasive argument that we can no longer afford to view global warming as a political issue - rather, it is the biggest moral challenges facing our global civilization.
An Unreasonable Man - With the help of exciting graphics, rare archival footage and over forty on-camera interviews conducted over the past two years, "An Unreasonable Man" traces the life and career of Ralph Nader.
Anthrax War -
A provocative new investigative documentary by filmmakers Bob Coen and Eric Nadler that examines the 2001 Anthrax Attacks and offers a frightening glimpse into today’s secret and dangerous world of germ weapons. Dead Silence is the accompanying book that fills out the story of the global investigation that the documentary could only outline.
The story begins in the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks when anthrax-laced letters, mailed to media offices in New York and to the U.S. Senate in Washington, spread fear and panic across the United States and beyond. The filmmakers probe troubling questions surrounding the FBI’s investigation of the 21st Century’s first act of biological terrorism.
The search for answers takes them from the United States to the United Kingdom, then to the edge of Siberia and to Southern Africa and leads them into an underworld in which leading scientists working with germs die under mysterious circumstances. The growing list includes Bruce Ivins, who the FBI claims was the only person behind the U.S. anthrax murders; Dr. David Kelly, the former head of UK bio-defense; and Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, the mastermind behind the Soviet Union’s vast and illegal bio-weapons complex who defected to the West.
The filmmakers penetrate what they come to call the “international biological warfare mafia” and uncover the development of terrifying new weapons – genetically mutated germs, some with the ability to target specific ethnic groups. In a rare interview, the man known as “Doctor Death”, who headed South Africa’s apartheid-era biological warfare program that developed germs aimed at the country’s black population, reveals that he received help from the U.S. and U.K. The filmmakers also learn that some of these germs may be for sale on the black market today.
Ballad of Greenwich Village, The - Portrays important political and social movements that started in Greenwich Village - such as the first interracial jazz club, the earliest Socialist newspapers from before World War I, and the Stonewall rebellion that sparked gay liberation. Directed by Karen Kramer.
Banished: How Whites Drove Blacks Out of Town in America - From the end of Reconstruction right up to the end of WWI, thousands of black families, threatened with death and physical injury, were forced off their land and farms. Churches were burned, homes dynamited and shot at and black men were lynched. In dozens of cases the banishment was so complete and so swift, dozens of cities and towns became effectively all-white over night. In most cases the families were never compensated for the loss of their property. A century later, some of these towns and counties have remained all-white. Marco Williams's documentary Banished tackles this historical minefield by delving into the present of Pierce City, Missouri; Harrison, Arkansas; and Forsyth County, Georgia. Tracking the stories of the descendents of those forced to flee, as well as the descendents of the townspeople that forced the original families out, Williams personalizes this tragic period in U.S. history.
Beckett on Film - Awarded the 'Best TV Drama' award at the sixth South Bank Show Awards ceremony on 6th February 2002 at the Savoy in London. For the first time, all 19 of Samuel Beckett's plays have been filmed, bringing together some of the world's most talented directors and actors.
BFI screenonline - Brings to life Britain's big and small screen histories from the 1890s to the present. Popular classics, little-known gems and many hard-to-find films and television programmes are represented by thousands of video extracts, thousands of still images, publicity materials and specially-written analyses by expert writers, supported by comprehensive filmographic information. screenonline is a vital resource for anyone with either an academic or casual interest in British film or television. Access to video and audio material is limited to users in registered UK schools, colleges and libraries.
Big Mouth Productions - Founded by Julia Pimsleur and Katy Chevigny to produce social-issue documentaries by talented emerging filmmakers and to provide production services for U.S. and international clients.
Big Noise Films - Non-profit media collective producing politically and culturally challenging films.
Big Uneasy, The -
In this feature–length documentary, New Orleans resident Harry Shearer gets the inside story of a disaster that could have been prevented from the people who were there. Shearer speaks to the investigators who poked through the muck as the water receded and a whistle–blower from the Army Corps of Engineers, revealing that some of the same flawed methods responsible for the levee failure during Katrina are being used to rebuild the system expected to protect the new New Orleans from future peril.
"The Big Uneasy" marks the beginning of the end of five years of ignorance about what happened to one of our nation’s most treasured cities — and serves as a stark reminder that the same agency that failed to protect New Orleans still exists in other cities across America.
Black Gold - A moving and eye-opening look into the 80-billion-dollar global coffee industry, where the spoils of overpriced lattes and cappuccinos are sparsely shared with the farmers who make it all possible.
Body of War - An intimate and transformational feature documentary about the true face of war today. Meet Tomas Young, 25 years old, paralyzed from a bullet to his spine - wounded after serving in Iraq for less than a week. Body of War is Tomas's coming home story as he evolves into a new person, coming to terms with his disability and finding his own unique and passionate voice against the war. The film is produced and directed by Phil Donahue andEllen Spiro, and features two original songs by Eddie Vedder.
Brave New Theaters - Directory of screenings and tools for promoting screenings at your home or in your community.
Breaking Ranks - Documentary that examines the current phenomena of U.S. soldiers seeking refuge in Canada as part of their resistance to the war effort in Iraq, revealing the everyday lives, hopes, and idealism of another generation of young soldiers as they become controversial peace activists. Directed by Michelle Mason.
Bridge Project - An international art initiative founded by the NY based theater artist Richard Foreman and his long time collaborator Sophie Haviland. Brings together visual artists, musicians, filmmakers, composers, writers, performers and directors, generating the collaborations and collisions necessary to make art that transforms.
Bright Path Video and Film - Progressive Internet streamed broadcasting site dedicated to the needs of the environment, green business, alternative medicine, the arts, education, progressive causes and the teachings of eastern mysticism.
Brooklyn Boheme -
A ove letter to a vibrant African American artistic community who resided in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill Brooklyn during the 80′s and 90′s that included the great Spike Lee, Chris Rock, Branford Marsalis, Rosie Perez, Saul Williams, Lorna Simpson, Talib Kweli just to name a few. Narrated and written by Fort Greene resident Nelson George, this feature length documentary celebrates Brooklyn’s equivalent of the Harlem Renaissance and follows the rise of a new kind of African American artist, the Brooklyn Boheme.
Bullfrog - A leading U.S. publisher of independently-produced, environmental videos, broadly defined to include programs on ecology, energy, agriculture, indigenous peoples, women's studies, genetics, marine biology, sustainable development, community regeneration, economics, ethics, and conflict resolution.
Bush Family Fortunes - This 70 minute long documentary follows the award-winning reporter-sleuth Greg Palast on the trail of the Bush family, from Florida election finagling, to the Saudi connection, to the Bush team's spiking the FBI investigation of the bin Laden family and the secret State Department plans for post-war Iraq.
California Newsreel -
Produces and distributes cutting edge, social justice films that inspire, educate and engage audiences. Founded in 1968, Newsreel is the oldest non-profit, social issue documentary film center in the country, the first to marry media production and contemporary social movements.
Canyon Cinema - Canyon's collection of more than 3500 films traces the history of the experimental and avant-garde filmmaking movement from the 1930s to the present. Canyon's primary activity is the distribution of 16mm films, videotapes, and DVDs by independent film artists.
Canyon Productions, Inc. -
Programs produced for the film festival circuit and for limited commercial distribution, including Edward Abbey: A Voice in the Wilderness, Ian Tyson & Tom Russell - 'Mano a Mano', and Hearts on the Line (Tom Russell Concert/Documentary).
Capitalism: A Love Story - Capitalism: A Love Story does not quite measure up to Moore's Sicko in its cumulative power, and it is unlikely to equal Fahrenheit 9/11 in political impact. In many ways, though, this is Moore's magnum opus: the grandest statement of his career-long belief that big business is screwing the hard-working little guy while government connives in the atrocity. As he loudly tried to confront General Motors CEO Roger Smith in Roger & Me in 1989, and pleaded through a bull horn to get officials at Guantanamo to give medical treatment to surviving victims of 9/11, so in Capitalism he attempts to make a citizen's arrest of AIG executives, and puts tape around the New York Stock Exchange building, declaring it a crime scene.
Capitalism Hits the Fan - With breathtaking clarity, renowned University of Massachusetts Economics Professor Richard Wolff breaks down the root causes of today's economic crisis, showing how it was decades in the making and in fact reflects seismic failures within the structures of American-style capitalism itself. Wolff traces the source of the economic crisis to the 1970s, when wages began to stagnate and American workers were forced into a dysfunctional spiral of borrowing and debt that ultimately exploded in the mortgage meltdown. By placing the crisis within this larger historical and systemic frame, Wolff argues convincingly that the proposed government “bailouts,” stimulus packages, and calls for increased market regulation will not be enough to address the real causes of the crisis - in the end suggesting that far more fundamental change will be necessary to avoid future catastrophes. Richly illustrated with motion graphics and charts, this is a superb introduction designed to help ordinary citizens understand, and react to, the unraveling economic crisis.
Carbon Rush, The -
From indigenous rain forest dwellers having their way of life completely threatened, to dozens of Campesinos assassinated, to the livelihood of waste pickers at landfills taken away, The Carbon Rush travels across four continents to brings viewers up close to projects working through the United Nations Kyoto Protocol-designed Clean Development Mechanism and asks: "What happens when we manipulate markets to solve the climate crisis? Who stands to gain and who stands to suffer?"
CBC Documentaries - Watch the best documentaries from Canada and around the world on digital TV. It's like having a cinema in your own living room, showing award winning films twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Century of the Self - Adam Curtis's acclaimed series examines the rise of the all-consuming self against the backdrop of the Freud dynasty. Sigmund Freud's work into the bubbling and murky world of the subconscious changed the world. By introducing a technique to probe the unconscious mind, Freud provided useful tools for understanding the secret desires of the masses. Unwittingly, his work served as the precursor to a world full of political spin doctors, marketing moguls, and society's belief that the pursuit of satisfaction and happiness is man's ultimate goal.
View entire documentary here: Part 1, 2, 3, and 4. Also see Wikipedia article.
Cinema Guild - Distributes documentary and fiction films (narrative features and shorts), offering producers full service distribution in all markets, including educational, non-theatrical, theatrical, television, cable, internet, and home video.
Cinema Libra - Online retailer of DVD movies, including socio-political documentaries and independent feature films.
Cinema=Jean-Luc Godard=Cinema - Essays, reviews, filmography, interviews, and links to the films of Jean-Luc Godard.
Complex Corporation - Henry S. Rosenthal's Complex Corporation, founded in 1988, is the most prolific production company for independent filmmakers in Northern California. In the past 6 years alone, Rosenthal has offered his production/consultation services to over 4,000 features, shorts, documentaries, industrials, music videos, commercials, and educational films and videos. He has also taught classes and lectured in producing independent films at San Francisco State University, UC Berkeley Extension, the California College of Arts and Crafts, De Anza College, City College, Academy of Art College, Film Arts Foundation, and the San Francisco Art Institute. Rosenthal advocates independent filmmakers through his role as Chairman of the Board at the San Francisco Film Arts Foundation and through his consulting practice.
Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood - Consuming Kids throws desperately needed light on the practices of a relentless multi-billion dollar marketing machine that now sells kids and their parents everything from junk food and violent video games to bogus educational products and the family car. Drawing on the insights of health care professionals, children's advocates, and industry insiders, the film focuses on the explosive growth of child marketing in the wake of deregulation, showing how youth marketers have used the latest advances in psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience to transform American children into one of the most powerful and profitable consumer demographics in the world. Consuming Kids pushes back against the wholesale commercialization of childhood, raising urgent questions about the ethics of children's marketing and its impact on the health and well-being of kids. Online here.
Control Room - A documentary about the Arab television network Al-Jazeera's coverage of the U.S.-led Iraqi war, and conflicts that arose in managed perceptions of truth between that news media outlet and the American military.
Corporation, The - Considering the odd legal fiction that deems a corporation a 'person' in the eyes of the law, this documentary employs a checklist, based on actual diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and DSM IV, the standard tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. What emerges is a disturbing diagnosis: psychopath. A documentary film by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, and Joel Bakan.
Corrugated Films - Works to build solidarity and understanding between communities of action through the grassroots production and distribution of video, radio, and other forms of independent media.
Countdown to Zero -
Traces the history of the atomic bomb from its origins to the present state of global affairs: nine nations possessing nuclear weapons capabilities with others racing to join them, with the world held in a delicate balance that could be shattered by an act of terrorism, failed diplomacy, or a simple accident. Written and directed by acclaimed documentarian Lucy Walker (The Devil’s Playground, Blindsight), the film features an array of important international statesmen, including Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pervez Musharraf and Tony Blair. It makes a compelling case for worldwide nuclear disarmament
Criterion - A continuing series of important classic and contemporary films, the Criterion Collection is dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions that offer the highest technical quality and award-winning, original supplements. Also see Eclipse series. Eclipse presents a selection of lost, forgotten, or overshadowed classics in simple, affordable editions. Each series is a brief cinematheque for the adventurous home viewer. Once a month, Eclipse will present a set of these films, usually from three to five titles, focusing on a particular director or theme.
Deadly Arrogance - A frightening look at the nuclear threat that looms over the world today, perpetual war for U.S. economic and strategic conquest, and the consequences of nuclear contamination.
Diamonds and Rust - Directors Adi Barash and Ruthie Shatz received permission to film everyday life on the Spirit of Namibia from diamond exporter De Beers, but the result - which shows fraying tempers, racist attitudes, a deteriorating vessel and front office indifference - hardly flatters the company.
Documentary Heaven - Compiles documentaries from around the web on a variety of topics.
Docurama Films -
Dedicated to making critically acclaimed and cutting-edge documentaries available digitally and on home video.
DocuSeek - A searchable database for documentary, social issue, and educational videos which allows users to search for videos by grade level, length, filmmaker, and other specific characteristics. Search results include complete title information, a detailed description, reviews and awards, plus links to the distributors.
donkeysaddle projects - Combats inhumanity through exposing the humanity of those who have been marginalized and oppressed, through platforms such as writing, film and theatre.
Dr. Bonner's Magic Soapbox - A human story about a socially responsible company, "Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox" documents the complicated family legacy behind the counterculture's favorite cleaning product.
Earth Films - Educational video and media project that specializes in environmental and social issue documentaries.
earlycinema.com - Focuses on the early pioneers of this art form and the prehistory of cinema, with experiments carried out by Eadweard Muybridge and Etienne Marey.
Elmer Bernstein (1922-2004) - Official site of the film composer who wrote the music for over 200 major film and television scores.
End of the Line, The -
The first major feature documentary film revealing the impact of overfishing on our oceans. The film examines the imminent extinction of bluefin tuna, brought on by increasing western demand for sushi; the impact on marine life resulting in huge overpopulation of jellyfish; and the profound implications of a future world with no fish that would bring certain mass starvation.
Filmed over two years, The End of the Line follows the investigative reporter Charles Clover as he confronts politicians and celebrity restaurateurs, who exhibit little regard for the damage they are doing to the oceans. One of his allies is the former tuna farmer turned whistleblower Roberto Mielgo – on the trail of those destroying the world's magnificent bluefin tuna population. Filmed across the world – from the Straits of Gibraltar to the coasts of Senegal and Alaska to the Tokyo fish market – featuring top scientists, indigenous fishermen and fisheries enforcement officials, The End of the Line is a wake-up call to the world.
Errol Morris - Janet Maslin of the New York Times describes Morris as "a one-of-a-kind filmmaker capable of melding science, philosophy, poetry and sheer whimsy into an elaborate meditation on mankind's mysteries."
Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement - A critically acclaimed 14-part series broadcast nationally by the Public Broadcasting Service. The first six programs,Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years (1954-1965), were aired in January and February of 1987. The eight-part sequel, Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads (1965-1985) was broadcast in 1990. Eyes on the Prize is the most important documentary ever made about the Civil Rights Movement - but copyright restrictions kept it from the public for many years. It is now available once more. See PBS's Eyes on the Prize page along with its Video Index, which provides almost two hours of the historic footage. The entire series is available on DVD through Blackside.
Facets - One of the nation's largest distributors of foreign, classic, cult, art, and hard-to-find videos.
Fahrenheit 9/11 - One of the most controversial and provocative films of 2004, Fahrenheit 9/11 is Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore's searing examination of the Bush administration's actions in the wake of the tragic events of 9/11.
FedFlix - Features over 8,700 films created by the US government over the past 70 years on a range of topics.
Film Commune - A collective and online community of 5 like-minded filmmakers (aka "comrades") who have joined together to promote their common interest in cinema, from production to exhibition.
Film Transit - Distributor of quality documentaries in art, culture, society, and politics.
Filmakers Library - Developing a collection of award-winning documentary films and videos primarily for educational use, covering such subject areas as psychology, sociology, anthropology, women's studies and multicultural issues. Titles from the collection are available for rental or sale to universities, schools, museums, businesses and community groups.
Films for Action (FFA) -
A non-profit website featuring over 500 of the best socially-conscious documentaries and videos you can watch free online.
First Run Features - Distributes independent, foreign, fiction and non-fiction film.
FLOW: For the Love of Water - A film by Irena Salina highlighting the local intimacies of an emerging global catastrophe: African plumbers reconnect shantytown water pipes under cover of darkness to ensure a community's survival; a Californian scientist forces awareness of shockingly toxic public water sources; a 'Big Water' CEO argues privatization is the wave of the future; a "Water Guru" in India sparks new community water initiatives in hundreds of villages; a Canadian author uncovers the corporate profiteering that drives global water business.
Fog of War - Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara - A documentary film directed by Errol Morris. The film was released in December 2003 and won many awards, including the 2004 Oscar for Best Documentary, as well as the documentary of the year award from the National Board of Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Chicago Film Critics, and the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics. The eleven lessons that give the film its structure and name were derived from the interviews conducted by Errol Morris and were not explicitly stated or created by Robert McNamara.
Folkstreams - A national preserve of documentary films about American roots cultures streamed with essays about the traditions and filmmaking. The site includes transcriptions, study and teaching guides, suggested readings, and links to related websites.
Food, Inc. -
In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults. Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms's Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.
ForeignFilms.com - Classic foreign titles to the latest arthouse releases.
Four Days Inside Guantánamo - This film recording the interrogation of a young Canadian in Guantánamo is a brutal document of modern cruelty. The movie shows us declassified video recordings of a 2003 interrogation, in Guantánamo prison, of 16-year-old Omar Khadr. He was a Canadian citizen picked up in Afghanistan on various charges including terrorism, reportedly tortured, never tried other than by a military tribunal, and finally in 2010 allowed to begin a supposedly lenient eight-year sentence in exchange for pleading guilty. His unseen interrogator here is a Canadian intelligence officer, evidently the lead officer in a team, permitted by the Americans to question the prisoner on the understanding that a friendly seeming fellow countryman might cause Khadr to open up and give the US valuable intelligence. So far from being a respite from torture, this insincere friendly chat is a hideous refinement of cruelty: a horrifying turn of the screw.
Freedom Archives, The - 8000 hours of audio and video recordings documenting social justice movements locally, nationally, and internationally from the 1960s to the present. The Archives features speeches of movement leaders and community activists, protests and demonstrations, cultural currents of rebellion and resistance. This oral history is in a searchable database. You can download programs and clips.
From Wharf Rats to Lords of the Dock - Directed by Academy Award winning director and cinematographer Haskell Wexler, is the film of a truly unique event – Ian Ruskin performing his one-man to a packed house of 1000 longshore workers in San Pedro, California. The result, with appearances by Elliott Gould, Edward Asner and members of ILWU Local 13, and with music by Jackson Browne, Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Tim Reynolds, Ciro Hurtado and others (including the world premiere of Woody Guthrie’s song about Harry, sung by his granddaughter Sarah Lee Guthrie) is an inspiring story. It is an intimate exploration of the life and times of this extraordinary man – “a hero or the devil incarnate, it all depends on your point of view” – full of the high drama and biting humor that ran through his life. And it is a springboard into understanding the parallel issues – globalization, global responsibilities, wars on terrorism, surveillance and privacy, and the widening gap between rich and poor, that we face today.
Fuel -
Eleven years in the making, Fuel is the in-depth personal journey of filmmaker and eco-evangelist Josh Tickell, who takes us on a hip, fast-paced road trip into America’s dependence on foreign oil. Combining a history lesson of the US auto and petroleum industries and interviews with a wide range of policy makers, educators, and activists such as Woody Harrelson, Sheryl Crow, Neil Young and Willie Nelson. Animated by powerful graphics, Fuel looks into our future offering hope via a wide-range of renewable energy and bio-fuels. Winner of the Sundance Audience Award.
Genius of Charles Darwin, The - Richard Dawkins presents the ultimate three-part guide to Charles Darwin and his materpiece, On the Origin of Species.
Getty Images: Film - Explore Getty stock footage, both royalty-free footage and rights-managed footage.
Ghosts of Attica - Attica's lessons about prison reform, hostage negotiations and state hubris are as relevant now as in 1971, when the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York exploded in rage and frustration.
Gorilla Cinema - Production and distribution for the digital age.
Graffitti Films - Formed in 2001 by David Martinez and Juliet Dervin in order to produce radical films that are poetic in form.
GreenHouse Pictures - Occupation: Dreamland (directed by Garrett Scott and Ian Olds); pack, strap, swallow (directed by Holly Paige Joyner); The Perfect Life (directed by Sam Lee); and A Man Ain't Nothin' But a Man: The Living Legacy of John Henry (directed by Craig Rice).
Gunnar Palace - Filmmaker Michael Tucker, who lived with 2/3 Field Artillery, a.k.a. "The Gunners" for two months, captures the lives and humanity of these soldiers whose barracks are the bombed-out pleasure palace of Uday Hussein (nicknamed Gunner Palace), situated in the heart of the most volatile section of Baghdad. With total access to all operations and activities, Tucker's insider footage provides a rare look at the day-to-day lives of these soldiers on the ground -- whether swimming in Uday's pool and playing golf on his putting green or executing raids on suspected terrorists, enduring roadside bombs, mortar attacks, RPGs and snipers.
Hacking Democracy - Electronic voting machines count about 87% of the votes cast in America today. But are they reliable? Are they safe from tampering? From a current congressional hearing to persistent media reports that suggest misuse of data and even outright fraud, concerns over the integrity of electronic voting are growing by the day. And if the voting process is not secure, neither is America's democracy. The timely, cautionary documentary Hacking Democracy exposes gaping holes in the security of America's electronic voting system.
Harry Smith Archives - It was in San Francisco that Smith began to build a reputation as one of the leading American experimental filmmakers. He showed frequently in the "Art in Cinema" screenings organized by Frank Stauffacher at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Smith not only became close with other avant-garde filmmakers in the Bay Area, such as Jordan Belson and Hy Hirsh, but traveled frequently to Los Angeles to see the films of Oskar Fischinger, Kenneth Anger, and other Southern Californians experimentalists. Smith developed his own methods of animation, using both stop motion collage techniques and, more uniquely, hand-painting directly on film. Often a single film required years of painstakingly precise labor. While a few other filmmakers had employed similar frame-by-frame processes, few matched the complexity of composition, movement, and integration in Smith's work. Smith's films have been interpreted as investigations of conscious and unconscious mental processes, while his fusion of color and sound are acknowledged as precursors of sixties psychedelia. At times, Smith spoke of his films in terms of synaethesia, the search for correspondences between color and sound and sound and movement.
Have You Heard From Johannesburg -
Seven documentary stories, produced and directed by Connie Field, chronicling the history of the global anti-apartheid movement that took on South Africa’s entrenched apartheid regime and its international supporters who considered South Africa an ally in the Cold War.
HBO Movies - HBO has been producing highly acclaimed films since 1983.
Hidden in Plain Sight - A feature-length documentary that looks at the nature of U.S. policy in Latin America through the prism of the School of the Americas (renamed, in January of 2001, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), the controversial military school that trains Latin American soldiers in the USA.
Hot Coffee -
Doumentary film by Susan Saladoff who applies her extensive legal background on what has become, at least in the public consciousness, a joke (perhaps most famously spoofed on Seinfeld) to rigorously debunk the dismissive myths concerning the case, and to examine why they’ve been allowed to propagate around it in the first place, pointing to abuses of the legal system and the disenfranchisement of ordinary people, and propaganda behind so-called "tort reform" efforts.
Hunting of the President - Using previously unreleased materials, interviews, and revelations from both sides of the beltway, this work focuses on the smear campaign against Clinton from his gubernatorial days in Arkansas up to his impeachment trial. Less of an advocacy film and more of an alarming treatise on the political power of the media and personal interests, the film offers a gallery of defeated politicians, disappointed office seekers, right-wing pamphleteers, wealthy eccentrics, zany private detectives, religious fanatics, and die-hard segregationists, all chiming in discord from the tops of their soapboxes.
Icarus Films - A leading distributor of documentary film and video.
Ice (Robert Kramer, 1969) - A pioneering work that blurred the boundaries between fictional and documentary styles, Ice was hailed by filmmaker and Village Voice critic Jonas Mekas as "the most original and most significant American narrative film" of the late sixties. An underground revolutionary group struggles against internal strife which threatens its security and stages urban guerrilla attacks against a fictionalized fascist regime in the United States. Interspersed throughout the narrative are rhetorical sequences that explain the philosophy of radical action and serve to restrain the melodrama inherent in the "thriller" genre. Shot in the gray landscape of New York City in a gritty cinema-verité style, the film has been compared to Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville.
IFC Films - Independent film on television and in theaters.
In Debt We Trust - The money we owe and the bill that's coming due. A Danny Schechter film. In Debt We Trust shows how the mall replaced the factory as America's dominant economic engine and how big banks and credit card companies buy our Congress and drive us into what a former major bank economist calls modern serfdom. Americans and our government owe trillions in consumer debt and the national debt, a large amount of it to big banks and billions to Communist China.
In the Waiting Room: John Huston's Let There Be Light - Review of the film by Quentin Turnour. "Huston and a team of cameramen lead by DOP Stanley Cortez (the master of black light carving responsible for The Magnificent Ambersons [1942] and The Night the Hunter [1955]) spent three months in 1946 at New York's Mason Hospital, documenting an intensive eight week, mass production program of therapeutic treatment for what was then described as 'psychoneurotic' illness: a baggage of anxieties and psychosomatic symptoms emerging in soldiers in combat or through alienation from home. All the scenes in the film are 'found'."
Inside the Revolution: A Journey into Heart of Venezuela -
Filmed in Caracas in November 2008, on the eve of the 10th anniversary of Chavez's controversial presidency, this feature-length documentary takes a journey into the heart of Venezuela's revolution to listen to the voices of the people driving the process forward.
Independent Film Channel (IFC) - Features independent movies, documentaries, animation, shorts, exclusive originals, and coverage of all the major independent film festivals.
International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) - Brings together institutions dedicated to rescuing films both as cultural heritage and as historical documents. Focuses on the practical and economic implications of digitalization, upon commercial imperatives, and what this may mean for traditional film archiving activities.
Internet Moving Images Archive: Movie Collection - This collection contains movies that the Prelinger Archives has digitized (about 750 now online) and donated to the Internet Archive. The films focus mainly on everyday life, culture, industry, and institutions in North America in the 20th century.
Into Eternity -
Every day, the world over, large amounts of high-level radioactive waste created by nuclear power plants is placed in interim storage, which is vulnerable to natural disasters, man-made disasters, and to societal changes. In Finland the world’s first permanent repository is being hewn out of solid rock - a huge system of underground tunnels - that must last 100,000 years as this is how long the waste remains hazardous.
Captivating, wondrous and extremely frightening, this feature documentary takes viewers on a journey never seen before into the underworld and into the future.
Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers - Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed and Uncovered) takes you inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq. Iraq for Sale uncovers the connections between private corporations making a killing in Iraq and the decision makers who allow them to do so.
Iris Films - A documentary film company dedicated to making films that address social justice issues.
Janus Films - For over 50 years, the preeminent U.S. distributor of foreign and classic films.
John Pilger - The films and journalism writing of John Pilger.
Kamran Shirdel - Shirdel is considered a father figure of Iran's new cinema and documentary school of filmmaking. He paved the way for a type of social and critical documentary film in Iran that refused to be misused by presenting a politically documented and accurate reflection of reality. Many famed Iranian cineastes, such as Abbas Kiarostami, Amir Naderi, Jafar Panahi, Rakhshan Banietemad, Mohammad Reza Aslani, Khosrow Masooumi, Mahvash Sheikholeslami, and Soudabeh Babagap, have been his pupils or worked directly with him during their formative years. Shirdel's films are considered to be veritable references for the social documentary and filmmaking in Iran.
Kill the Messenger -
Exploring abuses behind the State Secrets Privilege as invoked in FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds' case as well as highlighting the travails and persecution of U.S. national security whistleblowers.
Koch Brothers Exposed - A hard-hitting investigation of the 1% at its very worst. This full-length documentary film on Charles and David Koch—two of the world’s richest and most powerful men—is the latest from acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed, Rethink Afghanistan). The billionaire brothers bankroll a vast network of organizations that work to undermine the interests of the 99% on issues ranging from Social Security to the environment to civil rights. This film uncovers the Kochs’ corruption—and points the way to how Americans can reclaim their democracy.
KPFA Archives - Programming is local, original and eclectic, with a well produced mix of news and in depth public affairs, an ongoing drama, literature and performance series, interviews, and reviews.
Landscapes of the Soul: The Cinema of Alexander Dovzhenko - This program was curated by Alla Verlotsky and Richard Pena and is organized in collaboration with the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Ministry of Art and Culture of Ukraine, the Ukrainian National Center of Alexander Dovzhenko and with the support of The Consulate General of Ukraine in New York.
Last Mountain, The -
In the valleys of Appalachia, a battle is being fought over a mountain. It is a battle with severe consequences that affect every American, regardless of their social status, economic background or where they live. It is a battle that has taken many lives and continues to do so the longer it is waged. It is a battle over protecting our health and environment from the destructive power of Big Coal. The mining and burning of coal is at the epicenter of America’s struggle to balance its energy needs with environmental concerns. Nowhere is that concern greater than in Coal River Valley, West Virginia, where a small but passionate group of ordinary citizens are trying to stop Big Coal corporations, like Massey Energy, from continuing the devastating practice of Mountain Top Removal.
Law in These Parts, The -
A film by Ra'anan Alexandrowicz. Since Israel conquered the territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 war, the military has imposed thousands of orders and laws, established military courts, sentenced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, enabled half a million Israeli "settlers" to move to the Occupied Territories and developed a system of long-term jurisdiction by an occupying army that is unique in the entire world. This film attempts to answer the questions: Can a modern democracy impose a prolonged military occupation on another people while retaining it's core democratic values? Can such an occupation be achieved within a legal framework that includes genuine adherence to the principals of rule-of-law? Should it? What are the costs that a society engaged in such a long term exercise must bear? And what are the implications of the very effort to make a documentary film about such a system?
Mafia Principle of Global Hegemony, The: The Middle East, Empire, and Activism -
The world’s most influential living intellectual, Noam Chomsky, holds forth on the root causes of the conflicts in the Middle East, and talks about hopes for future social change. The renowned foreign policy critic and linguist brings the full force of his rapier-like mind and deadpan wit to bear in slicing through mainstream misconceptions—many of them intentional—about the internal and external politics of Iran and Israel/ Palestine. Chomsky eloquently contextualizes the power of the Israel lobby and the centrality of the U.S. in resolving the underlying antagonisms in the Middle East, as well as weighing in on how U.S. public opinion has shifted over the past several decades and addressing various positive directions for activism. DVD includes an hour long extra of Noam Chomsky conversing with Larry Bensky about the media, class, and right wing populism.
Media Education Foundation - Produces and distributes video documentaries to encourage critical thinking and debate about the relationship between media ownership, commercial media content, and the democratic demand for free flows of information, diverse representations of ideas and people, and informed citizen participation. Also see Links and Resources.
Media Resources Center (MRC) - MRC is the University of California, Berkeley library's primary collection of materials in electronic non-print (audio and visual) formats. The permanent collection includes dramatic performances, literary adaptations, speeches, lectures and events, documentaries, including one of the strongest collections of works by independent film and video makers in the U.S. Virtually every currently-available video version of Shakespeare's plays; major PBS series; radio documentaries and interviews from the Pacific Archives and National Public Radio, and an excellent study-level collection of international cinema works are just a few of the resources you will find in the Media Center.
Media That Matters - Showcase for short films on important topics of the day. Every June, Media That Matters presents a new collection of twelve shorts. The festival launches in New York City with a world premiere at the IFC Center and an awards ceremony at HBO where every filmmaker is honored and many receive cash awards sponsored by major foundations and corporations. Previous presenters include Tim Robbins, Al Franken, David Cross, Woody Harrelson, Barbara Kopple and Peter Yarrow.
MediaRights - Nonprofit organization that helps media makers, educators, librarians, nonprofits, and activists use documentaries to encourage action and inspire dialogue on contemporary social issues.
Middlemarch Films - Founded in 1978 by Ellen Hovde and Muffle Meyer. Hovde and Meyer have worked with numerous professionals including the Maysles Brothers, Lorne Michaels, Mike Nichols, Walter Cronkite, Penn and Teller, David Hockney and Twyla Tharp.
Milestone - Distributor of films by such masters of cinema as Alfred Hitchcock, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Luchino Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, F.W. Murnau, Orson Welles, and Luis Bunuel. Others are the work of some of the best directors working today, including Takeshi Kitano, Jane Campion, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Alan Berliner and Philip Haas.
MIRA Films - Produces social and political documentaries.
MLK: A Call to Conscience -
Examines the forgotten agenda of Martin Luther King Jr., whose famed "Beyond Vietnam" speech, given at Riverside Church in 1967, led to an abrupt loss of his popularity in the last year of his life. The program explores the relevance of King's anti-war position to the current U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the significance of the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor bestowed upon both King and President Barack Obama.
Mondovino (World of Wine) - A 2004 documentary film from Italy on the impact of globalization on the world's different wine regions written and directed by American film maker Jonathan Nossiter. It was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and a César Award. The film explores the impact of globalization on the various wine-producing regions, and the influence of critics like Robert Parker and consultants like Michel Rolland in defining an international style. It pits the ambitions of large, multinational wine producers, in particular Robert Mondavi, against the small, single estate wineries who have traditionally boasted wines with individual character driven by their terroir.
Monumental: David Brower's Fight for Wild America - If you've ever wondered what a single person can do against the relentless onslaught of development, wait until you see the charismatic and enigmatic David Brower push the 1964 Wilderness Act through Congress, and then go on to save the Grand Canyon from damming and help create Redwoods National Park and Point Reyes National Seashore. Monumental documents the golden age of American environmentalism, when Brower took the Sierra Club from a regional hiking group into a national political force. Seen through Brower's own eyes--he was an accomplished filmmaker - a 1956 raft trip down Glen Canyon, before its damming, evokes the awful sadness of losing public land we've failed to protect.
Mr. Bongo - Building a diverse catalogue of impressive directing and acting talent and a selection of cinematic gems from around the world.
Myths for Profit - A dramatic, exposé documentary which explores Canada’s role in industries of war and peace. Through diverse interviews and case studies this documentary unveils the specific interests and profits that are made by certain corporation, individuals and agency within Canada. The Canadian government and the military would like us to believe that we are altruistic peacekeepers helping people around the world. But is this accurate? Myths for Profit examines how these misconception are maintained and who stands to gain by perpetuating them. MYTH 1) 'Canada is a peacekeeping nation' examines the changes within the Canadian military policies and what has been the agenda of these actions. From the historical beginnings of peacekeeping, to the recent missions, the documentary takes a critical look to the motives behind these actions. Particular focus is given to the role Canada has taken in NATO, the current perpetual war in Afghanistan, and how Canada played a pivotal role in pushing the policy of ‘humanitarian bombing’ in Yugoslavia in 1999. MYTH 2) 'Canada’s military purpose is defence' By investigating the magnitude of the Canadian military industrial complex, this section probes the intersecting relationships between various government agencies and corporations as well as public complicity in this vast industry. MYTH 3) 'Canada's aid is helping people around the world' investigates how various government agencies and ministries have specific agendas they are implementing around the world. The active role taken on in regional development banks, to the policies pushed by Export Development Canada are designed and carried out to ensure a free market neo-liberal agenda in different countries, regardless of the negative effect they may have on the communities and environment they impact. This includes how Canada’s development agency’s (CIDA) ties and phantom aid function in post and present conflict zones.
Narcotic Farm, The -
An hour-long historical PBS documentary narrated and scored by former inmate Wayne Kramer, the film tells the story of this long forgotten American institution through the voices of the former addicts who spent years of their lives locked within its walls. The film also features candid interviews with former government doctors at “Narco” who reflect on both the challenges of treating addicts there and the research achievements made possible in a total institution populated by hardcore drug addicts. Astonishing, government-produced 16mm films and photographs take viewers back to the grounds and inside the walls of The Narcotic Farm, highlighting its thriving jazz scene and revealing publicly for the first time the experience of prisoners involved in this world famous drug research program.
National Film Board (Canada) - Nearly 1500 films, clips and trailers online, free for personal use and on a subscription basis for schools and institutions.
Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power - Tells the dramatic story of the often-forgotten civil rights leader who urged African Americans to arm themselves against violent racists. In doing so, Williams not only challenged the Klan-dominated establishment of his hometown of Monroe, North Carolina, he alienated the mainstream Civil Rights Movement, which advocated peaceful resistance.
Occupation: Dreamland - An unflinchingly candid portrait of a squad of American soldiers deployed in the doomed Iraq city of Falluja during the winter of 2004. Filmmakers Garrett Scott and Ian Olds were given access to all operations of the Armys 82nd Airborne. They lived with the unit 24/7, giving voice to soldiers held under a strict code of authority as they cope with an ambiguous, often lethal environment.
Occupation 101 - A powerful documentary film on the current and historical root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike any other film ever produced on the conflict -- 'Occupation 101' presents a comprehensive analysis of the facts and hidden truths surrounding the never ending controversy and dispels many of its long-perceived myths and misconceptions.
and Free Documentaries.
Oil Factor, The: Behind the War on Terror - Examines the link between oil interests and current U.S. military interventions. It includes original footage shot over a four-month period in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as many interviews with a large array of personalities including Bush administration officials.
One Bright Shining Moment - Film by Stephen Vittoris; narrated by Amy Goodman. Retraces George McGovern's grassroots presidential campaign of 1972 - a campaign that fought to the bitter end for peace and justice, a campaign that positioned ideas and people first, and, a campaign crushed in workmanlike fashion by Richard Nixon. The film features interviews with a patchwork of historians, activists, the candidate himself, foot soldiers from his campaign, and others, including Gore Vidal, Gloria Steinem, Warren Beatty, Dick Gregory, Gary Hart, Frank Mankiewicz, Howard Zinn, Jim Bouton, Sen. Jim Abourezk, Rev. Malcolm Boyd, and Ron Kovic.
Open Video Project: A Shared Digital Video Collection - The purpose of the Open Video Project is to collect and make available a repository of digitized video content for the digital video, multimedia retrieval, digital library, and other research communities. Researchers can use the video to study a wide range of problems, such as tests of algorithms for automatic segmentation, summarization, and creation of surrogates that describe video content; the development of face recognition algorithms; or creating and evaluating interfaces that display result sets from multimedia queries. Because researchers attempting to solve similar problems will have access to the same video content, the repository is also intended to be used as a test collection that will enable systems to be compared, similar to the way the TREC conferences are used for text retrieval.
Original Child Bomb - Inspired by Thomas Merton's poem, Original Child Bomb shows the human cost of nuclear weapons. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are depicted through declassified footage, photographs, drawings and testimonies of mothers, brothers and soldiers. Ordinary people gaze upon the nuclear past and its terrifying present. They expose the political rhetoric surrounding "security" and "weapons of mass destruction ". The film is a wake-up call and an invitation to action.
Orwell Rolls in His Grave - Filmmaker Robert Kane Pappas's long-winded yet terrifyingly bleak Orwell Rolls In His Grave argues that the mainstream American media are no longer the voice of American freedom. Instead, they're part of a repressive political power structure that has uncanny parallels with the dystopian world of George Orwell's novel 1984. Exploding the myth of the American media's liberal bias, the film asks tough questions: why, in March 2003, did 51% of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for 9/11? Why did CBS hurriedly drop a BBC-led story about electoral irregularities in Florida after the subject of the allegations - Governor Jeb Bush - denied it was true?
OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism - Outfoxed examines how media empires, led by Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, have been running a "race to the bottom" in television news. This film provides an in-depth look at Fox News and the dangers of ever-enlarging corporations taking control of the public's right to know.
P.O.V. - PBS's documentaries with a "point of view."
Pacific Film Archive (PFA) - More than 6,600 records describing PFA's permanent film and video collection. Berkeley, California.
Panama Deception, The - Academy Award winning documentary in 1992, blue ribbon winner at the American Film & Video Festival, 1993, and recipient of a number of international film awards. Documents the untold story of the December 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama; the events which led to it, the excessive force used, the enormity of the death and destruction, and the devastating aftermath. Refused broadcast by PBS.
Panik House Entertainment - Focuses on high-energy, wildly inventive genre films with a particular spotlight on Asian Cinema.
Paper Tiger Television - Volunteer video collective. Through the production and distribution of our public access series, media literacy/video production workshops, community screenings and grassroots advocacy PTTV works to challenge and expose the corporate control of mainstream media.
Payback -
Margaret Atwood's visionary work Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth is the basis for this riveting and poetic documentary on 'debt' in its various forms—societal, personal, environmental, spiritual, criminal, and of course, economic. Filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal (Manufactured Landscapes) strikingly interweaves these (sometimes surprising) debtor/creditor relationships: two families in a years-long Albanian blood feud; the BP oil spill vs. the Earth; mistreated Florida tomato farm workers and their bosses; imprisoned media mogul Conrad Black and the U.S. justice system. With stunning cinematography and insightful commentary from renowned thinkers Raj Patel, Louise Arbour and Atwood herself, Payback is a brilliant rumination on the subject.
Parlour Pictures - Specialize in classic, foreign and independent feature films presented in high-quality transfers. Launched in July 2006 with the brilliant road movie and crime drama, Wanda (1970).
Peoples Video Network (PVN) - Media activists with more than 50 public access shows across the U.S. and hundreds of videos. PVN has sent correspondents to the Lacondon Jungle, Russia, Cuba, Korea, Puerto Rico, South Africa, and Iraq - producing and editing videos about issues the corporate media will not touch.
Persons of Interest - After the 9-11 terrorist attacks, Muslim immigrants were subject to arbitrary arrest, secret detention, and solitary confinement by the U.S. Department of Justice. Through interviews, family photographs, and letters from prison, Director Alison Maclean fashions a compelling and poignant film, allowing the victims to tell their own stories.
Peter Wronski - Canadian writer, filmmaker, artist, investigative researcher, videographer, film and video editor, internet broadband video streaming content specialist, webmaster, historian. Various projects include: Lee Harvey Oswald in Russia, Montsegur and the Cathers, Ambrose Small: Case Closed, Crime and Punishment, Italian Products Onine, Express Gangland, Toronto Eng.
Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune -
Reveals the biography of a conflicted truth seeking troubadour who, with a guitar in hand, stood up for what he believed in and challenged us all to do the same. Unyielding in his political principals and unbending in his artistic vision, Phil Ochs, though branded a traitor by his critics, was above all a fiercely patriotic American. This is his story.
Pink Ribbons, Inc. -
Billions of dollars have been raised through the tireless efforts of women and men devoted to putting an end to breast cancer. Yet, breast cancer rates in North America have risen to 1 in 8. What's going on?
A 2011 National Film Board of Canada documentary about the pink ribbon campaign directed by Léa Pool and produced by Ravida Din.
Political Remix Video - Aims to showcase some of the best, most innovative and inspiring examples of political remix video on the net.
Prelinger Collection - The Library of Congress has acquired the Prelinger Collection, comprising more than 48,000 historical "ephemeral" motion pictures, from its owner, Prelinger Archives of San Francisco. The Prelinger Collection brings together a wide variety of American ephemeral motion pictures—advertising, educational, industrial, amateur and documentary films depicting everyday life, culture and industry in America throughout the 20th century. Although images from the collection have been used in thousands of films, television programs and other productions throughout the last 20 years, the films themselves generally have not been available to researchers and the public. Those wishing to gain access to films for research, pleasure or reuse may view and download 1,500 key titles without charge through the Internet Archive, while those in search of stock footage for production may acquire it through Prelinger's authorized representative, Getty Images.
Psywar: The Real Battlefield Is Your Mind - Explores the evolution of propaganda and public relations in the United States, with an emphasis on the “elitist theory of democracy” and the relationship between war, propaganda and class.
Available online here.
Pull My Daisy (Robert Frank, 1959) - A short film that typifies the Beat Generation. Directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, Daisy was adapted by Jack Kerouac from the third act of a stage play he never finished entitled Beat Generation. Kerouac also provided improvised narration. It starred Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers, Peter Orlovsky, David Amram, Richard Bellamy, Alice Neel, Sally Gross and Pablo Frank, Robert Frank's then-infant son. Based on an incident in the life of Neal Cassady and his wife Carolyn, Daisy tells the story of a railway brakeman whose painter wife invites a respectable bishop over for dinner. However, the brakeman's bohemian friends crash the party, with comic results.
Radical Films - Distribution of controversial political documentary films: Inside Red China (Mao Tze Tung, Chou En Lai), Three Cubans (Castro), No More War (Dr. Linus Pauling), HUAC-UnAmerican Activities Committee, Rosenberg A-Bomb Spy Case, American Narcotics Connection, and more.
Raindance - Dedicated to fostering and promoting independent film in the UK and around the world, Raindance combines Film Training Courses, Rawtalent Productions, Raindance, Raindance East and Raindance Kids Film Festivals, Raindance Film Magazine, and hosts the prestigious British Independent Film Awards.
Recount - Kevin Spacey leads an outstanding cast in this illuminating, entertaining film that pulls back the veil on the headlines to explore the human drama surrounding the most controversial presidential election in U.S. history. Recount chronicles the 2000 United States Presidential Election Bush v. Gore case between Governor of Texas George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore. It begins with the election on November 7 and ends with the Supreme Court ruling which stopped the Florida election recount on December 12. Key points depicted include Gore's retraction of his personal telephone concession to Bush in the early hours of November 8; the decision by the Gore campaign to sue for hand recounts in Democratic strongholds where voting irregularities were alleged, especially in light of the statistical dead heat revealed by the reported machine recount; Republican pressure on Florida’s Secretary of State Katherine Harris in light of her legally mandated responsibilities; the attention focused on the hand recounts by media, parties, and the public; the two major announcements by Florida Supreme Court spokesman Craig Waters extending the deadline for returns in the initial recount (November 21, 2000) and ordering a statewide recount of votes (December 8, 2000), and later overturned by the United States Supreme Court; and finally the adversarial postures of the Supreme Courts of Florida and the United States, as well as the dissenting opinions amongst the justices of the higher court.
RUSCICO (Russian Cinema Council) - A a commercial association of Russian and foreign companies, created for the purpose of realizing a complex program of restoring, remastering, replication and world distribution of a collection of the best Soviet and Russian feature, documentary and animated films, as well as of film versions of the best ballet, opera and theatre productions, in a DVD format.
Saint Misbehavin -
Beginning with Woodstock ‘99, director Michelle Esrick has spent ten years documenting the life of Wavy Gravy. Saint Misbehavin’ journeys from the hills of California to the Himalayan Mountains to reveal the life of this one of a kind servant to humanity. The film blends Wavy’s own words with magical stories from an extraordinary array of fellow travelers both cultural and counter-cultural, revealing the man behind the clown’s grin and the fool’s clothing. In Saint Misbehavin’ Wavy is revealed more than the tie-dyed entertainer and ice-cream flavor namesake that often defines him in the popular imagination. Audiences will come to know the activist, the optimist, and the healer who reaches beyond political, economic, and cultural divisions in his commitment to social change and the alleviation of human suffering.
Salute - Salute is a documentary about Australian sprinter Peter Norman and his public gesture of political solidarity with African American athletes John Carlos and Tommy Smith at the 1968 Olympic Games. Directed by Matt Norman, it was first shown at the 2008 Sydney Film Festival where it won the Best Australian documentary prize.
Saving the Bay -
Narrated by Robert Redford, Saving the Bay explores the history of one of America’s greatest natural resources — San Francisco Bay — with four one-hour episodes tracing the Bay from its geologic origins following the last Ice Age through years of catastrophic exploitation to restoration efforts of today. This spectacular high-definition series takes viewers on an unforgettable journey around the waters of San Francisco Bay and the larger northern California watershed from the Sierra Nevada mountains to the Farallon Islands in the Pacific Ocean.
Seagull Films - The only programming, distribution and promotional company in North America solely specializing in art, independent and innovative cinema from contemporary Russia and the former Soviet Union.
Shocking and Awful: A Grass Roots Response to War in Iraq - Deep Dish TV has collected and produced thirteen programs about the war and the occupation, which are being distributed to communities all over the United States on Free Speech TV and on community access channels. These programs address the implications and consequences of this country's recent military actions. The series also shows how people are mobilizing through art, actions, and international law.
Sicko - Michael Moore's "Sicko" purposefully does not focus on the 50 million or so Americans who don't have health insurance, as scandalous as that is, but on the horror stories of middle-class working folks who believed they were adequately covered.
Silver City - A John Sayles film on greed, corruption, power and deception. Equal parts scathing political lampoon and sun-stunned neo-noir detective story.
Sir No Sir! - In the 1960's an anti-war movement emerged that altered the course of history. This movement didn't take place on college campuses, but in barracks and on aircraft carriers. It flourished in army stockades, navy brigs and in the dingy towns that surround military bases. It penetrated elite military colleges like West Point. And it spread throughout the battlefields of Vietnam. It was a movement no one expected, least of all those in it. Hundreds went to prison and thousands into exile. And by 1971 it had, in the words of one colonel, infested the entire armed services. Yet today few people know about the GI movement against the war in Vietnam. Sir! No Sir! will change all that. The film does four things: 1) Brings to life the history of the GI movement through the stories of those who were part of it; 2) Reveals the explosion of defiance that the movement gave birth to with never-before-seen archival material; 3) Explores the profound impact that movement had on the military and the war itself; and 4) The feature, 90 minute version, also tells the story of how and why the GI movement has been erased from the public memory.
Slacker Uprising - Michael Moore’s tour of colleges in battleground states during the 2004 election, with a goal to encourage 18-29 year olds to vote, and the response it received. It is one of the first major motion pictures to be released as a free and legal download online.
SnagFilms - Watch free movies and documentaries online.
South of the Border -
There’s a revolution underway in South America, but most of the world doesn’t know it. Oliver Stone sets out on a road trip across five countries to explore the social and political movements as well as the mainstream media’s misperception of South America while interviewing seven of its elected presidents. In casual conversations with Presidents Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Cristina Kirchner (Argentina), as well as her husband and ex-President Nėstor Kirchner, Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Raúl Castro (Cuba), Stone gains unprecedented access and sheds new light upon the exciting transformations in the region.
Soundtrack for a Revoultion -
Tells the story of the American civil rights movement through its powerful music -the freedom songs protesters sang on picket lines, in mass meetings, in paddy wagons, and in jail cells as they fought for justice and equality. The film features new performances of the freedom songs by top artists, including John Legend, Joss Stone, Wyclef Jean, and The Roots; riveting archival footage; and interviews with civil rights foot soldiers and leaders, including Congressman John Lewis, Harry Belafonte, Julian Bond, and Ambassador Andrew Young.
Spill, The - PBS Frontline and ProPublica investigation into the trail of problems -- deadly accidents, disastrous spills, countless safety violations -- which long troubled the oil giant, BP. Could the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico have been prevented?
Standard Operating Procedure - Filmmaker Errol Morris (Gates of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line) takes an unflinching look at the Abu Ghraib prison scandal while meditating on the frightening side effects of the "War on Terror" in a thought-provoking documentary from Participant Productions.
Star Wars Dreams - For more than 50 years, the United States has desired a ballistic missile defense system to create a metaphorical "roof over America." Award-winning British documentary filmmaker Leslie Woodhead relates the story of how this hunger for national security arose from a deep faith in high technology, political isolationism and religious fundamentalism. Ironic archive film clips and interviews with writer Frances Fitzgerald, former defense secretary Robert McNamara and the late Dr. Edward Teller aid in telling this history.
Stealing the Fire - Reveals how the most closely guarded secrets of our time are now for sale in a dangerous atomic underground. The filmmakers obtained exclusive, behind-the-scenes access to Karl-Heinz Schaab, a German technician, and his defense team during his recent trial for treason in Munich. Schaab is the first person in the world convicted of atomic espionage in an open trial in the last fifty years. He sold top secret documents stolen from Germany to Saddam Hussein and traveled to Baghdad numerous times to help Iraq in its nuclear bomb quest.
SubCine - Artist-run and artist-owned collective of Latino independent film and video makers. Challenging, experimental, and progressive film and video work. Screened on PBS, in the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and at the Sundance Film Festival, among others venues.
Substream Films -
Representing radically independent, no-budget filmmakers from around the globe.
Subversive Cinema - Cinema outside the norm, those films that other distributors either can't locate or won't take the chance on.
Sweet Crude - Sweet Crude is the story of Nigeria's Niger Delta. Here, citizens of an oil-rich nation struggle to eat in a land that can no longer support them. The Delta's water and soil have been fouled by the same oil production that accounts for more than 80 percent of the country's revenue. Traditional fishing and farming livelihoods are all but gone. Potable drinking water is rare. So is electricity. With pitifully few clinics and schools, curable conditions go untreated and illiteracy is high. Families are broken up, as men die young or take off for the cities to find jobs.
Taxi to the Dark Side - Focuses on the controversial death in custody of an Afghan Jitney taxi driver named Dilawar who was beaten to death by American soldiers while being held in extrajudicial detention at the Bagram Air Base. The film goes on to examine America's policy on torture and interrogation in general, specifically the CIA's use of torture and their research into sensory deprivation.
The Take - In the wake of Argentina's spectacular economic collapse in 2001, Latin America's most prosperous middle class finds itself in a ghost town of abandoned factories and mass unemployment. In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act - the take - has the power to turn the globalization debate on its head. A film by Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein.
There's Something About W - A clear and funny look at the policies of the Bush administration. Featuring Ivins, Krugman, Franken, Maher, Moore, Phillips.
Thirst - Is water a human right or a commoditity to be bought and sold in a global marketplace? A documentary film by Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman.
Triumph of the Will - Banned for more than 30 years, this extraordinary blend of inspired art, direction and cinematography, now available complete and uncut from International Historic Films, generated perhaps the greatest moral and legal controversy in motion-picture history. The subject of the film is the 1934 session of Nazi Party Congress, and mass rallies involving thousands. Though branded a Nazi propaganda film, it is actually the film of a propaganda subject directed by a non-Nazi woman, Leni Riefenstahl, whose appointment by Hitler for this purpose was resented by propagandists in the Nazi hierarchy.
Typecast Films - A distributor & producer of quality independent films that challenge cultural and political assumptions about some of the underrepresented peoples and cultures of the world.
UNREPENTENT: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide - Kevin Annett reveals Canada's darkest secret - the deliberate extermination of indigenous (Native American) peoples and the theft of their land under the guise of religion. This never before told history as seen through the eyes of this former minister who blew the whistle on his own church, after he learned of thousands of murders in its Indian Residential Schools.
Video Activist Network (VAN) - An informal association of activists and politically conscious artists using video to support social, economic and environmental justice campaigns.
Video Data Bank (VDB) - Founded in 1976 at the inception of the media arts movement, the Video Data Bank is the leading resource in the United States for videotapes by and about contemporary artists. The VDB collections feature innovative video work made by artists from an aesthetic, political or personal point of view. The collections include seminal works that, seen as a whole, describe the development of video as an art form originating in the late 1960's and continuing to the present.
visionOntv - Enables you to create and collate video: we create shows to put news in context, and collate the best social change video from around the world. It is a source of in-depth and verifiable news, with fact-checking links to reliable sources.
Voices in Wartime - View the experience of war through powerful images and the words of poets, soldiers, journalists, historians and experts on combat from around the world.
Votergate.tv - Investigative documentary feature film about new computer voting systems, which allow a few powerful corporations to record votes in secret.
Waiting for Fidel -
This feature-length documentary from 1974 takes viewers inside Fidel Castro's Cuba. A movie-making threesome hope that Fidel himself will star in their film. The unusual crew consists of former Newfoundland premier Joseph Smallwood, radio and television owner Geoff Stirling and NFB film director Michael Rubbo. What happens while the crew awaits its star shows a good deal of the new Cuba, and also of the three Canadians who chose to film the island.
War, Inc. - Recreating his role as a hitman, John Cusak gives a hilarious performance in War, Inc., a political satire set in Turaqistan, a country occupied by an American private corporation run by a former U.S. Vice President (Dan Ackroyd). In an effort to monopolize the opportunities the war-torn nation offers, the corporation's CEO hires Hauser to kill a middle Eastern oil minister. Struggling with his own growing demons, the assassin must pose as the corporation's Trade Show Producer, while maintaining his cover by organizing the high-profile wedding of Yonica Babyyeah (Hilary Duff), an outrageous Central Asian pop star, and keeping a sexy left-wing reporter (Marisa Tomei) in check.
War Made Easy - Reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, the film exhumes remarkable archival footage of official distortion and exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations. War Made Easy gives special attention to parallels between the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq. Guided by media critic Norman Solomon's meticulous research and tough-minded analysis, the film presents disturbing examples of propaganda and media complicity from the present alongside rare footage of political leaders and leading journalists from the past, including Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, dissident Senator Wayne Morse, and news correspondents Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer.
War You Don't See, The -
Focusing on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel, John Pilger explains how the practice of “embedding” journalists within the military not only controls what they’re allowed to see but also how they’re allowed to report it which would explain among other things why Basra was reported to have fallen 17 times before it actually did and how the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue was a made-for-TV moment.
Also online here.
Whispered Media - A collective that promotes the use of video, and other media tools, in progressive grassroots movements.
Who Bombed Judi Bari? -
A film about the 1990 Oakland car bombing of Earth First! organizers Judi Bariand Darryl Cherney and the FBI's and Oakland Police Department's attempt to frame them.
Wide Angle (PBS) - A weekly PBS TV series of one-hour international documentaries, hosted by Mishal Husain.
Wide Open Exposure - A production team based in Montreal made up of social justice organizers and media activists. Works with educators to bring into the classrooms critical independent film and video on issues of social and economic justice.
Who Killed the Electric Car? - Detroit automakers have spent millions attempting to unplug California's effort to put electric cars on the road. And so far, Detroit's succeeding.
Wide Open Exposure Productions - A documentary production team based in Montreal made up of social justice organizers and media activists.
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe -
A documentary film about the late civil rights attorney William Kunstler directed by daughters Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler premiering at the 25th Sundance Film Festival in January 2009. William Kunstler was one of the most famous lawyers of the 20th century who's clients included Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Phillip and Daniel Berrigan, Abbie Hoffman, H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Filiberto Ojeda Ríos and Leonard Peltier.
Winter Soldier - In February 1971, one month after the revelations of the My Lai massacre, an astonishing public inquiry into war crimes committed by American forces in Vietnam was held at a Howard Johnson motel in Detroit. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War organized this event called the Winter Soldier Investigation. More than 125 veterans spoke of atrocities they had witnessed and committed. Though the event was attended by press and television news crews, almost nothing was reported to the American public. Yet, this unprecedented forum marked a turning point in the anti-war movement.
Wobblies, The -
An excellent documentary on the I.W.W. made by PBS. Loaded with tons of interesting interviews and archival footage. Also see article on same at Film and History.
Zeitgeist Films -
A New York-based distribution company founded in 1988 which acquires and distributes independent films from the U.S. and around the world.
Zeitgeist - The Movie - Zeitgeist, The Movie focuses on suppressed historical and modern information about currently dominant social institutions, while also exploring what could be in store for humanity if the power structures at large continue their patterns of self-interest, corruption, and consolidation. Zeitgeist: Addendum attempts to locate the root causes of this pervasive social corruption, while offering a solution.
Zoetrope Studios - A complete motion picture production studio on the Web. It offers powerful collaborative tools for writers, directors, producers and other film artists. Also provides a number of film-related discussion sections and chat rooms.
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Tuesday, May 15, 2012 1:09 PM
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