Joan Churchill
Filmmaker Joan Churchill, who is being honored this year with DOC NYC’s Lifetime Achievement Award, collaborates with Alan Barker on this personal portrait of legendary filmmakers Haskell Wexler, D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus. Over a rollicking evening, they discuss filmmaking and what it means to be an artist, interwoven with reflections on Wexler’s work as an activist.
During the chaotic final weeks of the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese Army closes in on Saigon as the panicked South Vietnamese people desperately attempt to escape. On the ground, American soldiers and diplomats confront a moral quandary: whether to obey White House orders to evacuate only U.S. citizens.
A journey that takes the viewers across the icy mid-winter snows of Alaska to meet her school friends, family, and Republican colleagues, to try and discover the real Sarah Palin.
Miller's Tale is a personal journey into the life of playwright and actor Jason Miller and his relationship with his hometown, Scranton, Pennsylvania. Best known for his performance as Father Karras in The Exorcist, Miller experienced a brief but brilliant period of national acclaim, then curiously abandoned Hollywood to return to his hometown. After Miller died in a local bar Scranton, at the age of 62, filmmaker and fellow Scranton native Rebecca Marshall Ferris set out with her camera to find out why did this exceptional playwright, who achieved such phenomenal early success, never write a Broadway play again? And what happened to Miller in Hollywood that would make him run away from a promising acting career?
From cinema-verite; pioneers Albert Maysles and Joan Churchill to maverick movie makers like Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and Nick Broomfield, the world's best documentarians reflect upon the unique power of their genre. Capturing Reality explores the complex creative process that goes into making non-fiction films. Deftly charting the documentarian's journey, it poses the question: can film capture reality?
An investigation of the massacre of 24 men, women and children in Haditha, Iraq allegedly shot by 4 U.S. Marines in retaliation for the death of a U.S. Marine killed by a roadside bomb. The movie follows the story of the Marines of Kilo Company, an Iraqi family, and the insurgents who plant the roadside bomb.
Documentary on the civil rights activist, Viola Liuzzo, who was murdered in 1965 as she campaigned for black suffrage in Selma, Alabama, and its effect on her family.
British documentarian Nick Broomfield creates a follow-up piece to his 1992 documentary of the serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a highway prostitute who was convicted of killing six men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. Interviewing an increasingly mentally unstable Wuornos, Broomfield captures the distorted mind of a murderer whom the state of Florida deems of sound mind -- and therefore fit to execute. Throughout the film, Broomfield includes footage of his testimony at Wuornos' trial.
Anna Deavere Smith transforms herself into scores of individuals -- using only their words and duplicating their speech patterns, mannerisms, dress, and attitudes -- in a mosaic set in the violent aftermath of the 1992 Rodney King trial and verdict. These verbatim portrayals bring together adversaries, victims, eyewitnesses, and observers who have never stood within the same four walls, let alone spoken to each other. In her signature performance style, Smith embodies and gives voice to scores of real-life "characters" -- from LAPD Police Chief Daryl Gates to a gang member, from Korean store owners to a white juror, from Reginald Denny to Congresswoman Maxine Waters -- black, white, Asian, Latino. Because she is able to speak the words and convey the deeply held sentiments of so many different people, Smith enables her audience members to hear what they might otherwise discount.
After rocker Kurt Cobain's death, ruled a suicide, a film crew arrives in Seattle to make a documentary. Director Nick Broomfield talks to lots of people. Portraits emerge: a shy, slight Kurt, weary of touring, embarrassed by fame, hooked on heroin; an out-going Courtney, dramatic, controlling, moving from groupie to star.
Plot details not available.
A film about the noted American linguist/political dissident and his warning about corporate media's role in modern propaganda.
Nick Bloomfield's sequel documentary reacquaints us with the lives of the children and officers and examines the scars left by the stark events of Part I.
In the 20th century, no artistic medium in North America with so much potential for creative expression has had a more turbulent history plagued with less respect than comic books. Through animated montages, readings and interviews, this film guides us through the history of the medium from the late 1930s and 1940s with the first explosion of popularity with the superheroes created by great talents like Jack Kirby and hitting its first artistic zenith with Will Eisner's "Spirit". It then shifts to the post war comics world with the rising popularity of crime and horror comics, especially those published by EC Comics under the editorshiop of William B. Gaines until it came crashing down the rise of censorship with the imposition of the Comics Code. In its wake of the devastation of the medium's creative freedom, we also explore EC's defiant survival with the creation of the singular "Mad Magazine" by Harvey Kurtzman.
Backstage record of how Lily Tomlin, Jane Wagner and their associates put together "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe," Miss Tomlin's one-woman Broadway play.
An intimate, hands on encounter with a maximum security juvenile correctional facility in Chino California.
This 1979 documentary depicts the daily life of gangs in the South Bronx. It deals primarily with two African American and Puerto Rican gangs known as the "Savage Skulls" and the "Savage Nomads".
A fictional-documentary depicting Denmark in deep crisis: the country is hit by general strike, during the holding of a NATO summit in Copenhagen. Meanwhile, a minister is kidnapped by extremists and state power cracks down against the politically active leftists. Made with a cast of 192 non-professional actors, the film intervenes polemically into a period of intense debates about the media, worker militancy, terrorism and the anti-nuclear movement.
Juvenile Liaison is about the day-to-day assignments of the juvenile liaison section of the Blackburn, Lancashire police force. The documentary provides a captivating snapshot of how juvenile offenders were dealt with in the '70s.
In this fictional documentary, U.S. prisons are at capacity, and President Nixon declares a state of emergency. All new prisoners, most of whom are connected to the antiwar movement, are now given the choice of jail time or spending three days in Punishment Park, where they will be hunted for sport by federal authorities. The prisoners invariably choose the latter option, but learn that, between the desert heat and the brutal police officers, their chances of survival are slim.
