Documentary Film
The director of The Rest I Make Up reflects on the life and companionship of María Irene Fornés.
The two filmmakers probe the ethics and surprise of documentary.
Films that combine documentary and poetics.
Huddled in front of a suite of bulletin boards filled with military charts, folding his fingers over papers as if they were slices of pizza, licking his lips, jowls quivering—this is Senator Joseph McCarthy as he appeared live on ABC in 1954 as part of the 36-day, 188-hour televised extravaganza that would come to be known as the Army-McCarthy Hearings. He’s berating a colonel, insinuating that “phony charts” have been submitted to the floor of the Senate. “The television audience,” he yells, “they are the jury in this case.”
In the molten golden hour, a row of Santhal tribeswomen dance in an open field. Arms interlocked, they bounce as one centipedal body to the beat of a dhol, cymbals, and a purring bamboo flute. The musicians wear flowers in their turbans, while the dancers don expressionless metallic masks that impart an otherworldly timbre to the pastoral scene.
In the aftermath of Eric Garner’s murder, a Black protester shouts at a group of cops, “Black officers, Puerto Rican officers, nobody likes you! Nobody. You are hated. You’re hated in New York and throughout the United States. This isn’t ignorance. This is anger, officer!” This scene from Stephen Maing’s character-driven documentary Crime + Punishment is another testimony to the rampant racial inequity in the United States.
Examining the politics of representation.
An experimental documentary on border crossing, less about that place than what it represents.
Featuring selections by Jaime Manrique, David Grubbs, Molly Surno, Lynn Melnick, Lucio Pozzi, and more.
A story of immigration and integration.
“We never thought, ‘We have to give them dignity.’ We thought we have to give them empathy.”
In the early 1960s, Eduardo Coutinho began shooting a film about the murder of Brazilian trade unionist João Pedro Teixeira.
Cinema Novo, Tropicália, and the tradition of Brazilian literary modernism
A documentary on the brutality behind India’s textile factories.
Radical feminist films from the legendary choreographer, artist, and dancer
The filmmaker speaks about his self-portrait as a young poet
Over the course of six years, filmmaker Laura Poitras had unparalleled access to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his closest confidantes. What she captured became Risk, the follow-up to her Oscar-winning Edward Snowden exposé, Citizenfour (2014).
Risk, a new documentary by Laura Poitras, follows the Wikileaks founder as public perception sours.
“I don’t make films for the audience, I make them for the subjects, and I try to position those subjects and the camera so that there’s a element of generosity between the two.”
Eduardo Williams’s debut feature takes us around the world on an ethnographic tour of labor, leisure, and logins.