Directed by Pacho Velez and Sierra Pettengill • 2017 • United States
Starring Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Walters
Composed entirely of archival footage, The Reagan Show is an ingenious work of media analysis about the original performer-president’s role of a lifetime. Teasing apart the spectacle at the heart of finger-on-the-button global diplomacy, the film follows Ronald Reagan’s rivalry with charismatic Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, tracing how the communicator in chief used his public-relations chops to overcome Soviet mistrust, the objections of a skeptical press corps, and the looming threat of World War III. Streaked with wit and political irony, and told solely through 1980s network news and videotapes created by the Reagan administration itself, this unique documentary dissects Reagan’s made-for-TV approach to politics as he faced down the United States’ greatest rival.
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The Village Detective: A Song Cycle
Directed by Bill Morrison • 2021 • United States
Starring Gísli Fannar Gylfason, Erlendur Sveinsson, Peter BagrovDuring the summer of 2016, a fishing boat off the shores of Iceland made a most curious catch: four reels of 35 mm film, seemingly of Soviet provenance. Unlike the film find explored...
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The American Sector
Directed by Courtney Stephens and Pacho Velez • 2020 • United States
For eighteen months, Courtney Stephens and Pacho Velez traveled the U.S. to document sections of the Berlin Wall that are on display in over seventy-five locations, ranging from the serious (Fort Benning) to the bizarre (Main S...
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American Dream
Directed by Barbara Kopple, Cathy Caplan, Thomas Haneke, Lawrence Silk • 1990 • United States
Fourteen years after her watershed documentary HARLAN COUNTY, USA, cinema-verité pioneer Barbara Kopple returned to the subject of union organizing in this eye-opening look at class struggle and solidar...
