Documentaries
88 Episodes
Meet some of life’s most colorful characters in these true stories.
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Strangers
Episode 1
Directed by Rajee Samarasinghe • 2022 • Sri Lanka, United States
“This footage was shot shortly after the civil war in Sri Lanka on the occasion of my mother’s long-delayed reunion with Kamala, the aunt she lived with as a child. Kamala was living a life of solitude at this point and has now sin...
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1:25:31Episode 2
LYNCH (one)
Episode 2
Directed by blackANDwhite • 2007 • United States
Starring David LynchThis 2007 feature-length film by blackANDwhite, the makers of DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE, was made over the course of two years during the filming of INLAND EMPIRE.
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We Knew How Beautiful They Were, These Islands
Episode 3
Directed by Younes Ben Slimane • 2021 • France, Tunisia
At night, a stranger digs graves, buries the dead, and watches over them. In the dark, he reveals the personal belongings of the deceased to us. These objects, separated from their owners, bear their scars and story, while others melt until...
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36:17Episode 4
Three Songs Without Z.
Episode 4
Directed by Karthik Pandian and Andros Zins-Browne • 2022 • United States
Starring Zakaria AlmoutlakA portrait of Zakaria Almoutlak, a sculptor and media activist from Homs, Syria, who fled the civil war in 2015.
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1:35:19Episode 5
What Happened to This City?
Episode 5
Directed by Deepa Dhanraj • 1986 • India
This pioneering work takes communal violence between Hindus and Muslims in 1984 as its starting point, gaining immense political force through its complexity. The film’s historical perspective is provided by a thorough commentary, illuminating the ways in...
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27:14Episode 6
Tobacco Embers
Episode 6
Directed by Yugantar • 1982 • India
In the spirit of mobilizing for the leftist labor and women’s movements, the Yugantar collective spent four months with female tobacco factory workers in Nipani, Karnataka, listening to their accounts of exploitative working conditions, discussing strategies f...
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1:27:51Episode 7
Loving Highsmith
Episode 7
Directed by Eva Vitija • 2022 • Germany, Switzerland
Starring Gwendoline Christie, Annina Butterworth, Marijane MeakerThe life and work of celebrated American writer Patricia Highsmith are revealed through her diaries and notebooks and the intimate reflections of her lovers, friends, and family...
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51:57Episode 8
Something Like a War
Episode 8
Directed by Deepa Dhanraj • 1991 • India
SOMETHING LIKE A WAR is a chilling examination of India’s family-planning program from the point of view of the women who are its primary targets. It traces the history of the family-planning program and exposes the cynicism, corruption, and brutality of ...
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1:26:30Episode 9
Invoking Justice
Episode 9
Directed by Deepa Dhanraj • 2011 • India
In Southern India, many family disputes are settled by Jamaats—all-male bodies that apply Islamic Sharia law to cases without allowing women to be present, even to defend themselves. Recognizing this fundamental inequity, a group of women in 2004 establis...
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46:50Episode 10
Love in the Time of AIDS
Episode 10
Directed by Deepa Dhanraj • 2006 • India
LOVE IN THE TIME OF AIDS follows a group of kothis (gay men who identify as femme) in Belgaum, a small city in Karnataka, and traces their stories of love, desire, and ostracization, as well as their work with an NGO that promotes safe-sex practices.
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27:04Episode 11
Maid Servant
Episode 11
Directed by Yugantar • 1981 • India
This portrait of female solidarity in action exposes the oppressive working conditions of hundreds of maidservants in Pune, India, and reveals how the women came together to form an organization to fight for their rights.
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Mother, I Am Suffocating. This Is My Last Film About You.
Episode 12
Directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese • 2019 • Germany, Lesotho
Part poetic essay, part documentary, this rapturous film by director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese (THIS IS NOT A BURIAL, IT’S A RESURRECTION) analyzes the complexities of his relationship to his native country of Lesotho from his new hom...
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27:40Episode 13
Is This Just a Story?
Episode 13
Directed by Yugantar • 1983 • India
The Yugantar Film Collective’s most successful and widely seen film sheds light on the issue of domestic violence in Indian society. Created in collaboration with the feminist activist collective Stree Shakhti Sanghatana, this short, improvised narrative film ...
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Sudesha
Episode 14
Directed by Yugantar • 1983 • India
SUDESHA tells the story of a woman who is a village activist in the Chipko Forest Conservation Movement in the foothills of the Himalayas. In this area, people depend entirely on the forest for their daily needs of firewood, food, and water. But the forests ha...
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1:20:55Episode 15
The Village Detective: A Song Cycle
Episode 15
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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1:27:32Episode 16
ABC Africa
Episode 16
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 2001 • Iran
Starring Abbas Kiarostami, Seifollah SamadianIn 2000, Abbas Kiarostami traveled to Africa at the request of the United Nations to document a humanitarian crisis unfolding in Uganda, where 1.5 million children had been orphaned by civil war and AIDS. Wo...
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2:36:39Episode 17
Celluloid Man
Episode 17
Directed by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur • 2012 • India
Starring P. K. Nair, Krzysztof Zanussi, Lester James PeriesAn engaging, heartfelt look at one man’s battle to preserve his nation’s cinematic heritage, CELLULOID MAN is an intimate portrait of legendary Indian archivist P. K. Nair, who founde...
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1:34:43Episode 18
Marx Can Wait
Episode 18
Directed by Marco Bellocchio • 2021 • Italy
Starring Marco Bellocchio, Alberto Bellocchio, Pier Giorgio Bellocchio1968 was the year Camillo died. Nearly fifty years after the death of his twin brother at the age of twenty-nine, acclaimed director Marco Bellocchio (FISTS IN THE POCKET) gathers h...
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Cane Fire
Episode 19
Directed by Anthony Banua-Simon • 2020 • United States
The Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi is seen by many as a paradise of leisure and pristine natural beauty, but these escapist fantasies obscure the colonial displacement, hyperexploitation of workers, and destructive environmental extraction that h...
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51:16Episode 20
Gramercy Stories
Episode 20
Directed by Joyce Chopra • 2008 • United States
GRAMERCY STORIES is an inspiring look inside a unique residence in Manhattan that provides a safe home for twenty-five gay and transgender teenagers who have experienced violence at home and on the streets. Told from their candid, often witty persp...
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7:27:36Episode 21
CzechMate: In Search of Jiří Menzel
Episode 21
Directed by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur • 2018 • India
Starring Jiří Menzel, Antonín Máša, Dušan HanákThis epic, indispensable work of cinema scholarship from archivist and filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur is a remarkable, in-depth portrait of director Jiří Menzel (CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS) and ...
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1:56:00Episode 22
My Architect
Episode 22
Directed by Nathaniel Kahn • 2003 • United States
Louis I. Kahn, who died in 1974, was one of the greatest architects of the twentieth century, but he left behind an illegitimate son, Nathaniel, and a personal life of secrets and broken promises. MY ARCHITECT takes us on a heartbreaking yet humo...
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1:32:47Episode 23
Milford Graves Full Mantis
Episode 23
Directed by Jake Meginsky with Neil Young • 2018 • United States
Starring Milford GravesThis portrait of renowned percussionist and founding pioneer of avant-garde jazz Milford Graves finds him exploring his kaleidoscopic creativity and relentless curiosity. The film draws the viewer through th...
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34:26Episode 24
The Cry of Jazz
Episode 24
Directed by Edward Bland • 1959 • United States
Starring George Waller, Dorothea Horton, Melinda DillonFeaturing music by Sun Ra and his Arkestra, this landmark semi-documentary explores—via a heated conversation between a group of Black and white jazz aficionados—the relationship between jazz ...