Directed by Rob Nilsson and John Hanson • 1980 • United States

A strikingly shot work of documentary as historical corrective, John Hanson and Rob Nilsson’s PRAIRIE TRILOGY chronicles the story of early North Dakota socialists through a portrait of Henry Martinson, a ninety-seven-year-old ex-org...

Directed by Nancy Savoca • 1982 • United States
Starring Marianne Leone Cooper, Jo Deodato Clark, Carla Wynn

With her very first short film, made while she was a student at NYU, director Nancy Savoca explores what would become a hallmark of her work—the push-pull between generations—through an a...

Directed by James Gist and Eloyce Gist • 1933 • United States

In this surreal filmed pageant—presided over by a horrific skull-faced jailer in a nun’s habit—a woman faces the throne of judgment and must account her iniquities to earn God’s mercy.

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1984 • West Germany, Australia
Starring Bruce Spence, Wandjuk Marika, Roy Marika

Werner Herzog heads to the Australian outback for this typically idiosyncratic variation on one of his pet themes: the uneasy relationship between modern man and nature. When an Austra...

Directed by Oscar Micheaux • 1920 • United States
Starring Iris Hall, Walker Thompson, Lawrence Chenault

THE SYMBOL OF THE UNCONQUERED is a response, of sorts, to D. W. Griffith’s THE BIRTH OF A NATION. In Oscar Micheaux’s rendition, the Klan (here renamed the Knights of the Black Cross) is depi...

Directed by Oscar Micheaux • 1932 • United States
Starring Lawrence Chenault, Willor Lee Guilford, Lorenzo Tucker

Resisting the stagebound atmosphere of THE EXILE, Oscar Micheaux found ways to shoot a talking picture on location, without cumbersome and expensive audio recording equipment. He did...

Directed by Christoper Radcliff • 2025 • Philippines, United States, Vietnam

In 1975, soon after the end of the Vietnam War, Hoa Thị Lê Chế and Huệ Nguyên Chế fled to the Philippines in a makeshift boat. There, they were held in a refugee camp and, along with nearly one hundred other refugees, w...

Directed by Adoor Gopalakrishnan • 1987 • India
Starring Ashokan, Mammootty, Shobana

A haunting psychological puzzle that continues to fascinate and unsettle, MONOLOGUE is one of director Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s most experimental and enigmatic works. Through an audacious, two-part narrative struc...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1971 • West Germany

Considered by many to be the quintessential masterpiece among Werner Herzog’s early works, FATA MORGANA can be described as an expressionist documentary. Consisting of three parts, the film is an absorbing collection of images shot in an around the...

Directed by Zora Neale Hurston • 1928 • United States

While a student of anthropologist Franz Boas at Columbia University, Zora Neale Hurston embarked on a journey through Alabama and Florida, using a 16 mm camera to capture life among the rural African American communities she found there. Hurs...

Directed by Richard C. Kahn • 1939 • United States
Starring Herb Jeffries, Lucius Brooks, Artie Young

A Hollywood-style western with a black cast, THE BRONZE BUCKAROO stars Herb Jeffries as singing cowboy Bob Blake, a smooth, brave, and honorable hero who is assisted by his comic sidekick Dusty,...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1982 • West Germany
Starring Klaus Kinski, Claudia Cardinale

Werner Herzog’s infamously arduous productions were already legendary when he outdid himself with FITZCARRALDO, a feat as utterly quixotic and improbable as its protagonist. Klaus Kinski stars as the wild-ey...

Directed by Kavery Dutta Kaul • 1988 • United States

This dynamic documentary tells the vibrant story of the West Indian musical traditions of calypso and soca through the eyes of two legendary artists: Grandmaster Lord Kitchener, who made the music a hit in London, and Calypso Rose, the first w...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1974 • West Germany
Starring Bruno S., Walter Ladengast, Brgitte Mira

Based on real events, THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR HAUSER tells the story of a young man imprisoned in a basement dungeon for the first seventeen years of his life, devoid of human contact, until his captor...

Directed by John Huston • 1987 • United Kingdom, Ireland
Starring Anjelica Huston, Donal McCann, Helena Carroll

The final film directed by John Huston—completed by the ailing director just months before his death and released posthumously—is a triumphant farewell from an artist in total command ...

Directed by Billy Luther • 2007 • United States

For more than fifty years, Navajo people have gathered in the capital of the Navajo Nation to witness the Miss Navajo Nation beauty pageant. This illuminating documentary traces twenty-one-year-old Crystal Frazier’s quest to win the Miss Navajo cro...

Directed by Woodrow Hunt • 2020 • United States

A familiar route is remapped to contemplate and remember the complicated past of Indigenous labor in the Pacific Northwest.

Directed by Fritz Lang • United States • 1953
Starring Anne Baxter, Richard Conte, Ann Sothern

Noir master Fritz Lang brings his hard-hitting style to this gripping thriller based on a short story by LAURA writer Vera Caspary. When LA switchboard operator Norah Larkin (Anne Baxter) is given the...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1992 • Germany

“The collapse of the stellar universe will occur–like creation–in grandiose splendor,” announces the quote (attributed to Blaise Pascal, but actually invented by the director) that begins Werner Herzog’s terrifyingly beautiful rumination on the ravaged ...

Directed by Rob Nilsson and John Hanson • 1980 • United States

A strikingly shot work of documentary as historical corrective, John Hanson and Rob Nilsson’s PRAIRIE TRILOGY chronicles the story of early North Dakota socialists through a portrait of Henry Martinson, a ninety-seven-year-old ex-org...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1985 • West Germany

Werner Herzog’s career-long concern with individuals who test the limits of human achievement receives one of its most extraordinary expressions in this portrait of mountaineers Hans Kammerlander and Reinhold Messner. Following the pair as they emb...

Directed by Roy Calnek • 1926 • United States
Starring Charles S. Gilpin, Lawrence Chenault, Harry Henderson

Based on the hugely popular 1854 temperance novel by Timothy Shay Arthur (and William W. Pratt’s 1858 stage adaptation), Roy Calnek’s TEN NIGHTS IN A BAR ROOM boasts a masterful performan...

Directed by Edward Dmytryk • 1947 • United States
Starring Robert Young, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan

This gritty film noir made history as the first Hollywood film to confront antisemitism. Three of the era’s most celebrated Roberts—Young, Mitchum, and Ryan—star in the hard-hitting tale of a pol...

Directed by Howard Hawks • 1946 • United States
Starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely

Humphrey Bogart steps into the legendary gumshoes of Raymond Chandler’s famed detective Philip Marlowe in what is widely regarded as the finest screen adaptation of the writer’s work. The famous...