A. K.

An intimate chronicle of the shooting of Ran (1985), a film directed by the legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa.

Chronos

Carefully picked scenes of nature and civilization are viewed at high speed using time-lapse cinematography in an effort to demonstrate the history of various regions.

Tokyo-Ga

German director Wim Wenders tries to explore the Tokyo that was depicted in the films of Yasujiro Ozu and finds a very different city.

Shoah

Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.

Faces of Death III

The third installment of the infamous "is it real or fake?" mondo series sets its sights primarily on serial killers, with lengthy reenactments of police investigations of bodies being found in dumpsters, and a staged courtroom sequence.

Night of 100 Stars II

This special is the second "Night of 100 Stars" to benefit The Actors Fund of America. Edited from a seven-hour live entertainment marathon that was taped February 17, 1985, at New York's Radio City Music Hall, this sequel to the 1982 "Night of 100 Stars" special features 288 celebrities.

We Are the World: The Story Behind the Song

We Are the World: The Story Behind the Song is a documentary which examines how the song was written, how producer Quincy Jones and songwriters Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie persuaded some of the most popular performers in America to donate their services to the project, and offers a behind-the-scenes look at the marathon recording session that produced the single.

That’s Dancing!

A documentary film about dancing on the screen, from it's orgins after the invention of the movie camera, over the movie musical from the late 20s, 30s, 40s 50s and 60s up to the break dance and the music videos from the 80s.

Streetwise

This documentary about teenagers living on the streets in Seattle began as a magazine article. The film follows nine teenagers who discuss how they live by panhandling, prostitution, and petty theft.

Twenty Years Later

Eduardo Coutinho was filming a movie with the same name in the Northeast of Brazil, in 1964, when there came the military coup. He had to interrupt the project, and came back to it in 1981, looking for the same places and people, showing what had ocurred since then, and trying to gather a family whose patriarch, a political leader fighting for rights of country people, had been murdered.

28 Up

Just two years away from turning 30, participants in Michael Apted's documentary series are facing serious questions of identity and purpose, wondering whether they've found their place in the world.

Stop Making Sense

A concert film documenting Talking Heads at the height of their popularity, on tour for their 1983 album "Speaking in Tongues." The band takes the stage one by one and is joined by a cadre of guest musicians for a career-spanning and cinematic performance that features creative choreography and visuals.

Terror in the Aisles

A non-stop roller coaster ride through the scariest moments of the greatest terror films of all time.

The Times of Harvey Milk

Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world.

Os Comprometidos – Actas de um processo de descolonização

The film deals with the judgment of the so-called "compromised", who integrated the colonial apparatus. At Josina Machel school, in an amphitheater with a full audience and balcony, there is a stage where Samora Machel and the members of the Frelimo political committee are located. He records Samora, an impeccable political actor, sometimes histrionic, in the role that he is attributed as the animator of the scene in the trial.

Ennenstadt Europa – The Making of The Element of Crime

Behind the scenes documentary of Lars von Trier's The Element of Crime (1984).

Style Wars

Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant's PBS documentary tracks the rise and fall of subway graffiti in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Educating Julie

Julie is an English student assigned to write a paper about "nudity in the 80s". A bit overwhelmed at first she takes on the project by visiting a nudist camping with her boyfriend. But while she learns about nudity and nudism, her boyfriend struggles to keep up.

Talking Heads: The Name of this Programme is Once In A Lifetime

In 1984, David Byrne put together a TV special on the Talking Heads for U.K. TV’s Channel 4, a 68-minute mix of live material filmed at Wembley Arena, interviews with the band, TV news clips, commercials and other various bits of found footage and sound.

Bruce Lee: The Legend

The Official Golden Harvest tribute to the Master of the Martial Arts Film, Bruce Lee.

From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga

From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga is a 1983 television documentary special that originally aired on PBS. It is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the original Star Wars trilogy, with particular emphasis on the final film, Return of the Jedi. Narrated by actor Mark Hamill, the documentary was written by Richard Schickel who had written the previous television documentaries The Making of Star Wars (1977) and SP FX: The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

Richard Pryor: Here and Now

One of comedian Richard Pryor's later stand-up performances. As foul-mouthed as ever, Pryor touches on most of the same topics as in his previous live shows.

The Cousteau Collection N°17-2 | Amazon: The Enchanted River

Koyaanisqatsi

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.

The Return of a Library Lover

Ruiz, rediscovering the things of his past in Chile ten years after the Coup, regards them now with the eyes of another world. This other world is cinema, the mechanical gaze of a Super 8 camera. This eye sees very deeply, even beyond reality and brute memory.

Sans Soleil

A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.

This Is Kung Fu

Documentary featuring scenes of hand-to-hand and combat with weapons.

Burden of Dreams

The Amazon rain forest, 1979. The crew of Fitzcarraldo (1982), a film directed by German director Werner Herzog, soon finds itself with problems related to casting, tribal struggles and accidents, among many other setbacks; but nothing compared to dragging a huge steamboat up a mountain, while Herzog embraces the path of a certain madness to make his vision come true.

Room 666

During the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wenders asks a number of global film directors to, one at a time, go into a hotel room, turn on the camera and answer a simple question: "What is the future of cinema?"

The Atomic Cafe

A disturbing collection of 1940s and 1950s United States government-issued propaganda films designed to reassure Americans that the atomic bomb was not a threat to their safety.