1. Black Diamond (Black Diamond)
(Black Diamond)
It has an average vote of 8 on TMDB.
2. Récréations (Récréations)
As French kindergarteners pour forth for recess, play takes on epic proportions. In every corner, some miniature drama is unfolding. Violence, love, jealousy, treachery are all here! This is human society in the making.
It has an average vote of 6.5 on TMDB.
3. Gene Boy Came Home
A portrait of Eugene "Gene Boy" Benedict from Odanak Indian Reserve near Montreal, Quebec. At 17, adrift and beginning to lose his way, he accepted a dare and enlisted in the US Marines – and was sent to the frontlines of the Vietnam War. This film is the account of his two years of service and his long journey back to Odanak afterwards.
4. One Day in Sarajevo (Jedan dan u Sarajevu)
Causes and consequences of the assassination that happened in Sarajevo a hundred years ago still continue to reverberate in Europe. On June 28, 1914 Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire Franz Ferdinand sparking World War I that marked the start of the 20th century. As Sarajevo commemorated the centennial of the assassination, different people had different interpretations of what happened in the city a century ago and different emotions about it. ONE DAY IN SARAJEVO tells about various perspectives of the anniversary in Sarajevo combining and contrasting footage filmed by citizens of Sarajevo with scenes from feature films about the assassination by directors from Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the United Kingdom
5. Kombit (Kombit)
(Kombit)
6. Rebels (Pøbler)
European statistics shows that every 6th youth between 18 and 24 drops out of school before finishing their upper high school education. Meet four Norwegians who have become high school dropouts.
It has an average vote of 8 on TMDB.
7. Paul Taylor Creative Domain
Among the most acclaimed choreographers in American history, Paul Taylor has been reinventing the roles of music, movement and theme in dance for nearly 60 years. In that time he has offered only glimpses into his creative process. Creative Domain is a rare in-depth documentation of how he creates a single dance. Through the lens of award-winning cinematographer Tom Hurwitz, we see Paul’s non-verbal communication with his dancers. Below the surface of this dance and the many works that came before, is Paul’s power of acute observation, revealing a side to his choreography that is strangely prophetic. The dominant voice is Paul’s, between the guarded and unguarded moments we see him with new eyes and new understanding.
8. Joan Crawford: Always the Star
Glamorous and hugely popular Joan Crawford raised herself from brutal poverty to Academy Award-winning stardom by guts, determination and hard work. During her 50-year career, she made over 80 films. But her obsessive perfectionism led to the later caricature of coat-hanger-wielding harridan that even the adoration of fans could not counter. Still, she has endured as one of the most popular icons of the movies, an early role model to a million young women who aspired to her image of stylish magnetic power and unquestioned independence.
It has an average vote of 7.5 on TMDB.
9. 25 April
A dramatization of the events at Gallipoli using the letters of the soldiers who were there.
It has an average vote of 6.6 on TMDB.
10. A Flickering Truth
Afghanistan's film history might well have have been lost forever, if not for the brave custodians who risked their lives to conceal films from the Taliban regime. This is a chronicle of their attempts to preserve and restore thousands of hours of film.
It has an average vote of 5 on TMDB.
11. Don't Blink - Robert Frank
The life and work of Robert Frank—as a photographer and a filmmaker—are so intertwined that they're one in the same, and the vast amount of territory he's covered, from The Americans in 1958 up to the present, is intimately registered in his now-formidable body of artistic gestures. From the early '90s on, Frank has been making his films and videos with the brilliant editor Laura Israel, who has helped him to keep things homemade and preserve the illuminating spark of first contact between camera and people/places. Don't Blink is Israel's like-minded portrait of her friend and collaborator, a lively rummage sale of images and sounds and recollected passages and unfathomable losses and friendships that leaves us a fast and fleeting imprint of the life of the Swiss-born man who reinvented himself the American way, and is still standing on ground of his own making at the age of 90.
It has an average vote of 7 on TMDB.
12. Horizons
By following the career of two dancers of the National Cuban Ballet, Amanda, young ballerina and Viengsay Valdez, star dancer, Horizons revisits the extraordinary destiny of Alicia Alonso, prima ballerina assoluta, with a steel temperament who is now in the twilight of her life.
It has an average vote of 6.3 on TMDB.
13. Las Marthas
Marthas is a PBS documentary about an extraordinary rite of passage in Laredo, Texas where teenage Mexican-American girls debut in a grand Colonial Ball dressed as American revolutionaries - a tradition that goes back 114 years.
It has an average vote of 7 on TMDB.
14. One
Collected as part of the Fluxfilm Anthology , One captures the lifespan of a single match recorded at 2,000 frames per second using a 16mm high-speed camera. The frame rate is then decelerated to the standard 24fps for presentation. The film emphasizes each gesture, sway and flare of flame as the small pinewood carrier ignites across the landscape of the filmstrip and screen, signalling the drama and poetics of this ”minor” event before the fire is extinguished. One also stands as an unassuming beacon, immortalizing on film the essence of some of Ono’s early concerns as an artist. At the slightest touch of fire, they burst into flame. Strike everywhere. Strike often.
It has an average vote of 3.5 on TMDB.
15. My Babushka: Searching Ukrainian Identities
This video documentary centers on the questions of civil liberties and cultural differences in a society beginning to open as one woman searches for her own ethnic roots, identity and family history in Ukraine. Issues of human rights, anti-Semitism, homophobia, feminism and a divided and economically-depressed country are encountered as Barbara Hammer, a feminist activist and pioneer of lesbian cinema, return to a “homeland” full of struggling as people search for a new post-glasnost identity.
It has an average vote of 1 on TMDB.
16. Diving Women of Jeju-do (Diving Women of Jeju-do)
Jeju-do is the largest of Korean islands and lies between Korea and Japan. There, for hundreds of years, women dive without breathing apparatus, to the ocean floor and collect shellfish, octopus, and urchins that they sell. The divers are in their sixties and seventies and their daughters do not want to inherit their work, lifestyle, and health problems that go with diving. As a filmmaker I was privileged to meet many of these women and dive with them. Their stories of hardship and pride confirmed my desire to record this unique and ancient tradition.
17. Celluloid Ceilings
Even though women make up 51 percent of the U.S. population, only about 4 percent of movies are directed by women. Of the 220 TV shows, representing about 3500 total episodes, only 14 percent were directed by women. Bloomberg interviewed several female directors in Hollywood, from Oscar winners to the director of "Twilight" to explore the various forms of sexism and discrimination they have faced in Hollywood, and what they are trying to do to change things
18. Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt
The life and work of German political philosopher of Jewish descent Hannah Arendt , who caused a stir when she coined a subversive concept, the banality of evil, in her 1963 book on the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann , held in Israel in 1961, which she covered for the New Yorker magazine.
It has an average vote of 7.4 on TMDB.
19. Packed In A Trunk: The Lost Art of Edith Lake Wilkinson
The story of artist Edith Lake Wilkinson, a painter who was committed to an asylum in 1924 and never heard from again. All her worldly possessions were packed into trunks and shipped to a relative in West Virginia where they sat in an attic for 40 years. Edith's great-niece, Emmy Award winning writer and director Jane Anderson, grew up surrounded by Edith's paintings, thanks to her mother who had gone poking through that dusty attic and rescued Edith's work. The film follows Jane in her decades-long journey to find the answers to the mystery of Edith's buried life, return the work to Provincetown and have Edith's contributions recognized by the larger art world.
It has an average vote of 7.2 on TMDB.
20. Don't Tell Anyone (No Le Digas A Nadie)
In a community where silence is seen as necessary for survival, undocumented immigrant activist Angy Rivera joins a generation of Dreamers in a quest to come out of the shadows and claim her place in the only home she's ever known.
It has an average vote of 7 on TMDB.
