Documentaries
91 Episodes
Meet some of life’s most colorful characters in these true stories.
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Pretty as a Picture: The Art of David Lynch
Episode 1
Directed by Toby Keeler • 1997 • United States
Starring David Lynch, Angelo Badalamenti, Jack NanceThis eighty-minute documentary was made by Toby Keeler in 1997. In addition to footage from the set of LOST HIGHWAY, it includes interviews with David Lynch, Patricia Arquette, Angelo Badalamenti,...
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13:13Episode 2
Oliver Sees Indigo
Episode 2
Directed by Ryan Clancy • 2022 • United States
This film enacts an attempt to regain attachment following a period of heroin addiction, near-death experiences, and oxytocin deficiency. The camera shifts between moments of fragile devotion as it searches for a higher power in threads of shared su...
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11:28Episode 3
Madness Remixed
Episode 3
Directed by Rhea Storr • 2021 • United Kingdom
MADNESS REMIXED examines the fetishization of Josephine Baker’s body through data-moshing analogue film. What unfolds is a questioning of which images of Black bodies should be reproduced and on what terms.
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30:12Episode 4
Home When You Return
Episode 4
Directed by Carl Elsaesser • 2021 • United States
“Stretching and blurring the boundaries of video essay, experimental film, and home movie, traces of a 1950s homemade melodrama by amateur filmmaker Joan Thurber Baldwin intermingle with a mournful homage to the author’s grandmother and her vacat...
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Strangers
Episode 5
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 6
LYNCH (one)
Episode 6
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 7
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 8
Three Songs Without Z.
Episode 8
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 9
What Happened to This City?
Episode 9
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 10
Tobacco Embers
Episode 10
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 11
Loving Highsmith
Episode 11
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 12
Something Like a War
Episode 12
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 13
Invoking Justice
Episode 13
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 14
Love in the Time of AIDS
Episode 14
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 15
Maid Servant
Episode 15
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 16
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 17
Is This Just a Story?
Episode 17
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 18
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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1:27:32Episode 19
ABC Africa
Episode 19
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 20
Celluloid Man
Episode 20
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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51:16Episode 21
Gramercy Stories
Episode 21
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 22
CzechMate: In Search of Jiří Menzel
Episode 22
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 23
My Architect
Episode 23
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 24
Milford Graves Full Mantis
Episode 24
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...