Best movies like Film: The Living Record of Our Memory

A documentary on the Z Channel, one of the first pay cable stations in the US, and its programming chief, Jerry Harvey. Debuting in 1974, the LA-based channel's eclectic slate of movies became a prime example of the untapped power of cable television.

An exiled filmmaker finally returns to his home country where former mysteries and afflictions of his early life come back to haunt him once more.

Virunga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is Africa’s oldest national park, a UNESCO world heritage site, and a contested ground among insurgencies seeking to topple the government that see untold profits in the land. Among this ongoing power struggle, Virunga also happens to be the last natural habitat for the critically endangered mountain gorilla. The only thing standing in the way of the forces closing in around the gorillas: a handful of passionate park rangers and journalists fighting to secure the park’s borders and expose the corruption of its enemies. Filled with shocking footage, and anchored by the surprisingly deep and gentle characters of the gorillas themselves, Virunga is a galvanizing call to action around an ongoing political and environmental crisis in the Congo.

A young black lesbian filmmaker probes into the life of The Watermelon Woman, a 1930s black actress who played 'mammy' archetypes.

This documentary recounts the life and work of one of most famous, and yet reviled, German film directors in history, Leni Riefenstahl. The film recounts the rise of her career from a dancer, to a movie actor to the most important film director in Nazi Germany who directed such famous propaganda films as Triumph of the Will and Olympiad. The film also explores her later activities after Nazi Germany's defeat in 1945 and her disgrace for being so associated with it which includes her amazingly active life over the age of 90.

Essay documentary explores eroded emulsions and images for lost vestiges of lesbian and gay culture. First feature by a pioneer of lesbian cinema, Hammer weaves gay and lesbian couples with footage that unearths the forbidden and invisible history of a marginalized people.

Journey into Spring is a 1958 British short documentary film directed by Ralph Keene, and made by British Transport Films. The film -- partly a tribute to the work of the pioneering naturalist and ornithologist Gilbert White (1720-1793), author of The Natural History of Selborne -- features a commentary by the poet Laurie Lee, and camerawork by the wildlife cinematographer Patrick Carey. The journey suggested by the title is through time rather than space. In fact, two such journeys are made: the first back to the eighteenth century to pay tribute to the work of White, and the second studies the changing natural landscape near White's home town of Selborne in Hampshire between a typical March and May. It was nominated for two Academy Awards -- one for Best Documentary Short, and the other for Best Live Action Short.

Robert Altman's life and career contained multitudes. This father of American independent cinema left an indelible mark, not merely on the evolution of his art form, but also on the western zeitgeist. With its use of rare interviews, representative film clips, archival images, and musings from his family and most recognizable collaborators, Altman is a dynamic and heartfelt mediation on an artist whose expression, passion and appetite knew few bounds.

With archive film clips and interviews, this brief look at a frequently overlooked historical period of filmmaking acts as an introduction rather than a complete record. It features interviews with some of the genre's biggest stars, like Fred Williamson, Pam Grier, and Richard Roundtree. Director Melvin Van Peebles discusses the historical importance of his landmark film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. For a contemporary perspective, the excitable Quentin Tarantino offers his spirited commentary and author/critic bell hooks provides some scholarly social analysis.

From 1970-1977, six low budget films shown at midnight transformed the way we make and watch films.

In the late 90s, a video archivist unearths a series of sinister pirate broadcasts and becomes obsessed with uncovering the dark conspiracy behind them.

The true history of a collection of some 500 films dating from 1910s to 1920s, which were lost for over 50 years until being discovered buried in a sub-arctic swimming pool deep in the Yukon Territory, in Dawson City, located about 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

Orphaned and alone except for an uncle, Hugo Cabret lives in the walls of a train station in 1930s Paris. Hugo's job is to oil and maintain the station's clocks, but to him, his more important task is to protect a broken automaton and notebook left to him by his late father. Accompanied by the goddaughter of an embittered toy merchant, Hugo embarks on a quest to solve the mystery of the automaton and find a place he can call home.

In 2012, awarded filmmaker Hernán Zin suffered an accident in Afghanistan that changed his life forever. The traumas he had been accumulating during 20 years of war reporting suddenly imploded. He began suffering depression, loneliness and self-destructive behaviors. Searching for answers of what happened to him, Hernán Zin decided to interview other journalists. He asked them about their traumas, their losses, their fears and their families. DYING TO TELL is the first documentary film ever made about trauma in war reporters. It is a brutal and torn portrait of war, and a tribute to those who risk their lives for the world to be informed. —Contramedia Films

A documentary examining the decade of the 1970s as a turning point in American cinema. Some of today's best filmmakers interview the influential directors of that time.

Werner Herzog's documentary film about the "Grizzly Man" Timothy Treadwell and what the thirteen summers in a National Park in Alaska were like in one man's attempt to protect the grizzly bears. The film is full of unique images and a look into the spirit of a man who sacrificed himself for nature.

I AM is an utterly engaging and entertaining non-fiction film that poses two practical and provocative questions: what’s wrong with our world, and what can we do to make it better? The filmmaker behind the inquiry is Tom Shadyac, one of Hollywood’s leading comedy practitioners and the creative force behind such blockbusters as “Ace Ventura,” “Liar Liar,” “The Nutty Professor,” and “Bruce Almighty.” However, in I AM, Shadyac steps in front of the camera to recount what happened to him after a cycling accident left him incapacitated, possibly for good. Though he ultimately recovered, he emerged with a new sense of purpose, determined to share his own awakening to his prior life of excess and greed, and to investigate how he as an individual, and we as a race, could improve the way we live and walk in the world.

World-renowned director Martin Scorsese narrates this journey through his favorites in Italian cinema.

The passion the original Star Wars trilogy inspires in its fans is unparalleled; but when it comes to George Lucas himself, many have found their ardor has cooled into a complicated love-hate relationship. This hilarious, heartfelt documentary delves deep into Lucas’s cultural legacy, asking all the tough questions. Has Lucas betrayed his masterwork? Should he just have left the original trilogy alone? Is The Phantom Menace so bad it should carry a health warning? Utilizing interviews taken from over 600 hours of footage, and peppered with extraordinary Star Wars and Indiana Jones recreations lovingly immortalized in song, needlepoint, Lego, claymation, puppets and paper-mâché, above all this film asks the question: who truly owns that galaxy far, far away—the man who created it, or the fans who worship it?

Tracing anxieties about technology back to the 1880s, DREAMS REWIRED combines clips from nearly 200 films and newsreels with an insightful commentary by Tilda Swinton on our eternal love/hate relationship with a hyper-mediated world.

A documentary about the life of Carl Laemmle, early cinema pioneer and founder of Universal Studios, documenting his life in Hollywood and his efforts in the 1930s to save Jewish families in Nazi Germany.

Controversial film about an underground organization that kidnaps and 'deprograms' African Americans who sell out or deny their cultural heritage. Spike Lee is the Executive Producer.

To Hell and Back: The Kane Hodder Story is the harrowing story of a stuntman overcoming a dehumanizing childhood filled with torment and bullying in Sparks, Nevada. After surviving a near-death burn accident, he worked his way up through Hollywood, leading to his ultimate rise as Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th series and making countless moviegoers forever terrified of hockey masks and summer camp. Featuring interviews with cinema legends, including Bruce Campbell (Ash vs. Evil Dead), Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger), and Cassandra Peterson (Elvira: Mistress of the Dark), To Hell and Back peels off the mask of Kane Hodder, cinema's most prolific killer, in a gut-wrenching, but inspiring, documentary. After decades of watching Kane Hodder on screen, get ready to meet the man behind the mask in To Hell and Back - an uniquely human story about one of cinema's most vicious monsters.

Socially inept 17-year-old cinephile Lawrence Kweller gets a job at a video store, where he forms a complicated friendship with his older female manager.

Overcoming the seemingly insurmountable odds that life threw his way, Liston became heavyweight champion of the world when he knocked out Floyd Patterson in 1962. Eight years later, he died but friends questioned the cause of his death.

Since the invention of cinema, the standard format for recording moving images has been film. Over the past two decades, a new form of digital filmmaking has emerged, creating a groundbreaking evolution in the medium. Keanu Reeves explores the development of cinema and the impact of digital filmmaking via in-depth interviews with Hollywood masters, such as James Cameron, David Fincher, David Lynch, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Steven Soderbergh, and many more.

Explore the most legendary horror studio of all time with this fascinating, frightening journey hosted by terror titans Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. England's most successful independent film company, the "fear factory" of Hammer Studios, has a history filled with feuds, censorship battles and streaks of luck both good and bad. Now the legacy of horror returns, featuring interviews with such Hammer legends as Raquel Welch, Veronica Carlson, Caroline Munro, Ingrid Pitt, Jimmy Sangster, Hazel Court, Martine Beswicke, Freddie Francis, Val Guest and Ray Harryhausen. Plus you'll be treated to behind-the-scenes home movies and nonstop shock scenes from over 40 classic films, including Horror of Dracula, Curse of Frankenstein, The Devil Rides Out, Curse of the Werewolf and many more! It's the definitive study of one of the greatest names in horror!

Filmmaker Claude Demers tells the story of his search for his biological mother and their eventual meeting. He does this in voice-over, accompanied by images from Canada's national archives. The painstakingly selected and fluidly edited black-and-white clips build up, like the perfectly fitting pieces of a puzzle; an impression of his mother as he had imagined her. How she grew up, worked, loved and left him.

A celebration of slasher cinema - from PSYCHO to the present day, with a focus on highlighting many of the genre's forgotten cult classics, deconstructing how to survive a slice and dice movie and meditating upon why it is almost always a final girl and rarely a final guy... this is a documentary which is designed for both the biggest fan of "mad maniac" movies and the person who may only have seen HALLOWEEN and SCREAM. Either way, this is a documentary that proves the SLASHER FILM is truly FOREVER!

This documentary traces the history of the B-Western from it's silent movie origins to its demise in the early 1950s. The film contains a large number of scenes from early silents and seldom seen films, as well as old photographs of the stars and one-sheet advertisements for lost films.

Toronto's diverse culture and heritage are explored through a couple's belongings, juxtaposed with the neighborhood in which they live.

The famous black cowboy Bill Pickett shows his prowess in rodeos. Only small parts of the film survive.

An amalgam of documentary and cinema verité, this movie outlines the life, loves and music of Rolling Stones bass guitarist Bill Wyman. After leaving the Stones in 1981, Wyman tried to establish his own separate musical identity, conveyed here through a stream of hallucinatory images and animated sequences.

A tribute to producer Irving Thalberg.

A rare look at the the career of film director Pedro Almodóvar, especially his early works, with interviews with the director himself and his stars and admirers.

A documentary that reviews the numerous contributions of African-Americans to the development of the United States. From the perspective of the turbulent late 1960s, the fact that their positive roles had not generally been taught as part of American history, coupled with the pervasiveness of derogatory stereotypes, was evidence of how Black people had long been victims of negative attitudes and ignorance.

A documentary about the history of the Free Cinema movement, made by one of it's greatest proponents, Lindsay Anderson, to commemorate British Film Year in 1985. Produced by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill. Unlike Richard Attenborough's celebratory episode of the same series, or Alan Parker's more aggressive show, which was balanced between celebrating the greats and attacking Parker's bugbears, Greenaway and Jarman and the BFI, Anderson's show accentuates the negative, painting an image of a British cinema in terminal artistic decline and trashing the ambitions and approach of British Film Year itself. It's mordantly funny and very savage.

The history of Rocky Mountain National Park is told with the help of historians, historical photographs and never before seen movie footage. Te begins with the Native American and Mountain Man eras through the pioneers. It continues through the 20th Century and into modern times. A group of individuals pooled their passions and dreams with those of naturalist Enos Mills. They persevered through opposition and antagonism while transforming an economy of mining and ranching to an economy of preservation and conservation. Legendary Everest climber Tom Hornbein and world-class climber, Tommy Caldwell share stories of Longs Peak and join others who pass on their legacies from this National Park.

Among the pieces featured in Fragments are the final reel of John Ford's The Village Blacksmith (1922) and a glimpse at Emil Jannings in The Way of All Flesh (1927), the only Oscar®-winning performance in a lost film. Fragments also features clips from such lost films as Cleopatra (1917), starring Theda Bara; The Miracle Man (1919), with Lon Chaney; He Comes Up Smiling (1918), starring Douglas Fairbanks; an early lost sound film, Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), filmed in early Technicolor, and the only color footage of silent star Clara Bow, Red Hair (1928). The program is rounded out with interviews of film preservationists involved in identifying and restoring these films. Also featured is a new interview with Diana Serra Cary, best known as "Baby Peggy", one of the major American child stars of the silent era, who discusses one of the featured fragments, Darling of New York (1923).

A look at the history of British B-movies.

This is a history of the England's Ealing Film Studios, from its beginnings in 1902. It follows the studio's successes through the 1930's, World War II dramas, the well-known 'Ealing comedies' with Alec Guinness, and the BBC's television productions

A Night at the Movies: The Gigantic World of Epics looks at Hollywood’s biggest screen spectaculars from all sides, including the genre’s beginnings, literary adaptations, great epic directors and actors, the challenges of making big-budget movies, classic set-pieces and epic music scores. The special also looks at how the genre fell out of favor with audiences and filmmakers in the ‘70s and ‘80s, only to be reborn with more recent films like Gladiator, and Dances with Wolves trilogy. Throughout, the special is packed with classic scenes and behind-the-scenes images from such films as The Birth of a Nation (1915), Gone With the Wind (1939), Samson & Delilah (1949), The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur (1959), El Cid (1961), King of Kings (1961), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965).

The history of color photography in motion pictures, in particular the Technicolor company's work.

Several well-known and pioneering abstract filmmakers discuss the history of non-objective cinema, the works of those that came before them and their own experiments in the field of visionary filmmaking.

The creative and ambitious Carlos, a young Spanish film buff, manages to become a professional camera operator with time and effort, and is also blessed with the love of Anna, which he has longed for; but the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936 changes everything for both of them.

A tribute to a fascinating film shot by Alfred Hitchcock in 1958, starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, and to the city of San Francisco, California, where the magic was created; but also a challenge: how to pay homage to a masterpiece without using its footage; how to do it simply by gathering images from various sources, all of them haunted by the curse of a mysterious green fog that seems to cause irrepressible vertigo…

27 year old surgical resident, Kendal Lawrence is living and working in Brooklyn, New York. She is abducted, on route to meeting her same sex partner, Lauren Stevens and their mutual friend, female police officer, Maria Rossetti. The question of terrorism arises several times throughout the story, with an unexpected medical twist, to the plot. The FBI and the New York Police department work closely together, to determine the reason for the abduction. Sensing a lack of interest, on the part of the police authorities, because of her sexual orientation and her partner's Middle eastern heritage, Lauren decides to launch her own investigation. When you least expect it, your life can take a detour that may in fact, change your world forever.

After the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, a boy grew up obsessed with all the movies he couldn't see. He met a mysterious film collector who saved thousands of films from destruction by the new regime. Despite arrest and torture, the collector refused to give up his secret hoard. Together they forged a friendship based on passion for cinema and resistance against tyranny. The boy escaped to exile in London to become a filmmaker, and tells their shared story of obsession and celluloid dreams.