The Corporation (Sundance 2004)

The Corporation features interviews with prominent corporate critics such as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Michael Moore, Vandana Shiva and Howard Zinn as well as opinions from company CEOs such as Ray Anderson (from the Interface carpet & fabric company), the conservative viewpoints of Peter Drucker and Milton Friedman, and think tanks advocating free markets such as the Fraser Institute.



150 years ago, the business corporation was a relatively insignificant institution. Today, it is all-pervasive. Like the Church, the Monarchy and the Communist Party in other times and places, the corporation is today's dominant institution. This documentary examines the nature, evolution, impacts, and possible futures of the modern business corporation.
You can buy The Corporation.

Born Into Brothels (2005 Accademy Award)

Amidst the apparent growing prosperity of India, there is a dark underbelly of poverty of another side of the nation that is little known. This film is a chronicle of filmmakers Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman's efforts to show that world of Calcutta's red light district.
Briski, a documentary photographer, went to Kolkata to photograph prostitutes. While there, she befriended their children and offered to teach the children photography to reciprocate being allowed to photograph their mothers. The children were given cameras so they could learn photography and possibly improve their lives. Much of their work was used in the film, and the filmmakers recorded the classes as well as daily life in the red light district.




The red light district has existed for centuries and will exist for centuries more, but now we know the tortured lives of children in the shadows of Calcutta. The fate of the children is not resolved, but their dreams resonate in our world and lives.
The Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee has criticized Briski for using hidden camera work to incorrectly present the children's parents as uncaring, for ignoring the prostitutes' substantial efforts to unite, and for harming the global movement for sex worker rights and dignity.
You can buy Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids.

Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam (Accademy Award 1989)

Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam is a documentary based on the book which printed letters from the soldiers and nurses who served in Vietnam.
This movie is so powerful precisely because it is so simple. Using real letters written by US soldiers and archive footage, the film creates a highly personal experience of the Vietnam War.



An intensely moving and disturbing experience. It shows a more humane story of the war than we see in most media outlets and reveal real people in real situations trying to explain or understand the war.
It has no plot except of thousands of young men who went to a faraway country and had unspeakable experiences there; many of them died or were wounded for life in body or soul.
You can buy Dear America - Letters Home from Vietnam.

Dark Days (Sundance 2000)

This film follows a group of people living in an abandoned section of the New York City underground railway system, more precisely the area of the so called Freedom Tunnel. After living with them for a number of months, Marc Singer decided to create a documentary.
This is a noble film worthy of our attention.
He just started hanging out and making friends in his neighbourhood. He met one guy who mentioned the tunnels. He heard that you could build a house down there and live somewhat normally but still be homeless. And that just fascinated him so Singer went exploring.
There is some crime, but it’s not total anarchy. Boundaries are almost always respected, and there is a sense of uneasy camaraderie among these people.
Dark Days is an eye-opening experience that shatters the myths of homelessness by revealing a thriving community living in tunnels beneath New York City and honestly capturing their resilience and strength in their struggle to survive.




This documentary helps to change negative perceptions of the homeless. But Singer doesn't want the film to make us feel guilty that we are living comfortably while somebody else is on the street. Singer focuses on the positive things people try to do for themselves. And most importantly he gave every homeless person involved in its making a percentage. The only thing that stood in the way of Singer's idea and its execution was that he knew absolutely nothing about filmmaking, or even still photography
He assembled a group of the tunnel homeless to be his camera loaders, sound recorders, electricians and equipment manufacturers. Such a crew would add to the authentically personal feel of the film and solve the problem of finding a professional crew willing to endure tunnel conditions for that long.
Dark Days's urban wasteland aesthetic is sort of Lynchian in its ironic beauty.
This is unique among documentaries because of Singer's sensitive treatment. There are shots in Dark Days that rank with the best black-and-white photojournalism pieces of the '30s and '40s. Singer's attention to detail rightly deserved the Cinematography Award at Sundance
You can buy Dark Days.

Street Fight (2005)

Street Fight is an Academy Award-nominated documentary by filmmaker Marshall Curry. This documentary follows the 2002 mayoral campaign in Newark, New Jersey in which Cory Booker attempted to unseat longtime mayor Sharpe James. It provides a fascinating in-depth look behind the scenes of campaigns and elections and shows a series of outrageous scenes.

The documentaries can be a force for good in the world. At their best, they expose people to new issues, struggles, characters and lifestyles. They challenge us and help us to understand each other.
Street Fight is a film about race and politics whose goal is to attract an audience that does not necessarily care about or does not know that they care about, race and politics.
This film will seduce you, using humor, irony and drama to lure you out of your comfort zones. Street Fight's subject matter is something you haven't seen before.

You can buy Street Fight: A Film by Marshall Curry.

Sortie D'Usine (1895)

According to many critics and film buffs, the first viewing of Sortie d' Usine takes it rightful place as the biggest shock in movie history: the audience was caught completely off guard and were absolutely dumbstruck. They didn't think that the picture would move!
The first film audiences did not demand to be told stories but found infinite fascination in the mere recording and reproduction of the movement of animate and inanimate objects.

I doubt a modern audience could fully understand the beauty of Leaving the Lumière Factory: what fascinated audiences wasn't the depiction of riveting events but what went on behind the scene.
You'll find yourselves flying into the screen, pulled by the movement of the doors of factory. Two doorways open themselves slightly. And at each moment we cannot be certain what will happen next but we're involved in a process of a spatial change, the opening of the doors.
You can buy The Lumiere Brothers' First Films.

Autism Is a World (2004)

Autism Is a World, a co-production of CNN Productions and State of the Art Inc., is a candid and compelling look into the mind of Sue Rubin, a 26-year-old Los Angeles woman living with autism. The film has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject.
Gerardine Wurzburg chose to make this film to bring people into the world of autism. Autism is a world so difficult to explain to someone who is not autistic.

This short film is written by Sue Rubin herself. At the age of thirteen, she learned to express herself through a computer keyboard, otherwise known as facilitated communication, revealing that she was in fact highly intelligent. She went on to study history, specializing in Latin American History at Whittier College and to write speeches about her life with autism.
Autism Is a World explores Sue's world, her writings and the remarkable friendships she created while in college.
As the film moves to its conclusion, it comes to a wrenching emotional climax. Sue shares her final thoughts as the film concludes. Her words are simple: “The last thing I want to clarify is that no matter how much social interaction one has, one will never be free of autism. The tendencies to be and act in certain ways may subside but I will always be autistic.”

Hardwood (2004)

The Academy Award nominated Hardwood is a personal journey by director Hubert Davis, the son of former Harlem Globetrotter Mel Davis, who explores how his father's decisions affected his life and those of his extended family. Mel Davis, now a coach for young basketball players in Vancouver, recalls falling in love at first sight with Hubert's mother, a white woman, at a time when racism seemed to make their union impossible. Despite their emotional bond, still resonating over 20 years later, Mel chose to marry a black woman, with whom he also had a son.


Elegantly structured into three chapters entitled "love," "recollection" and "redemption," Hubert Davis uses personal interviews, archival footage and home movies to delve into his father's past in the hope of finding a new direction for his own. He unites both sides of his family, speaking movingly about the complex web of love, betrayal and family ties that bind them all. This is a very touching and emotional story of mending relationships and unconditional family love.
Hardwood is about the healing power of redemption and the bonds between fathers and sons. This film is a heart-wrenching look at the socioal and emotional impact of fatherless families and the absentee African - American father.
This film is also important for African - American studies, multicultural studies, psychology and sociology.

My Architect (2003)

In A Son's Journey, Nathaniel Kahn examines the life and career of his father, Philadelphia architect Louis I. Kahn (1901-1974), whose work included the Salk Institute and the Parliament and Capitol Buildings in Dhaka, Bangladesh, before dying of a heart attack in a Penn Station bathroom in 1974, unidentified (it took three days before someone claimed his body) and broke despite having been one of the century's most influential architects.
Louis I. Kahn's obituary listed his survivors as a wife and daughter. But the list was incomplete because Louis I. Kahn also led three different personal lives, with three different families, fathering a daughter with his wife, and a child each by two other lovers.

The film was made by Louis Kahn's illegitimate son Nathaniel Kahn and features interviews with many giants of modern architecture.Throughout the film, Kahn visits all of his father's buildings. Thus, he pursues the object he wanted: by describing the obstacles and influences that shaped his father, he gains knowledge of a lost father.
Why should people watch this documentary? Because My Architect offers a fascinating insight into Kahn’s architecture and then into him as a man. Louis I. Kahn was a man obsessed by his work. His life was neither private nor public, but transcendent. He was a visionary man, whose aesthetics forced him beyond the dichotomy of public and private. And although Louis I. Kahn was already dead at the time of making the film, he is very much a presence in the film because his son was able to use documentary footage of his father from a series of films from the Museum of Modern Art. It’s a very satisfying, very informative documentary experience.
My Architect was nominated for the 2003 Academy Award for Documentary Feature.
You can buy My Architect: A Son's Journey.

The Blood of Yingzhou District (潁州的孩子), 2006

Ruby Yang is a noted Chinese-American filmmaker whose work in documentary and dramatic film has earned her an Academy Award and numerous international awards. She lives and works in Beijing, directing documentaries and public service announcements for the China AIDS Media Project.
The Blood of Yingzhou District, which Yang directed as part of the project, won an Academy Award in February 2007.
The subject is AIDS in China, specifically in the province of Anhui. The victims are poor families. The adults donated blood in evidently unsanitary conditions: one individual, apparently connected to the blood drawing procedure, describes combining the donated blood of fifty individuals and then re-injecting a little bit of the mixture into the veins of the donors.

Yang enters the Yingzhou region and follows the plight of a number of these orphans, including a particularly unfortunate one, Gau Jun. The suffering of these orphans is all the more devastating for being largely unnecessary: the results of misinformation about the nature of the disease. Abandoned by his family, Gau Jun hasn't uttered a word since then and is now treated as a pariah by surrounding communities. The film reveals how the little boy is taken in by a loving, accepting family and given a second chance.
No-one knows how old Gao Jun is. Four? Older? Younger? Whatever his biological age, he has none of the verbal babble, or ready tears of a child his age. The film tracks this orphan for a year as his closest surviving kin -- his uncles -- weigh what to do with him. The older uncle’s dilemma: if he allows his children to play with Gao Jun, who is HIV-positive, they will be ostracized by terrified neighbors. The younger uncle’s dilemma: so long as Gao Jun remains in the house, the young man may not be able to find a wife.
Though the film is primarily concerned about the social conditions of these children, political issues are indirectly raised. One can't help but dismayed by China's social services. It is hard to believe that China's health system could be so primitive!
Yang reminds us that because of governmental irresponsibility, many other less fortunate children are left to fend for themselves. These children may never find adoptive parents and social acceptance.

Recycled Life, 2006

Leslie Iwerks, documentarist granddaughter of famed animator and Disney collaborator U.B. Iwerks, helms the 38-minute muckraking nonfiction film Recycled Life.
She was shooting a project on the Mayas and traveling throughout all the country of Guatemala with a small crew. When they drove into the Antigua dump to unload some trash, they noticed two children, a brother and a sister living in a large cardboard box inside the dump. This was their home and they didn’t have any parents. And there are other people who lived like this.

If you watch this short film, you will encounter energetic and courageous people, surreal images: through these the filmaker traces the effects of a devastating cataclysm.
The generosity and spirit of so many people living in the most extreme poverty touched me beyond words.
It received a nomination at the 79th Academy Awards and it won prizes in various festivals.

An Inconvenient Truth, 2006

From director Davis Guggenheim comes the Sundance Film Festival hit, An Inconvenient Truth, which offers a passionate and inspirational look at one man's fervent crusade to halt global warming's deadly progress in its tracks by exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it. A catastrophe we have helped create. Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb!

Davis Guggenheim's documentary is based mostly on Gore's multimedia presentation on climate change, a lecture he has delivered hundreds of times in recent months. While Gore is managing the show with powerful efficiency, there is nothing dry or tired about it. The former Vice President Al Gore re-set the course of his life to focus on a last-ditch, all-out effort to help save the planet from irrevocable change. With wit, intelligence and hope, An Inconvenient Truth ultimately brings home Gore's persuasive argument that we can no longer afford to view global warming as a political issue - rather, it is the biggest moral challenge facing our global civilization.

I did not find a single negative review based solely on the film’s art. But I found so many errors in this movie!
If the movie will help you judge for yourself which direction we should take, then Gore should dig deeper into the material. If you want to read a full report, you can download this pdf file.
However, this is on the whole a good film. It explains the facts very well, explains away the objections that people have been hearing about from the media and is also pretty funny at times.
You can buy An Inconvenient Truth and An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It.

Deliver Us From Evil, 2006

When Amy Berg decided to hang out a shingle and produce feature documentaries two years ago, she wasn't quite sure what subject might both consume her interest and hit a nerve with audiences. When "Deliver Us From Evil" debuted at the Los Angeles Film Festival, it immediately won the Target Documentary Award and a $50,000 cash prize; the film was subsequently acquired by Lionsgate for theatrical release.

Moving from one parish to another in Northern California during the 1970s, Father Oliver O'Grady quickly won each congregation's trust and respect. Unbeknownst to them, O'Grady was a dangerously active pedophile that Church hierarchy, although aware of his predilection, had harbored for over 30 years, allowing him to abuse countless children. Juxtaposing an extended, deeply unsettling interview with O'Grady himself with the tragic stories of his victims, filmmaker Amy Berg bravely exposes the deep corruption of the Catholic Church and the troubled mind of the man it had sheltered.
Ms. Berg's film exposes the truth about sexual abuse in a compassionate and sensitive way. This film will make no one feel indifferent about what has been going on in the Catholic church for centuries.
You can buy Deliver Us from Evil.

Jesus Camp, 2006

“Jesus Camp” is the second film by the documentary team of Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady to explore the molding of young minds. The majority of the children in “Jesus Camp” are home-schooled by evangelical parents who teach them creationism and dismiss science.

It is a straightforward documentary, with no narrator or fancy cutting to present an opinion. The footage really does speak for itself. The film follows Becky Fischer, a Pentecostal children’s minister who runs the “Kids on Fire” summer camp in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota. Becky’s methods of reaching the children are powerful and at times, thought-provoking. But, some of her methods are a bit more radical.

The film also follows three children, Levi, Rachel, and Tory.

It is rather disturbing to see the children in this movie being instilled with thoughts and ideas that they do not have the full capacity to understand.
The film is being marketed as an even-handed, unbiased look at the Evangelical movement, but it lacks any obvious focus.
You can buy Jesus Camp.

My Country, My Country (2006)

My Country, My Country was motivated by a sense of despair. Laura Poitras was determined to see the contradictions of the war in Iran from the perspective of the people living there. Filmmaker and crew are invited into the home and personal lives of Riyadh and his family. Poitras and her crew are granted behind-the-scenes access to the election preparations, too.

Working alone in Iraq over eight months, Poitras creates an extraordinarily intimate portrait of Iraqis living under U.S. occupation. Her principal focus is Dr. Riyadh, an Iraqi medical doctor, father of six and Sunni political candidate. My Country, My Country is, in fact, an impartial documentary depicting the controversial 2005 Iraqi national elections. The documentary follows the agonizing predicament of one man caught in the tragic contradictions of the U.S. occupation of Iraq and its effort to spread democracy in the Middle East.
Still the tale told here is not so much a political one as it is a human one, which is why this film rates a wide audience.
You can buy My Country, My Country.

Sicko (2006)

Michael Moore interviews medics and investigators from private health insurance companies who admit denying legitimate claims for the most spurious technical reasons. According to Moore, it’s a scandal that can be traced back to Richard Nixon.
Health care isn't healthcare; bureaucracy, the labyrinth of paperwork and all legal language about pre-existing conditions and denial of service make having coverage as much of a challenge as lacking it.

To prepare for the film, Moore used the Internet to solicit health-care horror stories, not just from the 47 million Americans who don’t have insurance but from those who do. So he travels around to a bunch of countries that already have socialized medicine to see how they work and shows us how France, England, Canada and Cuba actually help sick people instead of letting them wither and die for lack of health insurance.

I don't know if we can accept Michael Moore's selected anecdotes as "proof", but the movie is very funny: only Moore can talk about political issues and make you laugh until you cry !
You can buy Sicko.

No End in Sight (2007)

No End in Sight, which won the 2007 Special Jury Prize at Sundance (although it was released practically in secrecy), examines the failures of America’s ongoing occupation of Iraq. Narrated by actor Campbell Scott, this film retraces the U.S. government’s steps after the "fall" of Baghdad in April 2003.
Charles Ferguson utilizes on-camera interviews with key personnel intimately involved with the rebuilding of Iraq, including former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Ambassador Barbara Bodine, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, and General Jay Garner , as well as Iraqi civilians, American soldiers and prominent analysts.

Emphasizing analysis over manipulation, the film details mistakes of the Bush administration. With a journalistic tone, Scott mostly recounts the facts of the occupation: one of the reasons for the postwar reconstruction’s collapse seems to be the administration’s lack of experience.
This documentary confirms what we thought we knew: American policy in Iraq was flawed from the start.
You can buy No End in Sight.

Operation Homecoming (2005)

Structured around the poetic, the comic and chilling writings of men and women posted in Iraq, this documentary explores firsthand accounts of American soldiers through their own words. The film is built upon a project created by the National Endowment for the Arts to gather the writing of soldiers and their families who have participated in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Through interviews and dramatic readings by such actors, the film transforms selections from this collection of writing into a deep examination of the experiences of the men and women who are serving in America's armed forces. Robbins is trying to present the soldiers' point-of-view without mixing it with politics. He offers a humanizing study of the soldiers who have suffered through the dehumanization of war.

At the core of the writing in Operation Homecoming is a deep desire by all those who have served in war to come to terms with their experiences. Through an extraordinary group of men and women it presents a profound window into the human side of America’s current conflicts.

Robbins steers clear of making judgments about the war itself; Operation Homecoming's message, on the other hand, seems to be simply that war is bad and that it kills people. The stories recounted here are sad, funny, violent and uplifting. Yet each one displays an honesty and intensity that is rarely seen in explorations of the war.
You can buy Operation Homecoming.

Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)

Taxi to the Dark Side is a serious film about the future of America. It may be shocking and disturbing as its title implies, because the subject matter is torture as a weapon of choice in the War Against Terror, but it has great visual grace and assurance: Gibney edits the material for maximum clarity and impact. His shots are beautiful and unexpectedly tranquil.

The case of Dilawar, an Afghan taxi driver, beaten to death in 2002 while in U.S. military custody forms the heart of this examination of the abuses committed during the detainment and interrogation of political prisoners. The film uncovers an inescapable link between the tragic incidents that unfolded in Bagram and the policies made at the very highest level of the United States government in Washington, D.C. Combining the cool detachment of a forensic expert with the heated indignation of a proud American who holds his country to a high standard, Gibney’s film reveals how the Bush administration has systematically betrayed the very ideals it professes to uphold.
From Dilawar's sad and purposeless death Gibney spirals his story outward to encompass the whole of the Bush administration's post-9/11 attitude toward torture, detention, and the rules of war. Far from being a leftist cry of hysteria, it deliberately and devastatingly lays out its case through interviews with and news footage about a wide range of subjects: fellow prisoners at Bagram; Carlotta Gall and Tim Golden, who reported on Dilawar’s story for The New York Times; etc.
You can buy Taxi to the Dark Side.

War/Dance (2007)

War/Dance narrates the story of Dominic, Rose and Nancy, three children whose families have been torn apart, their homes destroyed, and who currently reside in a displaced persons camp in Patongo. They're preparing to enter a music competition that offers them a lifeline of hope.
The war stole everything from them, except their music. These children and their families rose above the atrocities of war to achieve greatness within their community and their country. The music made feel them good and helped them to wipe away their pain.

Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine received a call from a non profit organization, Shine Global, about making a film to raise awareness about one of the world's worst child soldier situations in northern Uganda. They accepted to shoot the Uganda children's pain. They blended the history, facts and background as much as they could so they could focus on telling a truly human story in the kids' own voices. "War/Dance" earned the couple the Directing Award at Sundance in January as well as the audience prize for best doc at the Wisconsin Film Festival. And now War/Dance has a nomination at the 80th Academy Award.
This upbeat documentary shows the healing powers of music, song, and dance on these brutalized and traumatized youth. It's astounding how the film showed the resilience of the human spirit in the worst of circumstances. In War/Dance we rediscover the power of traditional art, dance and music.
You can buy War Dance.