Disfarmer: A Portrait of America

2010

0h 52m

7.0(3 votes)

Documentary

Overview

Mike Disfarmer, small town portrait photographer turned posthumous art star. This is the story of an eccentric curmudgeon and artistic icon whose powerful pictures of depression-era USA have left an unlikely mark on the modern Manhattan art world.

Links & Resources

IMDbView

Social & External

IMDb

Production Companies

Similar Movies

6.8

2008

Standard Operating Procedure

Errol Morris examines the incidents of abuse and torture of suspected terrorists at the hands of U.S. forces at the Abu Ghraib prison.

Movie

Everything at Once (Paco & Manolo's Gaze)

4.2

2021

Everything at Once (Paco & Manolo's Gaze)

Paco and Manolo are two Catalan photographers from the outskirts of Barcelona who have been working together for thirty years as if they were a single person, capturing their images in Kink magazine, a very personal photography fanzine with a homoerotic aesthetic of Mediterranean essence.

Movie

8.3

2024

Riverboom

In the year following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, young journalist Claude Baechtold finds himself in the war zone of Afghanistan. Not entirely voluntarily, the avowed anti-militarist is dragged by two fearless reporters on a round trip through the entire country.

Movie

6.9

1981

Reporters

The co-founder of the Gamma press agency, Raymond Depardon, created this documentary of press photographers in Paris and their subjects by following the photographers around for one month, in October, 1980. In-between long hours waiting for a celebrity to emerge from a restaurant or a hotel, boredom immediately switches to fast action as the cameras click and roll when the person appears. The reaction to the gaggle of photographers is as varied as the people they often literally chase all around town. While some of the celebrities, such as Jacques Chirac who was mayor of Paris at the time, are perceived as comical caricatures, others are shown simply going about ordinary pursuits - including Catherine Deneuve, Gene Kelly, and Jean-Luc Godard.

Movie

6.4

2017

Love, Cecil

A documentary about Academy Award-winning costume designer Cecil Beaton. A respected photographer, artist, and set designer, Beaton was best known for designing on award-winning films such as 'Gigi' (1958) and 'My Fair Lady' (1964). The film features archive footage and interviews with a number of models, artists, and filmmakers who worked closely with Beaton during his illustrious career.

Movie

7.7

2007

Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens

An account of the professional and personal life of renowned American photographer Annie Leibovitz, from her early artistic endeavors to her international success as a photojournalist, war reporter, and pop culture chronicler.

Movie

7.0

1987

Moments Without Proper Names

Parks makes himself the subject, tracing his development as a person and an artist through a non-narrative abstract self-portrait that combines his photographs with his poetry, musical compositions and scenes from his films. It also features footage of Parks, plus interpretations of his personal reminiscences performed by actors Avery Brooks, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Joe Seneca.

Movie

5.0

2025

Flight Photographers

"Flight Photographers" is an engaging look at the dynamic world of aviation photography, showcasing the passion and skill of both enthusiasts and professionals. Exciting stories and breathtaking images, highlight the art and adventure of capturing the beauty of flight.

Movie

7.3

2022

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

The life of internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin is told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis.

Movie

9.0

2024

Soviet Bus Stops

“There’s a bus stop I want to photograph.” This may sound like a parody of an esoteric festival film, but Canadian Christopher Herwig’s photography project is entirely in earnest, and likely you will be won over by his passion for this unusual subject within the first five minutes. Soviet architecture of the 1960s and 70s was by and large utilitarian, regimented, and mass-produced. Yet the bus stops Herwig discovers on his journeys criss-crossing the vast former Soviet Bloc are something else entirely: whimsical, eccentric, flamboyantly artistic, audacious, colourful. They speak of individualism and locality, concepts anathema to the Communist doctrine. Herwig wants to know how this came to pass and tracks down some of the original unsung designers, but above all he wants to capture these exceptional roadside way stations on film before they disappear.

Movie

8.0

2020

Un été à la Garoupe

La Garoupe, a beach in Antibes, in 1937. For one summer, the painter and photographer Man Ray films his friends Pablo Picasso, Dora Maar, Paul Eluard and his wife Nusch, as well as Lee Miller. During these few weeks, love, friendship, poetry, photography and painting are still mixed in the carefree and the creativity specific to the artistic movements of the interwar period.

Movie

7.0

2019

Elliott Erwitt - Silence Sounds Good

Elliott Erwitt has spent his entire adult life taking photographs, of presidents, popes and movie stars, as well as regular people and their pets. His work is iconic in world culture while his life is largely unknown.

Movie

7.6

2017

Cinema Through the Eye of Magnum

The film tells the story of the intimate and unprecedented encounter between the photojournalists of the Magnum Agency and the world of cinema. The confrontation of two seemingly opposite worlds – fiction and reality. For 70 years their paths crossed: a family of photographers, amongst them the biggest names in photography, and a family of actors and filmmakers who helped write the history of cinema, from John Huston to Marilyn Monroe to Orson Welles, Kate Winslet and Sean Penn.

Movie

6.2

1989

Helmut Newton: Frames from the Edge

A camera crew follows Helmut Newton, the fashion and ad photographer whose images of tall, blond, big-breasted women are part of the iconography of twentieth-century erotic fantasy. He's on the go from L.A., to Paris, to Monte-Carlo, to Berlin, where he was a youth until he escaped from the Nazis in 1936. We see him on shoots, interviewing models, and discussing his work.

Movie

2019

Imagraphy

Step inside the minds of 16 international masters of photography. They share stories behind their most iconic images and techniques whilst learning their impressions of our world as seen through their lenses.

Movie

8.0

2024

I'm Not Everything I Want to Be

After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Libuše Jarcovjáková, a young female photographer, strives to break free from the constraints of Czechoslovak normalization and embarks on a wild journey towards freedom, capturing her experiences on thousands of subjective photographs.

Movie

7.1

2017

Instant Dreams

There could hardly be a more telling contrast between the analog and digital eras than the beautifully blurry memories captured in a Polaroid picture and the thousands of pin-sharp photos on an iPhone. In this ambitious visual essay, Willem Baptist explores the visionary genius of Edwin H. Land, the inventor of the Polaroid camera. Even today, all sorts of people are keeping his instant dream alive. Former Polaroid employee Stephen Herchen moved from the United States to Europe to work in a laboratory developing the 2.0 version of Polaroid. Christopher Bonanos, the author of Instant: The Story of Polaroid, tells us, "When I heard Polaroid would stop making film, it felt like a close friend had died." Artist Stefanie Schneider, who is working with the last of her stock of Polaroid film, is using the blurring that occurs with expired film as an additional aesthetic layer in her photographic work.

Movie

Naked Ambition: An R Rated Look at an X Rated Industry

5.1

2009

Naked Ambition: An R Rated Look at an X Rated Industry

Noted celebrity photographer, Michael Grecco, sets out to capture the essence of the AVN Awards and Convention where the best in American Pornography is displayed, celebrated and honored.

Movie

5.9

2020

Night on Earth: Shot in the Dark

This look behind the scenes shows how worldwide camera crews climbed, dived and froze to capture the documentary's groundbreaking night footage.

Movie

1985

The Ballad of Sexual Dependency

Nan Goldin's slide show “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” converted, mixed and screened as a film by the artist, portraying the American underground culture, the no wave scene, post-Stonewall gay subculture, among others.

Movie

Recommended Movies

5.7

2007

American Pie Presents: Beta House

Erik, Ryan, and Cooze start college and pledge the Beta House fraternity, presided over by none other than legendary Dwight Stifler. But chaos ensues when a fraternity of geeks threatens to stop the debauchery and the Betas have to make a stand for their right to party.

Movie

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

7.2

2014

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

A documentary about the rise and fall of the Cannon Film Group, the legendary independent film company helmed by Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.

Movie

7.5

1931

Frankenstein

Tampering with life and death, Henry Frankenstein pieces together salvaged body parts to bring a human monster to life; the mad scientist's dreams are shattered by his creation's violent rage as the monster awakens to a world in which he is unwelcome.

Movie

5.4

2015

Soulless 2

Max Andreev thought the best place to start a new life would be at the other end of the world. What he didn't know, is that you can't outrun your past.

Movie

6.2

1986

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

Tommy Jarvis, tormented by the fear that maybe Jason isn't really dead, unwittingly resurrects the mass murderer for another bloody rampage.

Movie

5.5

2002

Cube 2: Hypercube

Eight strangers awaken with no memory, in a puzzling cube-shaped room where the laws of physics do not always apply.

Movie

7.8

2011

It's Such a Beautiful Day

Dark and troubling events force Bill to reckon with the meaning of his life.

Movie

6.9

2018

If Beale Street Could Talk

After her fiance is falsely imprisoned, a pregnant African-American woman sets out to clear his name and prove his innocence.

Movie

6.9

2017

T2 Trainspotting

After 20 years abroad, Mark Renton returns to Scotland and reunites with his old friends Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie.

Movie

7.7

2014

Doctor Who: Deep Breath

The newly-regenerated Doctor arrives in Victorian London, and Clara Oswald struggles to embrace the man he has become. All the while, they reunite with the Paternoster Gang to investigate a series of combustions that have been occurring all around the city.

Movie

7.2

2018

The China Hustle

An unsettling and eye-opening Wall Street horror story about Chinese companies, the American stock market, and the opportunistic greed behind the biggest heist you've never heard of.

Movie

7.9

1994

Three Colors: Red

Part-time model Valentine unexpectedly befriends a retired judge after she runs over his dog. At first, the grumpy man shows no concern about the dog, and Valentine decides to keep it. But the two form a bond when she returns to his house and catches him listening to his neighbors’ phone calls.

Movie

7.8

1968

Rosemary's Baby

A young couple, Rosemary and Guy, moves into an infamous New York apartment building, known by frightening legends and mysterious events, with the purpose of starting a family.

Movie

6.2

2017

Stephanie

After a mysterious global crisis, a young girl is left alone to hide from a malevolent power that stalks her home. Her parents eventually return and the struggle begins to save their daughter.

Movie

6.8

2017

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Rey develops her newly discovered abilities with the guidance of Luke Skywalker, who is unsettled by the strength of her powers. Meanwhile, the Resistance prepares to do battle with the First Order.

Movie

6.5

1997

Dobermann

The charismatic criminal Dobermann, who got his first gun when he was christened, leads a gang of brutal robbers. After a complex and brutal bank robbery, they are being hunted by the Paris police. The hunt is led by the sadistic cop Christini, who only has one goal: to catch Dobermann at any cost.

Movie

7.0

2006

Inland Empire

An actress’s perception of reality becomes increasingly distorted as she finds herself falling for her co-star in a remake of an unfinished Polish production that was supposedly cursed.

Movie

7.6

1994

Hoop Dreams

Every school day, African-American teenagers William Gates and Arthur Agee travel 90 minutes each way from inner-city Chicago to St. Joseph High School in Westchester, Illinois, a predominately white suburban school well-known for the excellence of its basketball program. Gates and Agee dream of NBA stardom, and with the support of their close-knit families, they battle the social and physical obstacles that stand in their way. This acclaimed documentary was shot over the course of five years.

Movie

6.0

2004

American Pie: Revealed

Documentary about the making of American Pie (1999), American Pie 2 (2001) and American Wedding (2003).

Movie

6.1

2018

Forgive Us Our Debts

Threatened by creditors, a newly unemployed man agrees to work for a debt collector, but soon discovers his deal with the devil has unexpected costs.

Movie