The year’s most spectacular Documentary short films.
Social & External
Henry Rollins narrates Lilly Scourtis Ayers' no-holds-barred profile of volatile Bay Area punk legend Marian Anderson, whose hypnotic beauty, devil-may-care rebellion and shocking sexual exploits onstage launched her to infamy before tragically dying of a heroin overdose at the tender age of 33.
Once again, David Graham Scott examines how some addicts use the plant medicine iboga to detox rapidly—and how, sometimes, the conditions in which they detox put them at risk.
A film showing how apples may be made an attractive part of the menu for many different occasions. Four recipes--apple salad, apple upside-down cake, glazed apples and apple ice cream--are given in detail, and a section is devoted to the choice of apples for different purposes.
Documentary depicts what happened in Rio de Janeiro on June 12th 2000, when bus 174 was taken by an armed young man, threatening to shoot all the passengers. Transmitted live on all Brazilian TV networks, this shocking and tragic-ending event became one of violence's most shocking portraits, and one of the scariest examples of police incompetence and abuse in recent years.
The surprising and entertaining life of renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert (1942-2013): his early days as a freewheeling bachelor and Pulitzer Prize winner, his famously contentious partnership with Gene Siskel, his life-altering marriage, and his brave and transcendent battle with cancer.
Incarcerated participants in a mental health experiment watch videos of sunset-soaked beaches, wildflowers and forests on loop, prompting them to reflect on isolation and wilderness. Equal parts meditation and provocation, Blue Room identifies the damage done by withholding access to the outdoors and how we are all prisoners when the essential human need for communion with nature is denied.
What are one week films? They're an assignment we do our first week back at CalArts, designed to dust off cobwebs by throwing us straight into the deep end. Our class theme was "square," and we had a lot of fun playing around with compositions inspired by East Asian graphic design.
The story about how Britt-Marie took back the brush factory from her husband’s cruel brother at the end of the fifties was one of Malin’s childhood fairy tales. Britt-Marie is now 95 years old and trying to set the story straight with the help of her daughter behind the camera. Together they outline a powerful life story that is slowly fading away.
What “living on the autism spectrum” means for those affected and their environment. To find out, the camera team accompanied autistic people into their world. The documentary shows the challenges they face in their everyday lives and lets them tell their personal stories. It is accompanied by two renowned autism researchers, Tony Attwood and Professor Ludger Tebartz van Elst, and dispels the clichés that most people have about autistic people. Because autism is very diverse. The documentary takes an exclusive look at the current state of autism research in Professor Jürgen Knoblich's gene laboratory in Vienna.
This explores the reality of chefs and cooks as they struggle to create dishes and experiences enjoyed on a daily basis. The restaurant industry is a tough business, not just for profits, but for everyone involved.
This documentary follows the lives of several extraordinary people who have been diagnosed with social anxiety disorder. Through personal interviews, viewers learn about the symptoms, emotions, and challenges these people face and about the treatments available to help people on their road to recovery.
Conrad Brooks discusses "Hellborn," his unfinished movie with Ed Wood, and other projects
The Wait to Nowhere: When a Crisis Goes Untreated reveals an unspeakable reality: children living in the ER for days, weeks and even months at a time, awaiting dedicated care. This film explores the issue and touches on solutions. True stories are told by those living this nightmare, including hospitals that are caught up in a failed system, while lawmakers help lay out a plan to address the crisis before even more children’s lives are lost.
In a village in Thailand, Pomm works in a care center for Europeans with Alzheimer's. While she is separated from her children, she helps Elisabeth during the final stages of her life, as Maya, a new patient, is on her way from Switzerland.
This film from Bill Moyers is the first documentary to focus exclusively on people formerly detained in New York City’s notorious Rikers Island Jail. They tell their compelling stories direct to the camera, revealing the violent arc of the Rikers experience – from the trauma of entry to extortion and control by inmates, to oppressive corrections officers, violence and solitary confinement.
Eva’s being allowed to leave the psychiatric institution she’s lived in for six years. After a long year of waiting, the news arrive: an assisted living residence is found for her. Eva takes the first steps towards the "normal" life she longs for: to find a job, earn an income of her own, visit her mother... even find love. While she’s taking stock of her past and works on her self-confidence as well as her trust in the outside world, she also fixes firmly on her main goal: to reconnect with the son she lost custody of 20 years ago and ask him to forgive her. The First Woman is a film about second chances, the search for "normality" and the borderline between lucidity and darkness.
In Fear, documentary filmmaker Michiel van Erp creates a collage of inhabitants of the city of Amsterdam who struggle with various anxiety disorders. Today, more patients with anxiety disorders seek professional help than those who suffer from depression, making anxiety the number one mental illness in the Netherlands. This film will show how a small number of those patients attempt to overcome their fears, in order to get on with their lives in the crowded cosmopolitan city that Amsterdam is today.
Story of Mary Mallon. Typhoid fever carrier
Those who knew iconic funnyman John Candy best share his story, in their own words, through never-before-seen archival footage, imagery, and interviews.
Incarcerated men defy the odds to expose a cover-up in one of America’s deadliest prison systems.
An in-depth look at the prison system in the United States and how it reveals the nation's history of racial inequality.
A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.
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.
The life and career of an actor, artist, and icon. His own journey through his own camera.
Unravel the case of Utah therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, whose child abuse arrest with parenting YouTuber Ruby Franke exposed a twisted tale of manipulation.
Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving November 2012, four boys in a red SUV pull into a gas station after spending time at the mall buying sneakers and talking to girls. With music blaring, one boy exits the car and enters the store, a quick stop for a soda and a pack of gum. A man and a woman pull up next to the boys in the station, making a stop for a bottle of wine. The woman enters the store and an argument breaks out when the driver of the second car asks the boys to turn the music down. 3½ minutes and ten bullets later, one of the boys is dead. 3½ MINUTES dissects the aftermath of this fatal encounter.
In this genre-bending tale, Errol Morris explores the mysterious death of a U.S. scientist entangled in a secret Cold War program known as MK-Ultra.
An impressionistic portrait of the iconic actor Harry Dean Stanton comprised of intimate moments, film clips from some of his 250 films and his renditions of American folk songs.
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.
Lyrical and powerfully personal essay film that reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother, her beloved dog, and such diverse subjects as family memories, surveillance, and Buddhist teachings.
Offbeat documentarian Chris Smith provides a behind-the-scenes look at how Jim Carrey adopted the persona of idiosyncratic comedian Andy Kaufman on the set of Man on the Moon.
A chronicle of the rise and fall of O.J. Simpson, whose high-profile murder trial exposed the extent of American racial tensions, revealing a fractured and divided nation.
From the heights of her modeling fame to her tragic death, this documentary reveals Anna Nicole Smith through the eyes of the people closest to her.
This revealing documentary honors the legendary Sidney Poitier—iconic actor, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Featuring interviews with Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Halle Berry, and more.
Twenty-five years after the verdict in the Rodney King trial sparked several days of protests, violence and looting in Los Angeles, LA 92 immerses viewers in that tumultuous period through stunning and rarely seen archival footage.
From a prolific career in film and television, Anton Yelchin left an indelible legacy as an actor. Through his journals and other writings, his photography, the original music he wrote, and interviews with his family, friends, and colleagues, this film looks not just at Anton's impressive career, but at a broader portrait of the man.
With exclusive access to his extraordinary unseen and unheard personal archive including hundreds of hours of audio recorded over the course of his life, this is the definitive Marlon Brando cinema documentary. Charting his exceptional career as an actor and his extraordinary life away from the stage and screen with Brando himself as your guide, the film will fully explore the complexities of the man by telling the story uniquely from Marlon's perspective, entirely in his own voice. No talking heads, no interviewees, just Brando on Brando and life.
