Summary: "All-American athlete, scholar, renowned baritone, stage actor, and social activist, Paul Robeson ... the son of an escaped slave, managed to become a top-billed movie star during the time of Jim Crow America ... his film legacy lives on and continues to speak eloquently of the long and difficult journey of a courageous and outspoken African-American."--Container.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2007

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Drama DVDs, Call number: DVD DRAMA PAU

Summary: Ten years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, this piece documents the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek. One of the first cinematic reflections on the horrors of the Holocaust and contrasts the stillness of the abandoned camps' quiet, empty buildings with haunting wartime footage.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2003

Copies Available at Woodmere

2 available in Foreign DVDs, Call number: DVD FOREIGN NIG

Summary: Filmmaker Les Blank considered this free-form feature documentary about singer-songwriter Leon Russell, filmed between 1972 and 1974 while Blank was living at the Russell/Shelter Records recording studio compound on Grand Lake of the Cherokees in NE Oklahoma, but unreleased due to creative differences and music clearance problems, to be one of his greatest accomplishments. Includes scenes of...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Music DVDs, Call number: DVD MUSIC LEO

Summary: Seamlessly interweaving archival war footage and a fictional narrative, this immersive account by Stuart Cooper of one twenty-year-old's journey from basic training to the front lines of D-day brings to life all the terrors and isolation of war with jolting authenticity.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2014

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in NEW Digital Video Disc, Call number: BLU-RAY DRAMA OVE

Summary: In 1983, director Martin Bell, photographer Mary Ellen Mark, and journalist Cheryl McCall set out to tell the stories of homeless and runaway teenagers in Seattle. These two films together create a frank, empathetic portrait of lost youth.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2021

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: BLU-RAY DOC STR

Summary: Portrait of the relationship between Edith Bouvier Beale and her grown daughter, Little Edie, once and aspiring actress in New York who left her career to care for her aging mother in their East Hampton home, and never left again. The aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis feed their cats and raccoons and rehash their pasts behind the walls of their decaying mansion, Grey Gardens.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Home Vision Entertainment 2001

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC GRE

Summary: "A landmark documentary ... Captures in vivid detail the bygone era of the door-to-door slesman. While laboring to sell a gold-embossed version of the Holy Word, Paul Brennan and his colleagues target the beleaguered masses, then face the demands of quotas and the frustrations of life on the road. Following Brennan on his daily rounds, the Maysles discover a real-life Willy Loman, walking the...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Home Vision Entertainment 2001

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC SAL

Summary: For more than a year, Sen followed New Delhi brothers Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad as they rescued birds of prey from the increasingly destructive effects of urban pollution. While charting the siblings' daily struggles and successes, he also documented their poetic reflections on humankind's relationship to the environment, the interaction of wildlife with the city, and India's explosions...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2024

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in NEW Digital Video Disc, Call number: DVD DOC ALL

Summary: Two French beggars on their way to Spain's holy city of Santiago de Compostela meet stigmatic children, crucified nuns, and others on their pilgrimage.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2007

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Foreign DVDs, Call number: DVD FOREIGN MIL

Summary: Walter Herzog's film Fitzcarraldo is the story of one man's attempt to build an opera house in the Amazon jungle. Filmmaker Les Blank captured the production, made perilous by Herzog's determination not to use models or special effects.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2005

Copies Available at Woodmere

2 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC BUR

Marker, Chris

Summary: In Paris after World War III, a few survivors research time travel hoping to send someone to the past to help their situation; the meditations of a world traveler on various world-wide locations are narrated.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2007

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Foreign DVDs, Call number: DVD FOREIGN JET

Summary: Anselm Kiefer is one of the most innovative and important painters and sculptors of our time. He allowed an immersive cinematic experience of his work exploring the overawing beauty of human existence, landscape, and myth while confronting the horrors of his native Germany's history and seeking to undo the postwar silence in which both artist and director came of age. Through archival footage,...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2024

Copies Available at Woodmere

2 available in NEW Digital Video Disc, Call number: DVD DOC ANS

Summary: The themes, images, and cultural vernacular of Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz continue to haunt David Lynch's filmography from his early short "The Alphabet" to his television series Twin Peaks: The Return. Is Lynch trapped in the Land of Oz? If so, what can we learn about his body of work by closely examining how it intersects and communicates with that legendary fantasy? In turn, what do...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2024

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC LYN
1 available in Browsing Hot DVDs, Call number: HOT DVD

Summary: Made up of intimate, revelatory footage of the singular author and poet filmed over the course of five years, Howard Brookner's 1983 documentary about William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch) was for decades mainly the stuff of legend; that changed when Aaron Brookner, the late director's nephew, discovered a print of it in 2011 and spearheaded a restoration. Includes on-screen appearances by Allen...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2015

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC BUR

Summary: Corridors of blood: Set in the primitive hospitals of 19th century London, this recounts the story of the unfortunate Dr. Bolton, an early pioneer in anesthesiology, showing his gradual addiction to drugs and his dealings with grave robbers.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2006

Copies Available at Woodmere

2 available in Thriller DVDs, Call number: DVD THRILLER HAU

Summary: An intimate documentary portrait of underground artist Robert Crumb, whose unique drawing style and sexually and racially provocative subject matter have made him a household name in popular American art. Zwigoff candidly and colorfully delves into the details of Crumb's incredible career, as well as his past, including his family of reclusive eccentrics, some of the most remarkable people ever...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2010

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: BLU-RAY DOC CRU

Summary: A collection of three dances choreographed by Martha Graham and performed by her company.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2007

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC MAR

Summary: In his unique fiction/documentary hybrid, the pioneering William Greaves presides over a beleaguered film crew in New York's Central Park, leaving them to try to figure out what kind of movie they're making. This wildly innovative sixties counterculture landmark is expanded 35 years later by its unconventional follow-up, Take 2 1/2. The sequel sees the actors reunited in a more personal,...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2020

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: BLU-RAY DOC SYM

Summary: Errol Morris (The Fog of War) turns his camera on one of the most fascinating men in the world: the pioneering astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, afflicted by a debilitating motor neuron disease that has left him without a voice or the use of his limbs. An adroitly crafted tale of personal adversity, professional triumph, and cosmological inquiry, Morris's documentary examines the way the collapse...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2014

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC BRI

Summary: "This holy grail for both documentary and theater aficionados offers a tantalizingly rare glimpse behind the Broadway curtain. In 1970, right after the triumphant premiere of Stephen Sondheim's groundbreaking concept musical Company, the renowned composer and lyricist, his director Harold Price, the show's stars, and a large pit orchestra all went into a Manhattan recording studio as part of a...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2021

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC ORI