documentaries

Oscar Documentary Winner "Navalny" Part of Long Protest Tradition

by Lynne Hartnett

Without traditional or legal support for dissent and free speech, Russian activists have long turned to martydom as the way to dramatize injustice and criticize power. The recent Best Documentary winner is part of this tradition. 

New Docuseries Traces the Importance of America's Vanishing Lesbian Bars

In 1987, there were an estimated 206 lesbian bars across the U.S. Phoenix's Boycott Bar is one of fewer than two dozen that remain today.

Catch these Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass Docs While You Can

by Walter G. Moss

Readers have a short time to watch two informative documentaries on American freedom fighters Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. 

Documentary on the Last Slave Ship to Arrive in the United States Takes on Questions of Memorializing Racist Violence

Margaret Brown's "Descendant" looks at the effort to preserve and promote Africatown, the Alabama coast community founded by people brought on the last slave ship to dock in the United States. 

Another Documentarian's Perspective on "The U.S. and the Holocaust"

by Martin Ostrow

Like many other Americans, I will be watching closely to see if The U.S. and the Holocaust honestly portrays the responsibility of American leaders, or fails to confront the difficult truths that need to be faced.

Documentary Shows the Choices that Led to Deadly Streets

Blaming distraction—by drivers, pedestrians or cyclists—for climbing road fatalities is a cop-out, says Jennifer Boyd. Americans need to be willing to question the basic design of roads and the priority they give to moving cars fast if they are serious about reducing road deaths. 

The Misuse of History in 2021 Documentary "The Business of Birth Control"

by Donna J. Drucker

The documentary combines an endorsement of conspiratorial suspicion of pharmaceutical contraception and scientifically questionable fertility management under the guise of "empowerment" with a dose of financial conflict of interest thrown in. 

Ken Burns on the Revolutionary Ben Franklin

"If you find out that, very early on, there’s somebody advocating emancipation, it just makes the narrative a little bit messier."

Docuseries "Everything's Gonna Be All White" Challenges Recurrent Historical Denial

The CRT moral panic is just the latest instance of white America preferring to forget about the significance of race in history. Historian Nell Irvin Painter joins a new series where Americans of color critique the idea of whiteness. 

The Beatles Ignited a Culture War and Changed the World

by Randall J. Stephens

While Peter Jackson's "Get Back" documentary focuses on the last phases of the band's work together, it's important to think about how the group's emergence changed American culture, especially around sex and gender. 

View the Pioneering 1971 TV Series "Chicano" Through the USC Moving Image Archive

The Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts has made available recently preserved video of the 1971 television program "Chicano," a pioneering examination of the political, social and cultural concerns of Mexican Americans in California and the U.S. Southwest. 

Detroit Bankruptcy Documentary Wins Library of Congress Prize

Ken Burns, who collaborated with Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden on the selection, called "Gradually, Then Suddenly" a "complex, nuanced, layered" examination of the city's financial crisis and the political divide between Detroit and the state of Michigan. 

Passing Time and the Challenge of Catching "Eyewitnesses to History"

by Thomas Doherty

Historians have only recently wised up to the need to capture eyewitness remembrances of events. As the "Greatest Generation" passes and the Baby Boomers age, a cultural historian urges: talk to people while you still can. 

LGBTQ Documentary “Cured” Debuts on PBS’ Independent Lens

A new documentary revisits the period before the American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973, and psychiatry endorsed extreme measures to "cure" same-sex attraction. 

Ken Burns's "Muhammad Ali" Well-Crafted, But Not Groundbreaking

Ken Burns has an irresistable subject for his latest project. The problem isn't the quality of his film, but that so many others have gotten there first. 

Spike Lee’s New Documentary Platforms a 9/11 Conspiracy Theorist [UPDATE: LEE TO EDIT DOC]

"There’s still time, though, before Episode 4 airs, for Lee to do the right thing by excising the 30-minute section from the film, which is totally unnecessary to the true and important story he tells in the rest of the episode."

New Documentary Asks Why Obsession with Hitler Endures

"Why take 90 minutes to warn everyone yet again about Hitler, they wonder, when every mention of him only seems to do more harm than good?"

Independent Lens Presents: The People Vs. Agent Orange

Two women activists demand accountability from the chemical industry for the toll of illness and death caused by Agent Orange. 

Women Dominate One Academy Award Category. Here’s Why

by David Resha

Women have dominated the Documentary Feature category at the Academy Awards, and have indeed shaped the genre from the beginning. But this reflects the fact that the film industry has been more willing to entrust leadership to women in the low-cost, low-stakes environment of documentaries than in feature film. 

The Fruit of Power

Raoul Peck's documentary "Exterminate All The Brutes" considers not just the history of settler colonialism, but the epistemology of history in contexts where the powerful seek to shape knowledge.