The Sun's Gonna Shine

A lyrical recreation of Lightnin’ Hopkins’ decision at age eight to stop chopping cotton and start singing for a living. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.

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Not a Pretty Picture

Mixing narrative and documentary, the film retells a 16 year old girl's experience of a date rape.

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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.

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Baraka

A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.

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Primary

Primary is a documentary film about the primary elections between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey in 1960. Primary is the first documentary to use light equipment in order to follow their subjects in a more intimate filmmaking style. This unconventional way of filming created a new look for documentary films where the camera’s lens was right in the middle of what ever drama was occurring. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 1998.

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God Respects Us When We Work, But Loves Us When We Dance

Les Blank's poetic documentation of 1967's Los Angeles Easter Sunday Love-In. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2002.

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Appointment in Tokyo

Produced by the Army Pictorial Service, Signal Corps, with the cooperation of the Army Air Forces and the United States Navy, and released by Warner Bros. for the War Activities Committee shortly after the surrender of Japan. Follow General Douglas MacArthur and his men from their exile from the Philippines in early 1942, through the signing of the instrument of surrender on the USS Missouri on September 1, 1945. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.

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Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator

The spectacular rise and scandalous fall of hot-yoga evangelist Bikram Choudhury is chronicled through archival footage and extensive insider interviews.

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Soft Fiction

Chick Strand's SOFT FICTION is a personal documentary that brilliantly portrays the survival power of female sensuality. It combines the documentary approach with a sensuous lyrical expressionism. Strand focuses her camera on people talking about their own experience, capturing subtle nuances in facial expressions and gestures that are rarely seen in cinema. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2015.

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Harlan County U.S.A.

This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with New York Women in Film & Television in 2004.

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The Man Who Skied Down Everest

This Oscar-winning documentary tells the story behind Japanese daredevil Yuichiro Miura's 1970 effort to ski down the world's tallest mountain. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2010.

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The Burning Times

This documentary takes an in-depth look at the witch hunts that swept Europe just a few hundred years ago. False accusations and trials led to massive torture and burnings at the stake and ultimately to the destruction of an organic way of life. The film questions whether the widespread violence against women and the neglect of our environment today can be traced back to those times.

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Becoming Nobody

The core arc of Ram Dass’ teachings and life: whether as Dr. Richard Alpert, the eminent Harvard psychologist, or as Ram Dass who serves as a bridge between Eastern and Western philosophies, he has defined a generation of inner explorers and seekers of truth and wisdom.

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Walk with Me

Narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, Walk With Me is a cinematic journey into the world of a monastic community who practice the art of mindfulness with Zen Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh.

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Women in Defense

Short documentary extolling the virtues and necessity for women to participate in America's preparation for war, showing women working in scientific, industrial, and voluntary-services activities. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2008.

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The Maltese Cross Movement

The film reflects Dewdney's conviction that the projector, not the camera, is the filmmaker's true medium. The form and content of the film are shown to derive directly from the mechanical operation of the projector - specifically the maltese cross movement's animation of the disk and the cross illustrates graphically (pun intended) the projector's essential parts and movements. It also alludes to a dialectic of continuous-discontinuous movements that pervades the apparatus, from its central mechanical operation to the spectator's perception of the film's images... (His) soundtrack demonstrates that what we hear is also built out of continuous-discontinuous 'sub-sets.' Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2009.

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Another World

A feature documentary about the journey of mankind to discover our true force and who we truly are. It is a quest through science and consciousness, individual and planetary, exploring our relationships with ourselves, the world around us and the universe as a whole.

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Marjoe

Part documentary, part expose, this film follows one-time child evangelist Marjoe Gortner on the "church tent" Revivalist circuit, commenting on the showmanship of Evangelism and "the religion business", prior to the start of "televangelism". Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2005.

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Awake: The Life of Yogananda

An unconventional biography by Oscar nominee Paola di Florio and Sundance winner Lisa Leeman about Hindu mystic Paramahansa Yogananda who brought yoga and meditation to the West in 1920 and authored the spiritual classic "Autobiography of a Yogi," which became the go-to book for seekers from George Harrison to Steve Jobs.

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Ram Dass, Going Home

Ram Dass is one of the most important cultural figures from the 1960s and 70s. A pyschedelic pioneer, author of Be Here Now, beloved spiritual teacher, and outspoken advocate for death-and-dying awareness, Ram Dass is now himself approaching the end of life. Since suffering a life-changing stroke twenty years ago, he has been living at his home on Maui and deepening his spiritual practice — which is centered on love and his idea of merging with his surroundings and all living things. Shot in a nuanced cinematic style, the film is an intimate summary of his life learning and awareness, and is ultimately a poetic meditation on life, death, and the soul’s journey home.

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