American Factory
In 2014, a Chinese billionaire opened a Fuyao factory in a shuttered General Motors plant in Dayton, Ohio. For thousands of locals, the arrival of this multinational car-glass manufacturer meant regaining their jobs—and dignity—after the recession left them high and dry. American Factory takes us inside the facility to observe what happens when workers from […]
Apollo 11
From director Todd Douglas Miller (Dinosaur 13) comes a cinematic event fifty years in the making. Crafted from a newly discovered trove of 65mm footage, and more than 11,000 hours of uncatalogued audio recordings, Apollo 11 takes us straight to the heart of NASA’s most celebrated mission—the one that first put men on the moon, […]
Ascension
Mesmerizing in its imagery, Ascension is an impressionistic portrait of China’s growing class divide through staggering observations of labor, consumerism and wealth. The film is structured in three parts, ascending through the levels of the capitalist structure: workers running factory production, the middle class selling to aspirational consumers, and the elites reveling in a new […]
Bisbee ’17
Boys State
Strap up your saddle and get ready for a wild ride. Boys State is a political coming-of-age story, examining the health of American democracy through an unusual experiment: a thousand 17-year-old boys from across the state of Texas gather together to build a representative government from the ground up. High-minded ideals collide with low-down dirty […]
Cameraperson
Drawing on footage she’s shot over the course of 25 years, documentary cinematographer Kirsten Johnson searches to reconcile her part in the thorny questions of permission, power, creative ambition and human obligation that come with filming the lives of others. (Ambulante)
City of Ghosts
Director Matthew Heineman returns with another immersive documentary from the front lines of one of the most dangerous places on Earth. In City of Ghosts, Heineman focuses his camera on the heroic citizen-journalists of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), who take great risks in order to document Islamic State atrocities in their home city. […]
Collective
What begins as a seeming exposé into a tragic accident gradually turns into something deeper and more shocking in this heartrending and revelatory documentary about state neglect and corruption. In October 2015, a devastating fire broke out at the Bucharest nightclub Colectiv, killing 27 people that night; in the following weeks, while the country was […]
Dick Johnson is Dead
Every day we get older. We can’t stop time and beat death, but we can change the way we react. In the face of losing her father, Dick, to dementia, Kirsten Johnson takes her dad’s death into her own hands. Through a series of hilarious, heart-wrenching fake fatal accidents, action stunts, and macabre special effects, […]
Ex Libris: The New York Public Library
Frederick Wiseman has described his documentaries as “reality fictions” and frequently compares his art to novel writing. Now, after 50 years of training his camera on institutions, he finally channels his passion for books to get inside the New York Public Library. Its photogenic Fifth Avenue main branch has served as a backdrop in numerous […]