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Nanook of the North

Robert Flaherty
1922 • 79 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #33 Edition: DVD

Robert Flaherty’s classic film tells the story of Inuit hunter Nanook and his family as they struggle to survive in the harsh conditions of Canada’s Hudson Bay region.

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Fishing with John

John Lurie
1992 • 147 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #42 Editions: DVD, Hulu Plus

John Lurie knows absolutely nothing about fishing, but that doesn’t stop him from undertaking the adventure of a lifetime in Fishing with John. Featuring Jim Jarmusch, Willem Dafoe, and Tom Waits.

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Salesman

Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin
1968 • 91 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #122 Editions: DVD, Hulu Plus

While laboring to sell a gold-embossed version of the Good Book, Paul Brennan and his colleagues target the beleaguered masses—then face the demands of quotas and the frustrations of life on the road. A landmark American documentary.

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Grey Gardens

Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Ellen Hovde…
1976 • 94 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #123 Editions: DVD, Collector’s Sets, Hulu Plus, iTunes

In Albert and David Maysles’s 1976 cult classic, Grey Gardens, meet Big and Little Edie Beale—high-society dropouts, mother and daughter, reclusive cousins of Jackie O.—thriving together amid the decay and disorder of their ramshackle East Hampton mansion.

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General Idi Amin Dada

Barbet Schroeder
1974 • 90 minutes • 1.33:1 • France
Spine: #153 Editions: DVD, Hulu Plus

In 1971, self-styled dictator General Idi Amin Dada took control of Uganda; director Barbet Schroeder turns his cameras on the dynamic, charming, and appallingly dangerous tyrant.

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Tokyo Olympiad

Kon Ichikawa
1965 • 170 minutes • 2.35:1 • Japan
Spine: #155 Edition: DVD

Utilizing glorious widescreen cinematography, Kon Ichikawa examines the beauty and rich drama on display at the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo. A spectacle of magnificent proportions, Tokyo Olympiad ranks among the greatest documents of sport ever committed to film.

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Night and Fog

Alain Resnais
1955 • 31 minutes • 1.33:1 • France
Spine: #197 Editions: DVD, Hulu Plus

One of the first cinematic reflections on the horrors of the Holocaust, Alain Resnais’ documentary Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) contrasts the stillness of the abandoned camps’ quiet, empty buildings with haunting wartime footage.

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F for Fake

Orson Welles
1975 • 87 minutes • 1.66:1 • United States
Spine: #288 Editions: DVD, Hulu Plus, iTunes

Trickery. Deceit. Magic. In Orson Welles’s free-form documentary F for Fake, the legendary filmmaker (and self-described charlatan) gleefully engages the central preoccupation of his career—the tenuous line between truth and illusion, art and lies.

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Burden of Dreams

Les Blank
1982 • 95 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #287 Editions: DVD, Hulu Plus, iTunes

Les Blank documents acclaimed German filmmaker Werner Herzog’s ambitious and troubled production of Fitzcarraldo, the story of one man’s attempt to build an opera house deep in the Amazon jungle.

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Hoop Dreams

Steve James
1994 • 171 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #289 Editions: DVD, Hulu Plus, iTunes

Filmed over a five-year period, Hoop Dreams follows young Arthur Agee and William Gates as they navigate the complex, competitive world of scholastic athletics, while striving to overcome the intense pressures of family life and the realities of their Chicago streets.

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Harlan County USA

Barbara Kopple
1976 • 103 minutes • 1.78:1 • United States
Spine: #334 Edition: DVD

Barbara Kopple’s Academy Award–winning Harlan County USA unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners’ strike in a small Kentucky town. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners’ sometimes violent struggles with strikebreakers, local police, and company thugs.

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Koko: A Talking Gorilla

Barbet Schroeder
1978 • 80 minutes • 1.33:1 • France
Spine: #340 Edition: DVD

In 1977, acclaimed director Barbet Schroeder entered the universe of the world’s most famous primate to create the entertaining, troubling, and still relevant documentary Koko: A Talking Gorilla.

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The Beales of Grey Gardens

Albert Maysles and David Maysles
2006 • 91 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #361 Editions: DVD, Collector’s Sets, Hulu Plus

The filmmakers of Grey Gardens went back to their vaults of footage to create part two, The Beales of Grey Gardens, a tribute both to these indomitable women, Big and Little Edie Beale, and to the landmark documentary’s legions of fans, who have made them counterculture icons.

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Antonio Gaudí

Hiroshi Teshigahara
1984 • 72 minutes • 1.33:1 • Japan
Spine: #425 Editions: DVD, Hulu Plus, iTunes

A unique, enthralling cinematic experience, Teshigahara’s Antonio Gaudí, less a documentary than a visual poem, takes viewers on a tour of Gaudí’s truly spectacular architecture.

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Bergman Island

Marie Nyreröd
2006 • 83 minutes • 1.77:1 • Sweden
Spine: #477 Editions: DVD, Hulu Plus

The most breathtakingly candid series of interviews that the famously reclusive director ever took part in, Bergman Island features legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman sitting down just four years before his death with Swedish documentarian Marie Nyreröd in his home on Fårö Island.

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For All Mankind

Al Reinert
1989 • 79 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #54 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray, Hulu Plus, iTunes

Al Reinert’s visually dazzling documentary For All Mankind is the story of the twenty-four men who traveled to the moon—told in their words, in their voices, using the images of their experiences.

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Monterey Pop

D. A. Pennebaker
1967 • 78 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #168 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray, Collector’s Sets

In 1967, at the height of the Summer of Love, the first and only Monterey International Pop Festival roared forward, capturing a decade’s spirit and ushering in a new era of rock and roll. Monterey would launch the careers of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Otis Redding, but they were just a few.

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Jimi Plays Monterey & Shake! Otis at Monterey

D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus
1986 • 63 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #169 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray, Collector’s Sets

Jimi Plays Monterey and Shake! Otis at Monterey, acclaimed documentarian D. A. Pennebaker’s Monterey Pop companion pieces, feature the entire sets by these legendary musicians, performances that have entered rock-and-roll mythology.

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Gimme Shelter

David Maysles, Albert Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin
1970 • 91 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #99 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray

Called the greatest rock film ever made, this landmark documentary follows the Rolling Stones on their notorious 1969 U.S. tour.

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Crumb

Terry Zwigoff
1995 • 120 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #533 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray

Terry Zwigoff’s landmark 1995 film is an intimate documentary portrait of the 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.

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Louie Bluie

Terry Zwigoff
1985 • 60 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #532 Editions: DVD, Hulu Plus, iTunes

Crumb director Terry Zwigoff’s first film is a true treat: a documentary about the obscure country-blues musician and idiosyncratic visual artist Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong, member of the last known black string band in America.

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The Times of Harvey Milk

Robert Epstein
1984 • 88 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
Spine: #557 Editions: DVD, Blu-ray, Hulu Plus, iTunes

The Oscar-winning The Times of Harvey Milk, was as groundbreaking as its subject. One of the first feature documentaries to address gay life in America, it’s a work of advocacy itself, bringing Milk’s message of hope and equality to a wider audience.

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