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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.