Summary: In the late 19th century, as America's teeming cities grew increasingly congested, the time had come to replace the nostalgic horse-drawn trolleys with a faster, cleaner, safer, and more efficient form of transportation. Ultimately, it was Boston, a city of so many firsts that overcame a litany of engineering challenges, the greed-driven interests of businessmen, and the great fears of its...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2017
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV RACSummary: It is a timely tale of what can happen when engaged citizens fight the power for the sake of a better world. Arguably, no one did more to shape our understanding of the modern American city than Jane Jacobs, the visionary activist and writer who fought to preserve urban communities in the face of destructive development projects. The film vividly brings to life Jacobs' 1960s showdown with...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: MPI Media Group 2017
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC CITSummary: Narrated by Tony-and Academy Award-winner Joel Grey, this entertaining documentary mingles cultural history with illuminating perspectives on the origins and meanings of some of Broadway's most beloved songs, stories, and shows. With performances by Matthew Broderick, Kelli O'Hara, Zero Mostel, Nathan Lane, Barbra Streisand, Idina Menzel, Kristin Chenoweth, and many more!
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2021
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV BROSummary: On the Bowery: A documentary film of men living on the Bowery. Depicts life inside the bars and on the sidewalks, the alcoholism and unemployment and life on the streets. Good times, wonderful times: This antiwar film predated Viet Nam, but had great impact in the sixties. The film cuts between documentary war footage and extemporized conversations.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Milestone Film & Video 2012
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC ONSummary: In 1969 the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village, leading to three nights of rioting by the city's LGBT community. With this outpouring of courage and unity the gay liberation movement had begun. Newly restored for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, this documentary pries open the closet door, setting free the dramatic story of survival,...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2019
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC BEFSummary: With a healthy dose of insight and wit, takes an inside look at the Park Slope Food Coop, one of America's most successful cooperative food supermarkets. In Brooklyn NY, in the shadow of Wall Street, an institution that represents a less well-known American tradition is booming. The Park Slope Food Coop, a cooperative supermarket where all 16,000 members work 2.75 hours per month to earn the...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2019
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC FOOSummary: There are 8,000 miles of roads and paths in New York City, and for the past six years, Matt Green has been walking them all, every street, park, cemetery, beach, and bridge. It's a five-borough journey that stretches from the barbershops of the Bronx to the forests of Staten Island, from the Statue of Liberty to Times Square, with Matt amassing a surprisingly detailed knowledge of New York's...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Kino Lorber 2019
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC WORSummary: In 2020 the Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrated its 150th anniversary. This three-part program looks at the uncertainty the Met faced at this time as it faced an indefinite closure due to COVID-19 and calls for social justice following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2021
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV INSSummary: Incorporates user-generated content to follow a 31-day scavenger hunt that took place in October, 2013, on the streets of New York City at the hands of Banksy, a British street artist.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Kino Lorber 2015
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC BANSummary: As live performances on Broadway start up again after an unprecedented absence of eighteen months, an all-star cast tells the inside story of the last time Broadway theater came back from the brink. On Broadway shows how this revival helped save New York City, thanks to innovative work, new attention to inclusion, and the sometimes uneasy balance between art and commerce. Legends of the stage...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2021
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC ONSummary: A fiery and urgent documentary portrait of downtown New York City artist, writer, photographer, and activist David Wojnarowicz. As New York City became the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, Wojnarowicz weaponized his work and waged war against the establishment's indifference to the plague until his death from it in 1992 at the age of 37. Exclusive access to his breathtaking body of...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2021
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC WOJSummary: With editing completed by filmmaker Ken Kobland after the death of director/producer Marion Cajori, this movie describes the life and work of an artist who has reinvented portraiture. Close photographs his subjects, blows up the image to gigantic proportions, divides it into a detailed grid and then uses a complex set of colors and patterning to reconstruct each face. The artist describes his...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Arthouse Films 2010
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC CHUSummary: The Automat recounts the lost history of the iconic restaurant chain Horn & Hardart, which served affordable food to millions of New Yorkers and Philadelphians for more than a century. Founded by Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart in 1888, it revolutionized the nation's restaurant scene with technology that captured the public's imagination like nothing else the customer put nickels into slots, and...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2022
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC AUTSummary: Documents the monumental move of renowned photographer and artist, Jay Maisel, who, in February 2015 after forty-eight years, sold his home, the 36,000 square-foot, 100-year-old landmark building in Manhattan known simply as "The Bank." Through the intimate lens of noted artist and photographer Stephen Wilkes, the viewer is taken on a remarkable journey through Maisel's life as an artist,...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2019
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC JAYSummary: "Made when she was just 18 years old, Barbara Rubin's art-porn masterpiece Christmas On Earth (1963-65) shocked NYC's experimental film scene and inspired NYC's thriving underground. For the next four years her filmmaking and irrepressible energy helped shatter artistic and sexist boundaries. A mythical 'Zelig' of the sixties, she introduced Andy Warhol to the Velvet Underground and Bob Dylan...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2018
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC BARSummary: Chef, writer, adventurer, provocateur: Anthony Bourdain lived his life unabashedly. Director Morgan Neville offers an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at how an anonymous chef became a world-renowned cultural icon. This unflinching look at Bourdain reverberates with his presence, in his own voice and in the way he indelibly impacted the world around him.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2021
Copies Available at Woodmere
2 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC ROASummary: New York City, including its outer boroughs, during August 2017: it's a month heavy with the tension of a new President, growing anxiety over everything from rising rents to marching white nationalists, and unrelenting news of either wildfires or hurricanes on every coast. The film pivots on the question of futurity: what does the future look like from where we are standing? And what if we are...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2019
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC HOTSummary: A portrait of musical iconoclast David Johansen from Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi. From his days leading The New York Dolls to his reinvention as lounge lizard Buster Poindexter, David Johansen is a chameleonic one-of-a-kind performer. Featuring a live performance at Cafe Carlyle in New York City, where he performs as Poindexter singing the Johansen songbook, along with new and archival...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2023
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC PERSummary: This compilation of five early short films by Martin Scorsese offers a fascinating window onto his artistic development. Spanning the years from Scorsese's time at NYU in the mid-1960s to the late '70s.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2020