Summary: A behind-the-scenes look at the life of the former Saturday Night Live comedian turned author, radio host, and political satirist.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Docurama 2007

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Robert Frank, now 91 years old, is among the most influential artists of the last half-century. His seminal volume, The Americans, published in 1958, records the Swiss-born photographer's candid reactions to peculiarly American versions of poverty and racism. Today it is a classic work that helped define the off-the-cuff, idiosyncratic elegance that are hallmarks of Frank's artistry.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2017

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Simone Bitton, a Jewish woman born in Morocco who identifies with both Arab and Jewish cultures, examines the personal, cultural, and monetary costs of the Israeli West Bank Barrier, a wall being built to separate Israelis and Palestinians.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Life Size Entertainment 2005

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Traces the history of black America back to ancient African civilization, examining attempts by the white establishment in the U.S. to conceal this knowledge as a means of undermining African American identity. Presents theories of scholars and social commentators which comprise a history in which African Americans have been systematically oppressed as a people.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2011

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Hilma af Klint was an abstract artist before the term existed, a visionary, trailblazing figure who, inspired by spiritualism, modern science, and the riches of the natural world around her, began in 1906 to reel out a series of huge, colorful, sensual, strange works without precedent in painting. The subject of a recent smash retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, af Klint was for years an...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2020

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Eight hundred years ago, Francis of Assisi and the Sultan of Egypt met on the bloody battlefields of the Crusades. Based on new research and scholarship about that fateful meeting, The Sultan and The Saint tells one of the great, lost stories from history as two men of faith fought against a century of war and distrust in a search for mutual respect and common ground.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: PBS 2017

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Exposes the rampant poaching of migratory songbirds in southern Europe. Songbird populations have been drastically declining for several decades, with a number of species facing imminent extinction. This poignant documentary explores the wonder of these tiny globe-trekking marvels, millions of which are unlawfully slaughtered each year for large sums on the black market.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2015

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Interviews, performances, and footage from church services illustrate the story of soul singer Al Green, who gave up a successful singing career to become a gospel singer and Pentecostal preacher.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2008

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Rabble rouser or activist? Opportunist or trailblazer? During his six-decade journey from pastoral prodigy to racial justice firebrand to elder media statesman, the Reverend Al Sharpton has been a polarizing figure on the national stage. It is the definitive look at his life and legacy, featuring President Barack Obama, Reverend Jesse Jackson, and Senator Chuck Schumer.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2023

Copies Available at Woodmere

Causey, Frances

Summary: Explores the impact that deregulation and outsourcing have had on American's middle class.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Passion River 2013

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: With a fist full of credit cards, a lucky run at the horse track, and chutzpah for days, Franco Stevens launched Curve, the best-selling lesbian magazine ever published. The film tracks the power of lesbian visibility and community from the early '90s to the present day through the story of Franco's founding of Curve magazine. Decades later, in the wake of a disabling injury, Franco learns that...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2020

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: The Grande Chartreuse, considered one of the world's most ascetic monasteries is based in the French Alps. In 1984, German filmmaker Philip Gröning wrote to the Carthusian order for permission to make a documentary about them. They said they would get back with him. Sixteen years later, they were ready. Gröning, sans crew or artificial lighting, lived in the monks' quarters for six months -...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Zeitgeist Films 2007

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: A documentary about an important American still photographer who captured New York City in the 1960s (his work there is said to have influenced the TV show Mad Men) and later the West in Texas and Los Angeles.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2019

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Documentary providing an intimate portrait of Iraqis living under U.S. occupation. The principal focus is Dr. Riyadh, an Iraqi medical doctor, father of six, and Sunni political candidate who is an outspoken critic of the occupation but passionate about the need to establish democracy in Iraq. As his waiting room is filled daily with patients suffering the physical and mental effects of...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Zeitgeist Films 2007

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: The story of cinematography as seen through the lenses of the world's greatest filmmakers and captured in classic scenes from over 125 immortal movies. Traces the evolution and innovations of cinematography beginning in an era when the movie camera was a marvelous invention, and examines how the filmmaking process was complicated by new cinematic trends and technologies.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment 2000

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Looks at the mystique surrounding chef and restaurateur Georges Perrier at the time leading up to the closing of his iconic Philadelphia restaurant Le Bec-Fin, which in Perrier's own estimation was the last true French restaurant in the U.S.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: A documentary presenting the live recording of Aretha Franklin's album 'Amazing grace' at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts, Los Angeles, in January 1972.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment 2019

Copies Available at Fife Lake

Summary: The Frontline film is both an intimate and epic journey into the female experience of war. A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab's life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2019

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Naturalist and nineteenth century painter, John James Audubon was one of the most remarkable men of early America. The program brings to life his timeless paintings with dazzling footage of the living birds he immortalized, and celebrates visually the natural world he described in his writings. Interviews reveal the man, explore his art, and put his groundbreaking work in modern perspective.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2017

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: This is a documentary that chronicles artist and activist Ai Weiwei as he prepares for a series of exhibitions and gets into an increasing number of clashes with the Chinese government.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: MPI Media Group 2012

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: A portrait of contemporary Iran, as seen through the eyes of one woman as she drives through the streets of Tehran over a period of several days. Her journey is comprised of ten conversations with various female passengers, and shed light on the lives of these women whose voices are seldom heard.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Zeitgeist Video 2004

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Director Robert J. Flaherty journeyed with his wife, Frances, and their children to the South Seas island of Savai'i to capture on film the exotic lifestyles of the Samoan people. In doing so, they resurrected and dramatized the recently vanished customs and struggles of the people just before modernization permanently altered the cultural landscape of the island. In 1975, nearly 50 years after...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2015

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Ye Haiyan is labeled a trouble maker by the Chinese government. Someone who embarrasses the state, for example, with public protests involving the civil rights of sex workers. She travels to Hainan Province to protest a case in which sexual mistreatment of elementary-age school girls by their principal has gone unprosecuted.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

Copies Available at Woodmere