Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment
Genres
Overview
A documentary about direct-cinema from its very beginnings (Nanook of the North) to the fake-direct-cinema of the Blair Witch Project. All the important direct-cinema filmmakers are portrayed and/or interviewed: Leacock, Wiseman, Maysles, Pennebaker, Reisz and others.
Details
Budget
$0
Revenue
$0
Runtime
105 min
Release Date
2000-06-09
Status
Released
Original Language
English
Vote Count
6
Vote Average
6
7.3
Gimme Shelter
A detailed chronicle of the famous 1969 tour of the United States by the British rock band The Rolling Stones, which culminated with the disastrous and tragic concert held on December 6 at the Altamont Speedway Free Festival, an event of historical significance, as it marked the end of an era: the generation of peace and love suddenly became the generation of disillusionment.
1970-12-13 | en
6.4
Primary
Primary is a documentary film about the primary elections between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey in 1960. Primary is the first documentary to use light equipment in order to follow their subjects in a more intimate filmmaking style. This unconventional way of filming created a new look for documentary films where the camera’s lens was right in the middle of what ever drama was occurring. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 1998.
1960-11-08 | en
7.4
Dont Look Back
In this wildly entertaining vision of one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists, Bob Dylan is surrounded by teen fans, gets into heated philosophical jousts with journalists, and kicks back with fellow musicians Joan Baez, Donovan, and Alan Price.
1967-05-17 | en
6.9
The War Room
A behind-the-scenes documentary about the Clinton for President campaign, focusing on the adventures of spin doctors James Carville and George Stephanopoulos.
1993-11-03 | en
7.3
Grey Gardens
Edie Bouvier Beale and her mother, Edith, two aging, eccentric relatives of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, are the sole inhabitants of a Long Island estate. The women reveal themselves to be misfits with outsized, engaging personalities. Much of the conversation is centered on their pasts, as mother and daughter now rarely leave home.
1976-02-19 | en
6.0
Valldaura: A Quarantine Cabin
A group of young architects, confined to a forest in Barcelona during the COVID crisis, explore the problems generated by the ambition of wanting to be completely self-sufficient.
2022-07-24 | es
7.2
Titicut Follies
A stark and graphic portrayal of the conditions that existed at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and documents the various ways the inmates are treated by the guards, social workers, and psychiatrists.
1967-10-03 | en
7.2
Salesman
This documentary from Albert and David Maysles follows the bitter rivalry of four door-to-door salesmen working for the Mid-American Bible Company: Paul "The Badger" Brennan, Charles "The Gipper" McDevitt, James "The Rabbit" Baker and Raymond "The Bull" Martos. Times are tough for this hard-living quartet, who spend their days traveling through small-town America, trying their best to peddle gold-leaf Bibles to an apathetic crowd of lower-middle-class housewives and elderly couples.
1969-04-17 | en
7.0
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One
In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?
1968-10-28 | en
7.3
Monterey Pop
Featuring performances by popular artists of the 1960s, this concert film highlights the music of the 1967 California festival. Although not all musicians who performed at the Monterey Pop Festival are on film, some of the notable acts include the Mamas and the Papas, Simon & Garfunkel, Jefferson Airplane, the Who, Otis Redding, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Hendrix's post-performance antics -- lighting a guitar on fire, breaking it and tossing a part into the audience -- are captured.
1968-12-26 | en
0.0
Trump Rally
Sean Dunne's observational documentary of a 2016 Donald Trump Rally.
2016-01-31 | en
0.0
Back to the Land
Feature-length documentary as part of Pierre Perrault's Abitibian Cycle. The filmmaker questions the past and present of Abitibi and draws up, face to face, the promises of colonization in the 1930s and the great disappointment caused by the closing of the land in the 1970s. There are witnesses to the heroic era, including the cultivator Hauris Lalancette, as well as extracts from films by Father Maurice Proulx (1934-1940).
1976-01-01 | fr
0.0
With Sea Views
After consolidating itself as a tourist destination in the mid-1960s, this small coastal village has become the dormitory town for the workers of a Nuclear Power Plant. With the liberal promise of prosperity and socioeconomic wellfare, many workers left their homes to move to the small city and started working at the new Nuclear Power Plant. The collective unrest and the silence, cut off by the great gusts of wind, articulate the landscape of the village that is now under the aid of the Nuclear Power Plant.
2021-09-17 | es
5.8
Campaign
Can a candidate with no political experience and no charisma win an election if he is backed by the political giant Prime Minister Koizumi and his Liberal Democratic Party? This cinema-verite documentary closely follows a heated election campaign in Kawasaki, Japan, revealing the true nature of "democracy."
2007-10-06 | ja
0.0
Seafighters
Living among the percebeiros of the Coast of Death (Galicia), this documentary shows a unique relationship between man and his surroundings, man and the sea. At the end of Europe, years after the Prestige oil spill disaster, these fishermen face an uncertain future.
2017-10-21 | gl
6.1
Capturing Reality
From cinema-verite; pioneers Albert Maysles and Joan Churchill to maverick movie makers like Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and Nick Broomfield, the world's best documentarians reflect upon the unique power of their genre. Capturing Reality explores the complex creative process that goes into making non-fiction films. Deftly charting the documentarian's journey, it poses the question: can film capture reality?
2008-11-01 | en
7.2
Chronicle of a Summer
Paris, summer 1960. Anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch and sociologist and film critic Edgar Morin wander through the crowded streets asking passersby how they cope with life's misfortunes.
1961-10-20 | fr
6.4
Mysterious Object at Noon
A camera crew travels through Thailand asking villagers to invent the next chapter of an ever-growing story.
2000-11-08 | th
7.3
High School
Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman takes us inside Northeast High School as a fly on the wall to observe the teachers and how they interact with the students.
1969-05-14 | en
7.3
Warrendale
This ground-breaking cinéma-vérité classic documents five weeks in the lives of twelve residents of a home for emotionally disturbed children. It is the first in the form that King later described as actuality drama. All the action is spontaneous and undirected, with neither interviews nor narration. The theme is the outrage of life. The children asked the filmmakers, Why is it that whenever pictures of us are put in the papers, our faces are blacked out. What is so awful about us that we cant be seen? They wanted to be filmed so that they could be seen.
1967-06-07 | en