New York Doll (2005)

Director:
Greg Whiteley

IMDB

Synopsis:
The New York Dolls were a rock band who titled their second studio album Too Much Too Soon, and it summed up the band's career all too well. Playing hard, swaggering rock & roll that anticipated the aural chaos of punk five years before the Sex Pistols became a cause célèbre, and boasting an androgynous fashion statement that made David Bowie look timid, the Dolls made headlines and earned a loyal cult following between 1971 and 1976, but their look and sound were too extreme for the mass audience at the time, and the fact that several members of the band had serious drug and alcohol problems hardly helped matters. After the New York Dolls finally fell apart in 1977, singer David Johansen went on to a successful solo career (scoring hit records under the alter ego Buster Poindexter), lead guitarist Johnny Thunders and drummer Jerry Nolan kept the band's sound alive in the Heartbreakers, and guitarist Syl Sylvain cut a few solo albums and occasionally worked with Johansen. But bassist Arthur Kane struggled for years to get his musical career back on track while battling alcoholism, with little success on either front. In 1989, after a stay in the hospital, a clean and sober Kane embraced the Mormon faith, and through his contacts in the church he got a job working in a Mormon genealogy library in Los Angeles. Despite his quiet new life, Kane's greatest dream was to someday play a reunion show with the New York Dolls, and in 2004 his wish unexpectedly became a reality when British pop icon Morrissey invited the surviving members of the band to appear at a prestigious music festival he was curating. Filmmaker Greg Whiteley knew Kane as a fellow Mormon, and New York Doll is a documentary about the ups and downs of Kane's life in music, how his faith came into his life, and his unexpected return to the rock & roll stage at the age of 55.

E-Dreams (2001)

Director:
Wonsuk Chin

IMDB

Synopsis:
In 1998, Joseph Park had an idea: What if someone created an Internet-based delivery service in which, after you'd typed a few commands into a web page, you could have videos, snacks, books, or other small items delivered to your door in less than an hour? By January of 1999, Park and his friend and business partner, Yong Kang, had turned their idea into a business proposal for Kozmo.com, and by the end of that year, the company had managed to secure 150 million dollars in financing, with seemingly everyone on board poised to become fabulously wealthy. In April of 2000, the NASDAQ market crash tolled the end of the e-commerce boom, and it soon became evident to Kozmo.com's investors that the company was losing money like water through a sieve; within months, Park's dream was in ruins. E-Dreams is a documentary that examines the rise and fall of Kozmo.com, and by extension the failings and foibles of the Internet commerce explosion of the late '90s.

We're Not Broke (2012)

Directors:
Victoria Bruce, Karin Hayes

IMDB

Synopsis:
We're Not Broke tells the story of U.S. corporations dodging billions of dollars in income tax, and how seven fed-up Americans take their frustration to the streets…and vow to make the corporations pay their fair share.

Triage: Dr. James Orbinski's Humanitarian Dilemma (2008)

Director:
Patrick Reed

IMDB

Synopsis:
Documentarist Patrick Reed's Triage: Dr. James Orbinski's Humanitarian Dilemma creates a biographical portrait of Orbinski, former head of the non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders and one of the most ardent social crusaders to work in Third World African countries during the late 20th century. Triage visits Dr. Orbinski at a point when this physician - amid the completion of his memoirs - returns to the countries of his life's work, including Rwanda, Somalia, and Congo, to evaluate the status quo in each locale. As memories of deplorable conditions and grave personal dangers come flooding back to haunt the physician, his current findings are even more sobering and challenging: today, the countries have worsened, elevating the need for social activism. Nevertheless, Orbinski feels encouraged by the individuals who continue to strive for improved conditions, and issues a not-so-subtle plea for westerners to assume social responsibility and become involved at all costs with alleviating the plight of their African neighbors.

The Glass House (2009)

Director:
Hamid Rahmanian

IMDB

Synopsis:
Growing up can be hard under ideal circumstances, but for young women in Iran, a male-dominated society where a female's rights and opportunities are compromised from birth, growing into an emotionally healthy adult can be profoundly difficult. Iranian expatriate Marjaneh Halati has opened an outreach center for teenage women in Tehran, where they can speak to counselors and receive training that can help them deal with the crises they face. Filmmaker Hamid Rahmanian offers a telling portrait of four of the young women who have come to Halati's center for help in the documentary The Glass House. Mitra is sixteen years old and growing up in a violent household where her father will beat her for talking back to him, and she's come to the center looking for help in conflict resolution while learning to express herself through her fiction. Nazila is nineteen and has found an outlet for the anger she feels about her life as a rapper; however, her family forbids her to record her music and her outspoken rhymes would almost certainly never be aired in Iran. At twenty, Sussan has been the subject of physical and emotional abuse for much of her life, and repeated beatings have left her with brain damage and memory loss. And Samira is trying to deal with an addition to drugs that was inflicted upon her by her own family. The Glass House received its American premiere at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

4 Little Girls (1997)

Director:
Spike Lee

IMDB

Synopsis:
Director Spike Lee made his first feature-length documentary with this powerful story of the bombing of an African-American church in Birmingham, AL, in 1963, which took the lives of four girls, ages 11 through 14. The shocking incident received national press attention and became a rallying point in the ongoing struggle for civil rights, but while Lee's film examines the crime, the perpetrators, and the long struggle to bring them to justice, it also offers a close look at the four girls themselves as their friends and families recall, in moving detail, who they were and how they lived. A variety of civil rights activists, politicians, journalists, and lawyers are interviewed onscreen, including Walter Cronkite and a brief but disturbing meeting with former Alabama governor George Wallace.

The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun (2006)

Director:
Pernille Rose Grønkjær

IMDB

Synopsis:
A lovable, eighty-two year old virgin living alone in a dilapidated Danish castle enlists the aid of an ambitious and headstrong Russian Orthodox nun in realizing his lifelong dream of transforming his vast abode into a Russian Orthodox monastery in filmmaker Pernille Rose Gronkjær's heartwarming, and often humorous, documentary. Mr. Vig is an amiable eccentric who finally finds his dream coming to fruition as controlling nun Sister Ambrosija agrees to send a group of nuns and priests to evaluate and develop the site. An unapologetically overbearing woman who has a very precise vision of how the monastery should be run, Sister Ambrosija commences to making a seemingly-endless list of repair demands and the put-upon Mr. Vig implores the filmmaker for advice on dealing with the slightly-boorish bride of Christ. Despite their initial differences and occasional misgivings, however, Mr. Vig and Sister Ambrosija soon form a unique and exceptional bond as they work together for the good of a common cause.

Mondovino (2004)

Director:
Jonathan Nossiter

IMDB

Synopsis:
Filmmaker Jonathan Nossiter is a serious wine connoisseur as well as a practicing sommelier when he isn't busy behind the camera, and he's combined his two passions in this documentary on the international wine business. Mondovino offers a witty but well-informed look at how business concerns and the homogenization of tastes around the world are changing the way wine is being made. Nossiter's primary focus is on American vintners and their new degree of worldwide acceptance (in part due to the efforts of wildly influential U.S. wine critic Robert Parker), as well as French wine makers who are struggling to maintain a more traditional approach in the wake of a rapidly shifting business climate, such as Hubert de Montille and Yvonne Hegoburu. Nossiter deals with the personalities of his subjects as much as their status in the wine business, and he frequently introduces us to the pets of his interview subjects. Mondovino was screened in competition at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

LaLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton (2001)

Directors:
Deborah Dickson. Susan Frömke, Albert Maysles

IMDB

Synopsis:
The cotton-growing industry has long had a tight hold on the political and economic lives of many people in the Mississippi Delta, and this documentary -- directed in part by Albert Maysles -- explores the toll King Cotton has taken on one woman and her family. Laura Lee Wallace, known to friends and family as LaLee, has spent all her life in Mississippi's Tallahatchie County. The product of a long line of cotton farmers, LaLee has grown up in dire poverty, and her children and grandchildren are poor prospects for a better life, given the region's failing school systems. At the urging of the major cotton firms, Tallahatchie County's schools used to routinely shut down during the harvest season so children could join their parents in the fields, and conditions have gotten only marginally better, with the county's ill-funded school system facing a possible takeover by the state government unless scores improve on the next round of standardized aptitude tests. With both money and job opportunities scarce, LaLee faces an uphill struggle to support her extended family, which now includes several grandchildren left to her care by sons and daughters unable to care for their offspring themselves. LeLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton was produced for the premium cable television network HBO; prior to it's HBO debut, the film was presented at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.

Comments enabled!

Well I was surprised when I tried to add a comment and wasn't able to, and then I have discovered that the commenting on posts is turned off. How did this happen I don't know, probably some blogger "updates" and "improvements" have messed something up. Nevertheless the comments are now enabled once again so fire away!

Cheers