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Documentaries
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  1. The Ambassador
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2011
    Danish journalist Mads Brügger goes undercover with a diplomatic passport to expose the blood diamond trade in Africa.
  2. Ask a Silly Question
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    An inquiry into the polling and market industry. Through bogus street polls, we see how frequently people are willing to give opinions on subject matter they know nothing about.
  3. The Betrayal
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2011
    The filmmaker's personal journey to confront her past, baring her soul to those most hurt by her troubled youth when she ricocheted from far-left radicalism to neo-Nazi fascism out of a desperate need to belong.
  4. Big Boys Gone Bananas!*
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2011
    First there was a film about banana workers saying the Dole Food Company had made them infertile. Then Dole attacked the filmmakers. Now it's time for a new film!
  5. Bonus March, 1932
    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 1982
    WFPL footage of the 1932 Bonus Army demanding early redemption of their service certificates in Washington D.C. through protest.
  6. Booker's Place
    A Mississippi Story

    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    In 1965, African-American waiter Booker Wright spoke out in a television documentary, outraging many white Southerners and resulting in his murder. Years later, the filmmaker's son returns to examine the repercussions of the interview on Wright's family and the community as a whole.
  7. Born into Brothels
    Calcutta's Red Light Kids

    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 2004
    The chronicling of two documentary filmmakers and their time in Sonagchi, Calcutta and the relationships they developed with children of prostitutes who work the city's notorious red light district.
  8. Brink of Reality
    New Canadian Documentary Film and Video

    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1983
    From angles both practical and philosophical, Peter Steven examines the business of making documentaries in Canada and reaching audiences with them.
  9. British Pathé Film Collection
    Resource Type: Website
    A vast collection of historical events and social activity on film. 85,000 newsreels are searchable and viewable on YouTube, equating to 3,500 hours of filmed history.
  10. Call Me Kuchu
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    In Uganda, a new bill threatens to make homosexuality punishable by death. David Kato - Uganda's first openly gay man - and his fellow activists work against the clock to defeat the legislation while combating vicious persecution in their daily lives. But no one, not even the filmmakers, is prepared for the brutal murder that shakes the movement to its core and sends shock waves around the world.
  11. Canned Dreams
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    A simple can of ravioli propels this spectacular 30,000-kilometre, eight-country journey through all phases of food production and the far flung sources of international ingredients.
  12. Century of Progress
    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 1934
    WFPL documentary film that criticizes society's direction in the early decades of the 20th century.
  13. Conscience & Courage
    Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust

    Resource Type: Book
  14. CRAC-PC: take the arms and the destiny of our lives in Guerrero, Mexico
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2017
    A documentary on the CRAC-PC (Regional Coordinator of Communitary Authorities - Communitarian Police), a police force of community volunteers elected by regional assemblies, operating in the Guerrero state in Mexico.
  15. Crayons of Askalan
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2011
    In 1975, at the age of fifteen, Palestinian artist Zuhdi Al Adaw is sentenced and confined in the high security prison of Askalan, Israel for fifteen years. With the help of his fellow prisoners and their families, he manages to stay alive by smuggling in colour crayons and smuggling out his allegorical artwork done on pillowcases, so it finds its way to the outside world.
  16. Detropia
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    A documentary on the city of Detroit and its woes, which are emblematic of the collapse of the U.S. manufacturing base.
  17. "Do Not Resist": The Police Militarization Documentary Everyone Should See
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    On a sunny afternoon last summer, Craig Atkinson, a New York City-based filmmaker, stood in a front yard in South Carolina surrounded by several heavily armed police officers. Inside, they found a terrified family of four, including an infant. As the family members were pulled outside, Atkinson's camera captured a scene that plays out with startling regularity in cities and towns across the country, one of many included in his new documentary, "Do Not Resist," an examination of police militarization in the United States.
  18. Downeast
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    A foreign entrepreneur's plan to rehire employees from a closed down factory and reopen the plant for local lobster processing is met with resistance by obstinate fishermen, suspiscious of outsiders.
  19. Dream Tower
    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 1994
    Follows the history Rochdale College, a famous experiment in co-operative living and self-directed education in 1960's Toronto.
  20. Drought
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2011
    As a result of the persistent drought, an entire community prepares for an inevitable exodus from their homeland in northern Mexico.
  21. Espoir Voyage
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    Like many young men of his country, Joanny travelled from Burkina Faso to the more affluent Ivory Coast in search of work and a better life. For many young Burkinabe men this emigration is a ritual and rite of passage — but Joanny never returned. Years later his brother, Burkinabe filmmaker Michel K. Zongo, decides to retrace his steps.
  22. Fame & Fortune Online
    Resource Type: Website
    Comprehensive listing of awards available to Canadian journalists.
  23. Fed Up
    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 2014
    An examination of America's obesity epidemic and the food industry's role in aggravating it.
  24. The Field of Magic
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2011
    Field of Magic is a docu-poem about people living for over two decades in Buda forest near the closed down Kariotiške.s dump, 40 km from Vilnius, Lithuania. A result of four year’s work, the film captures the perspective of the dump dwellers in telling the story of a dissolving community, its uniqueness, daily rhythm, peculiar way of life, every-day joys and sorrows.
  25. Finding North
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    A documentary that investigates incidents of hunger experienced by millions of Americans, and proposed solutions to the problem.
  26. Ford Massacre
    Detroit Workers News Special, 1932

    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 1982
    WFPL newsreel of the March 7th Detroit/Dearborn demonstration and hunger march of unemployed Ford workers.
  27. Frontier Films
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2015
    Frontier films Inc. was a non-profit organization formed in March 1938 out of the Worker's Film and Photo League and Nykino, meant to continue the tradition of producing films for social change in a documentary format.
  28. G-Dog
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    Unlikely gang expert Jesuit Father Boyle, known as G-Dog, creates Homeboy Industries, leading former gang involved youth to become a positive force in their communities.
  29. The Great Depression
    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 1934
    WFPL docudrama with a silent narrative of one man's struggle and despair in search of a job in Depression-era Chicago.
  30. Greetings from the Colony
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    Belgium's dark colonial past is remembered in this story of a white Belgian official who abandons his Rwandan wife and sons in Africa, taking only his daughter back home. Decades later, she breaks the silence surrounding her upbringing.
  31. Halsted Street
    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 2000
    WFPL Documentary portraying the various ethnic groups along Chicago’s Halsted Street.
  32. Herman's House
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    'What kind of house does a man who has been imprisoned in a six-foot-by-nine-foot cell for over 30 years dream of?' This film captures the remarkable creative journey and friendship of Herman Wallace, one of the Angola 3, and artist Jackie Sumell while examining the injustice of prolonged solitary confinement.
  33. Homeless
    The Motel Kids of Orange County

    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 2010
    Follows a group of children as their families struggle to live survive in one of the country's wealthiest areas.
  34. HOT DOCS Canadian International Documentary Festival
    Resource Type: Organization
    Hot Docs is a national charitable organization dedicated to advancing and celebrating the art of documentary. Their collection is small but curated and is periodically updated with new releases. Cost: Monthly subscription is $4.99/month. There are three annual membership tiers, for as low as $59/year. See their site for details.
  35. Hot Docs
    Resource Type: Website
    Schedule of events showing at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema.
  36. IFJ Condemns Attempts by Embattled Food Company to Censor Free Speech in US
    Sources News Release

    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2009
    The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned as "unforgiveable censorship" attempts by the US fruit company, Dole Food, to prevent the release of a documentary film Bananas which exposes threats to the health of banana plantations
  37. Inocente
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    Inocente is both a timeless story about the transformative power of art and a timely snapshot of the new face of homelessness in America: children.
  38. Interview with director of "Like"
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2016
    The director of a documentary about Bangladeshi workers who get paid to "like" Facebook posts discusses the people and ideas behind her film.
  39. The Invisible War
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    An investigative documentary about the epidemic of rape of soldiers within the US military.
  40. Jai Bhim Comrade
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2011
    India’s Dalit (oppressed) castes were abhorred as “untouchables”. The film, shot over 14 years follows the music of protest of Maharashtra's Dalits. In an age of increasing bigotry and superstition, it is both a record of recent history as well as eloquent testimony to a tradition that has survived amongst the subaltern for thousands of years.
  41. The Kill Team
    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 2013
    An account of the aftermath of one American soldier's decision to turn whistleblower after his involvment in the Maywand District murders during the War in Afghanistan.
  42. Krisis
    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 2012
    By 2010, Greece was in an economic crisis and the society and people were shown to be deeply affected by the country's state.
  43. Last Stand of the Lubicon Cree
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1991
  44. Life in Stills
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2011
    A photo shop owner and her grandson join forces to save the shop and the nearly one million negatives that document Israel's defining moments.
  45. Manufacturing Consent
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 1992
    A film about Noam Chomsky's ideas about the media, ideology, propaganda, and elite control of society's institutions.
  46. Meet the Fokkens
    Resource Type: Unclassified
    Published: 2011
    A documentary on Louise and Martine Fokkens, 69-year-old twin sisters who have worked as prostitutes in the red-light district in Amsterdam for over 40 years.
  47. Milton Rogovin, Social Documentary Photographer
    Resource Type: Website
    Social documentary photographer Milton Rogovin has been likened to the great social documentary photographers of the 19th and 20th Centuries, Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis. Milton, who lived to be 101 years old, dedicated his lifetime to creating photographs that speak of the humanity of working people, the poor and the forgotten ones.
  48. Miss Representation
    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 2011
    Explores the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence in America, and challenges the media's limited portrayal of what it means to be a powerful woman.
  49. My Freedom, Your Freedom
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    Knowing nothing but drugs and violence since childhood, Kuebra and Salema have spent their adult years in and out of a Berlin prison, their experiences calling into question the effectiveness of incarceration.
  50. The National Hunger March to Washington, 1932
    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 1982
    WFPL Documentary of the Second National Hunger March to Washington, D.C. 1932.
  51. National Hunger March, 1931
    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 1931
    WFPL footage of protesters marching to Washington demanding jobs, food, and clothing during the infancy of the Great Depression.
  52. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - January 30, 2016
    Conflict of interest

    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    Published: 2016
    This issue of Other Voices shines a light on the murky world of conflict of interest, the hidden reality that often underlies appearances of neutrality, objectivity, and due process. Conflicts of interest are inherent in capitalism, a system founded on the premise that the state and society should be subordinated to economic self-interest and the accumulation of private wealth. Scientists who are supposed to be studying the effects of GMOs are funded by agribusiness corporations. Doctors who receive money from pharmaceutical companies write articles promoting the drugs produced by those companies. Decisions about pipelines are made by regulators who have spent years working in the oil industry, and who will be heading back to jobs in the industry after their stint 'regulating' it. Politicians receive campaign funds from corporate lobbyists.
  53. Our Daily Bread
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2005
    Our Daily Bread (original German title: Unser taglich Brot) is a 2005 documentary film, depicted how modern food production companies employ technology to produce food on large scales. It consists mainly of actual working situations without voice-over narration or interviews as the director tries to let viewers form their own opinion on the subject. The names of the companies where the footage was filmed are purposely not shown. The director's goal is to provide a realistic view on the internal workings of multiple food production companies in our modern society.
  54. Peace Out
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2011
    Charles Wilkinson explores the costs of damming, fracking, and extracting, and how they implicate every gas tank and light switch in this country.
  55. Price of Gold
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    Mongolia is known for its original Nomad culture as well as the spectacular natural landscape. Since gold deposits have been discovered however, both are threatened.
  56. The Prophet
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2011
    Gary Tarn takes audiences on an imagistic journey form Serbia to Lebanon, weaving the poetic prose of Kahil Gibran with a unique soundtrack to create a cinematic exploration of love, life and loss.
  57. Radio Documentary Handbook, Creating, producing and selling for broadcast (book review)
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 1987
  58. The Revisionaries
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    The Revisionaries follows the attempts of a creationist Board of Education member to revise the science and history curricula to better suit a white, Christian nation.
  59. Scarlet Road
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2011
    Scarlet Road follows the extraordinary work of Australian sex worker, Rachel Wotton. Impassioned about freedom of sexual expression and the rights of sex workers, she specializes in a long over-looked clientele – people with disability.
  60. Seeds of Death: Unveiling The Lies of GMOs
    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 2012
    An exposition of the massive public health dangers associated with genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
  61. Sexy Baby
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    Sexy Baby is the first documentary film to put faces to a seismic cultural shift: the cyber age is creating a new sexual landscape.
  62. Shadows of Liberty
    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 2012
    Examines the new media monopoly by corporations in America and the public battle for truth and democracy.
  63. Slumming in Kenya's back streets
    A young TV crew is chronicling a life of dirt, violence and hope

    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2008
    Slum TV is a group of young people from Mathare, one of the slums of Kenya, who chronicle life in their community during times of peace and unrest.
  64. Smoke Traders
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    Smoke Traders tells the story of the contraband tobacco trade and the effect on individual lives and communities from a Native perspective.
  65. Sources welcomes Michael Riordon
    Sources News Release

    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2010
    Sources welcomes a new member: Michael Riordon. Canadian writer and documentary-maker Michael Riordon writes/directs/produces books and articles, audio, video and film documentaries, plays for radio and stage.
  66. The Times of Harvey Milk
    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 1984
    A look at the career and assassination of San Francisco's first elected gay councilor.
  67. United in Anger
    A History of ACT UP

    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 2012
    Examines the birth and life of the AIDS activist movement from the perspective of the people in the trenches fighting the epidemic.
  68. ¡Vivan las Antipodas!
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    Filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky journeys to four antipodal communities and launches an exuberent travelogue of spaces with uncanny continuities and disturbing disjunctions.
  69. The War Amps
    Media Profile in Sources

    Resource Type: Organization
  70. WatchDocumentarioes
    Resource Type: Organization
    WatchDocumentaries is an extensive online collection of free documentaries. Their aim is to provide curated informative and educational films in an accessible manner. Includes movies like: The Internet's Own Boy, Inside Job, The 11th Hour, Man on Wire, Exit Through the Giftshop. Cost: Free streaming (no registration required).
  71. We Are Legion
    The Story of the Hacktivists

    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 2012
    A history of Anonymous, the radical "hacktivist" collective that has redefined civil disobedience for the digital age.
  72. Where Heaven Meets Hell
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2011
    Drawing strength from their families and their Muslim faith, Indonesian sulfur miners face gruelling labour and treacherous conditions on an active volcano, while struggling to overcome the desperate poverty and illiteracy that plague their community.
  73. Who Cares?
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2012
    Rosie Dranfeld captures the gritty and dangerous world of Edmonton's sex-trade workers. In this post-Pickton era where the unthinkable is now a gruesome reality, women voluntarily provide police with DNA samples for future identification.
  74. Winter Soldier
    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 1972
    A chronicling of the Winter Soldier Investigation - about war crimes during the Vietnam War - that took place in Detroit, Michigan, from January 31 to February 2, 1971.
  75. Word is Out
    Stories of Some of Our Lives

    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 1977
    Interviews with 26 people, who speak about their experiences as gay men and lesbians.
  76. Worker's Newsreel Unemployment Special, 1931
    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 1982
    WFPL footage of the first mass demonstration against unemployment and hunger in Union Square, New York City on March 6, 1930.
  77. The World in Review and America Today, 1934
    Resource Type: Film
    Published: 1982
    WFPL newsreel segments that exposed multiple social current event topics.
  78. The Yes Men Are Revolting
    Resource Type: Film/Video
    Published: 2014
    A documentary film about The Yes Men, a culture jamming duo who use the aliases Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno. The film follows their exploits as they prank various organizations and corporations who engage in climate change denial.

Experts on Documentaries in the Sources Directory

  1. Michael Riordon


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