Essential Documentaries
A selection of standout non-fiction films from the Metrograph library.
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Be Pretty and Shut Up
Directed by Delphine Seyrig | 112 mins | 1981
In Hollywood and Paris, Seyrig sits down to talk to some of the most famous actresses in the world—including Juliet Berto, Ellen Burstyn, Jane Fonda, Shirley MacLaine, Jill Clayburgh, Louise Fletcher, Maria Schneider, Barbara Steele, Viva, Anne Wiazem... -
Don't Hurry Back: A Diaspora Fable
Directed by Portia Cobb | 26 mins | 1996
A five-film shorts program curated by LA Rebellion affiliated-filmmaker Zeinabu irene Davis, including works by Pierre Desir ("The Gods and the Thief"), Julie Dash ("Four Women"), Portia Cobb ("Don’t Hurry Back: A Diaspora Fable"), and others.“These sho...
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Goodbye to Language
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard | 70 mins | 2014
An innovator to the end, Godard’s penultimate feature finds him experimenting with the possibilities of digital 3D, using the technology to plot the disintegration of both a couple’s relationship and the images of the relationship. A film of unpreceden... -
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Directed by RaMell Ross | 76 mins | 2018
The results of five years of living among African American families in rural Hale County, Alabama—also the setting of Walker Evans and James Agee’s photo-essay Let Us Now Praise Famous Men—Ross’s debut feature documentary is a lyrical and loving treatment ... -
Land of Silence and Darkness
Directed by Werner Herzog | 85 mins | 1971
After a childhood accident caused her an eventual loss of vision at 15 and hearing at 18, Fini Straubinger spent the next 30 years of life bedridden. But by age 56, when she became the subject of Herzog’s documentary feature, she had found her inner stre... -
Let the Wind Carry Me
Leaving March 1
Directed by Hsiu-Chiung Chiang and Pun-Leung Kwan | 86 mins | 2009
A tender documentary portrait of the renowned cinematographer for Hou Hsiao-hsien as well as films by Wong Kar Wai ("In the Mood for Love"), Hirokazu Kore-eda ("Air Doll"), and Tran Anh Hung ("The Vertical Ray of ... -
Little Dieter Needs To Fly
Directed by Werner Herzog | 77 mins | 1997
In the German-born U.S. Navy pilot Dieter Dengler, Herzog seems to have met his match: Dengler too is a wily, tenacious adventurer, a skilled raconteur-philosopher, and a dreamer of dangerous dreams. This gripping documentary has Dengler recount—and reen... -
Maso and Miso Go Boating
Directed by Nadja Ringart, Ioana Wieder, Carole Roussopoulos, and Delphine Seyrig | 55 mins | 1975
1975 has been declared Year of the Woman by the United Nations, prompting popular television Bernard Pivot to host then-Secretary of State for the Condition of Women Françoise Giroud on his program,... -
My Best Fiend
Directed by Werner Herzog | 99 mins | 1999
Amidst insults hurled, tantrums thrown, and some literal shots fired, Herzog’s collaboration with the notoriously explosive Klaus Kinski produced five indelible films, from 1972’s "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" to 1987’s "Cobra Verde". “Every gray hair on m... -
Ornette: Made in America
Leaving March 1
Directed by Shirley Clarke | 85 mins | 1985
“Discovering the work of filmmaker and the Film-Makers' Cooperative co-founder, Shirley Clarke made me aware of the wide range of cinema’s possibilities. This 1985 documentary shot in collaboration with the late Ornette Coleman, using a... -
Our Nixon
Directed by Penny Lane | 85 mins | 2013
Using an array of archival materials including television interviews, Nixon’s secretly recorded White House tapes, and more than 500 reels of long-out-of-circulation Super 8 home movies by presidential aides Dwight Chapin, John Ehrlichman, and H.R. Haldeman... -
Parkland of Decay and Fantasy
Directed by Chenliang Zhu | 101 mins | 2022
Technology and spirituality are parallel forces in an abandoned and possibly haunted Chinese amusement park once taken over by outsider artists. If it is true that at the moment of death, consciousness sends out its last waves of thought into the univer... -
Physician, Heal Thyself
Directed by Asher Penn | 79 mins | 2023
"Physician, Heal Thyself" offers a searingly intimate portrait of the celebrated expert on addiction, stress, and trauma, Gabor Maté. The documentary follows Gabor’s life’s journey, from his start as a young contrarian to a contemporary icon still strugglin... -
Portrait of Jason
Leaving March 1
Directed by Shirley Clarke | 107 mins | 1967
A distillation of a single 12-hour interview in a room at the Chelsea Hotel with the charismatic Jason Holliday (“real” name Aaron Payne), a gay, African American cabaret dancer, part-time hustler, and full-time raconteur, Portrait of ... -
Scum Manifesto
Directed by Carole Roussopoulos and Delphine Seyrig | 29 mins | 1976
A crucial piece of early feminist video art from the Les Insoumuses collective that documents a staged reading of would-be Andy Warhol assassin Valerie Solanas’s notorious misandrist call-to-arms of the same name—the acronym sta... -
Spirits of Rebellion: Black Independent Cinema from Los Angeles
Directed by Zeinabu irene Davis | 101 mins | 2016
Davis’s documentary on the LA Rebellion, a surge of artistically ambitious, far-from-the-mainstream Black-American-directed films that came out of southern California—specifically, out of the UCLA film production program—beginning in the late ’70s... -
The Competition
Directed by Claire Simon | 121 mins | 2016
The Competition begins, significantly, with the image of a locked gate—that of La Fémis, one of the most prestigious film schools in the world, offering hands-on training from working professionals and accepting only 40 students per year from hundreds of... -
The Connection
Leaving March 1
Directed by Shirley Clarke | 110 mins | 1961
“Shirley Clarke’s The Connection based on and adapted by Jack Gelber is a film way ahead of its time. Arguably the first film to use the “found footage” trope to tell a fictional story. This film blew my mind when I first saw it, the d... -
The Falls
Leaving March 1
Directed by Peter Greenaway | 239 mins | 1980
Greenaway’s first feature, an epic mock documentary in 92 parts that catalogs the aftermath of a mysterious “Violent Unknown Event” that has killed many people, and left survivors suffering from symptoms including strange dreams and m... -
The French
Directed by William Klein | 130 mins | 1982
“For me, this film encapsulates everything I loved and love about the tennis of that moment; and in the hands of the great and singular William Klein, it is at once a gripping sports page, a fascinating piece of reportage, and a work of art.”—Wes Ande...
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The Image Book
Leaving November 1
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard | 84 mins | 2019
A cinematic collage, an esoteric essay film, a wide-reaching, freewheeling ontological history of the moving image, and a sorrowful survey of the fallen world at the beginning of the 21st century, Special Palme d’Or winner The Image... -
The Prairie Trilogy
Directed by John Hanson and Rob Nilsson | 97 mins | 1978
John Hanson and Rob Nilsson, co-directors of Cannes Camera d’Or winner Northern Lights and fellow members of San Francisco’s Cine Manifest film collective, collaborated on this remarkable series of documentaries underwritten by the North Da... -
The Projectionist
Leaving March 1
Directed by Abel Ferrara | 81 mins | 2019
Ferrara’s fond, often funny portrait of Nicolas “Nick” Nicolaou, a Cypriot immigrant who got his start in movie houses working in the Times Square porno theaters in the 1970s and has held on into the 21st century as an independent exhibit... -
The Raft
Directed by Marcus Lindeen | 97 mins | 2018
In the summer of 1973, a young international crew of six women and five men embarked together on a most unusual sea voyage—a close-quarters trip across the Atlantic from Spain to Mexico on a free-floating raft christened the Acali, initiated by Mexican ...