Documentaries about films, filmmaking and filmmakers

War stories and life lessons from the industry's top writers.

Carl-Gustaf Nykvist's documentary about his father, Sven Nykvist. The film is based on Sven's memoirs with Sven himself as narrator. A journey to the place of birth, Moheda, constitutes the hub of the film and during the journey friends and memories emerge.

A comprehensive history of the medium and art of motion pictures.

A documentary on Woody Allen that trails him on his movie sets and follows him back to Brooklyn as he visits his childhood haunts.

Ten of the greatest filmmakers in the world passionately discuss their craft in Angela Ismailos' hugely entertaining documentary GREAT DIRECTORS.

An hour-long documentary designed to celebrate the spirit of the independent filmmaker from D.W. Griffith to Quentin Tarantino. Interview footage and film clips are blended together to form a chronological approach to the subject matter. Profiles of important figures within the independent film industry include John Cassavetes, Stanley Kubrick, John Sayles, Woody Allen, Roger Corman, Samuel Fuller, Martin Scorsese, Orson Welles, Arthur Penn, Spike Lee, Peter Bogdanovich, Sam Peckinpah, Nicholas Ray, and Henry Jaglom. The documentary compiles new and stock interviews with important filmmakers including Cassavetes, Corman, Bogdanovich, Fuller, Scorsese, Welles, Penn, Sayles, Ray, Peckinpah, Lee, and Jaglom. The program also covers important movements in the history of independent cinema such as the Italian neorealism and the French New Wave. The documentary makes it clear in the emphasis that an independent film is not simply a low-budget film, but instead, accurately defines the genre by the filmmaker's ability to convey an individual vision through their creative approach, with limited interference from a higher authority, whether or not working within a studio system.

The enduring hope that humanity may or may not persevere. A tale of love and abandonment.

This short documentary film reveals the inner workings of the Brothers' studio.

Martin Scorsese describes his initial and growing obsession with films from the 1940s and 50s as the art form developed and grew with clips from classics and cult classics.

World-renowned director Martin Scorsese narrates this journey through his favorites in Italian cinema.

The career and life of Stanley Kubrick is explored through pictures, clips from his films, his old home movies, comments from his colleagues and a narration by Tom Cruise.

During the '35th Cannes International Film Festival' (14th-26th May 1982), German director Wim Wenders asked a sample of 15 other international film directors to get, each one at a time, into the same hotel room to answer in solitude the same question about the future of cinema, while they were filmed with a 16mm camera and recorded with a Nagra sound recorder. In social sciences the goal of standardization is that each person is exposed to the same question experience, and that the recording setting of answers is the same, too, so that any differences in the answers can be correctly interpreted as reflecting differences between persons rather than differences in the process that produced the answer. The wide sampling frame in "Room 666" included European 'auteurs' and Hollywood directors, narrative and experimental filmmakers, male and female professional film directors that presented their films or were simply present at the 35th Cannes Festival in May 1982. The directors came from France, Italy, Brazil, Lebanon, Germany, Turkey, the Philippines and the USA. This unique documentary shows the complete footage (or selected parts) of the 15 answers that resulted from this 'standardized survey interviews'. The historical value of "Room 666" has increased over time: The 5 directors Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Yilmaz Güney, Maroun Bagdadi, Robert Kramer and Michelangelo Antonioni have died since then in this order. Fassbinder died only a few weeks later on June 10th 1982 and gave his last 'interview' in "Room 666".

An intimate and poetic scene-by-scene look into the filming of Tarkovsky's masterpiece, 'Nostalghia'.

Acclaimed Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky and his screenwriter Tonino Guerra travel all over Italy to scout locations for the film Nostalghia.

He is considered by many the greatest film director the medium has ever known. Yet in a 45-year career, Stanley Kubrick's films number only a dozen. That he strove for perfection is well established. What is less known is that he lavished years of energy on several films that never saw the flickering light of the silver screen. Through interviews and abundant archival materials, this documentary examines these "lost" films in depth to discover what drew Kubrick to these projects, the work he did to prepare them for production, and why they ultimately were abandoned.

Documentary on the making of Kubrick's classic film.

Kubrick Remembered is one of the supplementary bonus documentaries included in Stanley Kubrick: The Masterpiece Collection. This box set of eight Kubrick classics has films, from the 1962 Lolita to his final film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999). In addition to the eight discs (films), there are two more discs, making this a ten-disc set. It does include the previously-released supplements on each film, plus it features two new-to-disc documentaries and one new feature length film, along with a 78-page book of stills, storyboards, production art, script pages, and other production paraphernalia from the featured films. Part of this collection is the aforementioned bonus documentary, which is with the feature-length documentary Kubrick Remembered. Kubrick's widow opened up the Kubrick archives for this documentary, allowing all of us a closer glimpse into his methods.

30 years after the shooting of 'Blue Velvet', the classic film of David Lynch, the German filmmaker Peter Braatz revisits his original Super-8 material and numerous photographies, filmed 30 years ago on the set in Wilmington, USA.

A behind-the-scenes look for David Lynch's surrealist neo-noir film Mulholland Dr. (2001).

Captures David Lynch at work, offering rare glimpses into the legendary filmmaker's artistic journey while bringing his surreal vision "Inland Empire" to life.

Jon Ronson is asked by the widow of Stanley Kubrick to investigate the contents of about a thousand boxes left by Kubrick, shown to contain materials reflecting the work Kubrick did after the release of Barry Lyndon (1975) in 1975.

An overview of the making of Badlands (1973)

A look at 1970s Hollywood when it was known as New Hollywood, and the director was the star of the movie.