"Great Art Always Survives"
Two South Africans set out to discover what happened to their unlikely musical hero, the mysterious 1970s rock 'n' roller, Rodriguez.
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Manchester, 1976. Tony Wilson is an ambitious but frustrated local TV news reporter looking for a way to make his mark. After witnessing a life-changing concert by a band known as the Sex Pistols, he persuades his station to televise one of their performances, and soon Manchester's punk groups are clamoring for him to manage them. Riding the wave of a musical revolution, Wilson and his friends create the legendary Factory Records label and The Hacienda club.
Computer-generated imagery and other visualization techniques reveal how it would look if all the water was removed from RMS Titanic's final resting place.
Actor Rawiri Paratene was 16 years old when he joined Māori activist group Ngā Tamatoa (Young Warriors) in the early 1970s. "Those years helped shape the rest of my life," says Paratene in this 2012 Māori TV documentary, directed by Kim Webby. The programme is richly woven with news archive from the 1970s, showing protests about land rights and the Treaty of Waitangi, and a campaign for te reo to be taught in schools. Several ex Ngā Tamatoa members — including Hone Harawira, Tame Iti and Larry Parr— are interviewed by Paratene, who also presents the documentary.
Filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond spent three months in 1976 riding along with patrol officers in the 44th Precinct of the South Bronx, which had the highest crime rate in New York City at that time.
A documentary that explores the challenges that a life in music can bring.
In 1999, teenage sisters Celeste and Eleanor survive a seismic, violent tragedy. The sisters compose and perform a song about their experience, making something lovely and cathartic out of catastrophe — while also catapulting Celeste to stardom. By 2017, the now 31-year-old Celeste is mother to a teenage daughter of her own and struggling to navigate a career fraught with scandals when another act of terrifying violence demands her attention.
A panorama of Brazilian popular music from the 60s and 70s through the musical group Novos Baianos. A retrospective of the community lifestyle adopted by its members and the influence inherited from singer João Gilberto.
The first feature-length documentary that fully explores how the toxic social and political Canadian context after 1968 created some of the most nihilistic and imaginative Canadian cult films of the 1970s and 80s and beyond.
In this biopic, Christian Rahadi – aka Chrisye – overcomes early failures, family strife and anxiety to become one of Indonesia's legendary musicians.
Paris, 1978. In a male-dominated music industry, Ana uses new electronic machines to make herself heard, thus creating a new sound that is destined to mark the decades to come: the music of the future.
An ageing hard-living 1970s rock star decides to change his life when he discovers a 40-year-old undelivered letter written to him by John Lennon.
"The Jersey Sound" is a love letter to New Jersey's diverse music scene. It captures its rich history through untold stories and intimate interviews while paying homage to legendary icons who have called Jersey home. It's an attitude.
Explore how one man's relentless drive and invention of the atomic bomb changed the nature of war forever, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and unleashed mass hysteria.
This is Poe and Král's first effort, shot on small-gauge stock, before their more well-known endeavor The Blank Generation (1976) came to be. A "DIY" portrait of the New York music scene, the film is a patchwork of footage of numerous rock acts performing live, at venues like Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, the dive bars of Greenwich Village and, of course, CBGB.
When the mastermind behind New York's infamous Studio 54 disco plucks young Shane from the sea of faces clamoring to get inside his club, he not only gets his foot in the door, but lands a coveted job behind the bar — and a front-row ticket to the most legendary party on the planet!
Former singer wants to come back but the music industry has changed.
Archival film maestro Göran Hugo Olsson has assembled—from a vast catalogue of footage in the vaults of Sweden’s national television service SVT—accounts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as witnessed and represented by Swedish journalists. Stories of the beginning of the Israeli state interwoven with the Palestinian struggle for independence. News coverage with Yasser Arafat and interviews with Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban during a visit to Sweden unseen since first broadcast. From the tenth anniversary of Israel’s founding to the First Intifada, perspectives and encounters with statesmen, civilians, revolutionaries, and intellectuals tell the story from myriad angles of an evolving media landscape, revivifying a history of the ongoing conflict.
An exploration of the seminal and transformative 18 months that one of music’s most famous couples — John Lennon and Yoko Ono — spent living in Greenwich Village, New York City, in the early 1970s.
In the last five years of his life, David Bowie ended nearly a decade of silence to engage in an extraordinary burst of activity, producing two groundbreaking albums and a musical. David Bowie: The Last Five Years explores this unexpected end to a remarkable career. Made with remarkable access, Francis Whately’s documentary is a revelatory follow-up to his acclaimed 2013 documentary David Bowie: Five Years, which chronicled Bowie’s golden ‘70s and early-‘80s period.
A musical audiovisual journey in four parts. A young man finds himself unexpectedly taking an audiovisual odyssey into a world of surreality, slowly recounting his memories, revealing the puzzle pieces that led him to where he is, and maybe how he can get out.
The plot centers on students involved in the Soweto Riots, in opposition to the implementation of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in schools. The stage version presents a school uprising similar to the Soweto uprising on June 16, 1976. A narrator introduces several characters among them the school girl activist Sarafina. Things get out of control when a policeman shoots several pupils in a classroom. Nevertheless, the musical ends with a cheerful farewell show of pupils leaving school, which takes most of act two. In the movie version Sarafina feels shame at her mother's (played by Miriam Makeba in the film) acceptance of her role as domestic servant in a white household in apartheid South Africa, and inspires her peers to rise up in protest, especially after her inspirational teacher, Mary Masombuka (played by Whoopi Goldberg in the film version) is imprisoned.
The story of sex, violence, race and rock and roll in 1950s Chicago, and the exciting but turbulent lives of some of America's musical legends, including Muddy Waters, Leonard Chess, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Etta James and Chuck Berry.
New York, early 1960s. Against the backdrop of a vibrant music scene and tumultuous cultural upheaval, an enigmatic 19-year-old from Minnesota arrives in the West Village with his guitar and revolutionary talent, destined to change the course of American music.
Grammy® winner singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo takes a familiar road trip from Salt Lake City, where she began writing her debut album “SOUR,” to Los Angeles. Along the way, Rodrigo recounts the memories of writing and creating her record-breaking debut album and shares her feelings as a young woman navigating a specific time in her life. Through new live arrangements of her songs, intimate interviews and never-before-seen footage from the making of the album, audiences will follow Olivia along on a cinematic journey exploring the story of “SOUR.”
Here's a little story they're about to tell... Mike Diamond and Adam Horovitz share the story of their band and 40 years of friendship in a live documentary experience directed by friend, collaborator, and their former grandfather, Spike Jonze.
In 1966, Helen Reddy landed in New York with her three year old daughter, a suitcase, and $230 in her pocket. Within weeks, she was broke. Within months, she was in love. Within five years, she was one of the biggest superstars of her time and an icon of the 1970s feminist movement who wrote a song which galvanized a generation of women to fight for change.
During the same summer as Woodstock, over 300,000 people attended the Harlem Cultural Festival, celebrating African American music and culture, and promoting Black pride and unity. The footage from the festival sat in a basement, unseen for over 50 years, keeping this incredible event in America's history lost — until now.
While The Rolling Stones rehearse "Sympathy for the Devil" in the studio, an alternating narrative reflects on 1968 society, politics and culture through five different vignettes.
The incomparable Bruce Springsteen performs his critically acclaimed latest album and muses on life, rock, and the American dream, in this intimate and personal concert film co-directed by Thom Zimny and Springsteen himself.
The story of Elton John's life, from his years as a prodigy at the Royal Academy of Music through his influential and enduring musical partnership with Bernie Taupin.
A vibrant tribute to one of America's legendary bandleaders, charting Glenn Miller's rise from obscurity and poverty to fame and wealth in the early 1940s.
No other band in rock'n'roll history has rivaled The Stooges' combination of heavy primal throb, spiked psychedelia, blues-a-billy grind, complete with succinct angst-ridden lyrics, and a snarling, preening leopard of a frontman who somehow embodies Nijinsky, Bruce Lee, Harpo Marx, and Arthur Rimbaud all rolled into one. There is no precedent for The Stooges, while those inspired by them are now legion. The film will present the context of their emergence musically, culturally, politically, historically, and relate their adventures and misadventures while charting their inspirations and the reasons behind their initial commercial challenges, as well as their long-lasting legacy.
A compilation of interviews, rehearsals and backstage footage of Michael Jackson as he prepared for his series of sold-out shows in London.
After years in the limelight, Selena Gomez achieves unimaginable stardom. But just as she reaches a new peak, an unexpected turn pulls her into darkness. This uniquely raw and intimate documentary spans her six-year journey into a new light.
Supersonic charts the meteoric rise of Oasis from the council estates of Manchester to some of the biggest concerts of all time in just three short years. This palpable, raw and moving film shines a light on one of the most genre and generation-defining British bands that has ever existed and features candid new interviews with Noel and Liam Gallagher, their mother, and members of the band and road crew.
A trio of female soul singers cross over to the pop charts in the early 1960s, facing their own personal struggles along the way.
Jamaican singer-songwriter Bob Marley overcomes adversity to become the most famous reggae musician in the world.
Evolution as an artist is often times what separates legends from the more mundane. After being heavily influenced by his experience in Jamaica – and his subsequent name change from Snoop Dogg to Snoop Lion – the LBC showman prepares his latest reggae-infused album Reincarnated. As part of the process, VICE followed Snoop to the island nation as he recorded various songs with backing from Diplo, Ariel Reichtshaid and Dre Skull of Major Lazer. Having grown tired of what rap provided him, the documentary reveals the rebirth and inspiration for his latest project.
A behind-the-scenes documentary about the recording of Aretha Franklin's best-selling album finally sees the light of day more than four decades after the original footage was shot.
The true story of Vera Brandes, teenage patron saint of the 1970s Cologne music scene, who risked everything to organize the greatest solo concert in music history: Keith Jarrett’s legendary Köln Concert.