Documentary films
Documentary Chronicles Students' Fight For Black Rights During 'Freedom Summer'
Freedom Summer, now streaming on PBS, focuses on the 1964 movement to get Black people to vote in Mississippi. Director Stanley Nelson and organizer Charles Cobb discussed the film in 2014.
'Guide To Freedom' Documentary Chronicles The Real Life 'Green Book'
Filmmaker Yoruba Richen's documentary, The Green Book: Guide to Freedom, tells the story of the manual that helped African-Americans find safe places to stay, eat, shop and do business on the road.
Netflix Documentary Revisits Decades-Old Mystery Between Filmmaker And Mentor
Sandi Tan was 19 when she wrote and starred in a film directed by her 40-year-old mentor. Then her mentor disappeared with the film footage. Twenty years later, Tan chronicles the mystery in Shirkers.
A Filmmaker's 'Quest' For A Quiet Family Portrait Is Pierced By Unforeseen Trauma
Jonathan Olshefski spent 10 years filming Christopher Rainey and his family, who run a recording studio in a working-class African-American section of North Philadelphia. Then their daughter was shot.
'Becoming Cary Grant' Reveals The Self-Invention Of A Hollywood Icon
The new documentary about Cary Grant is a fascinating look at the contrast between Grant's personal unhappiness, and onscreen persona.
'Last Men In Aleppo' Captures The Horror And Humanity Of The Syrian Crisis
A new documentary focuses on a group of emergency volunteers in Syria's largest city known as the White Helmets. Critic David Edelstein says Last Men In Aleppo is a powerful and affecting work.
For 'New York Times' Obit Writers, 'Death Is Never Solicitous Of A Deadline'
Bruce Weber and Margalit Fox have written obituaries for thousands of people, ranging from heads of state to the inventor of the Etch-a-Sketch. They are featured in the new documentary Obit.
Five Came Back
TV critic David Bianculli says the new documentary series Five Came Back, based on the book of the same name, "leaves you hungry to seek out more (films) from the briefest documentary short to the subsequent Oscar-winning postwar features.