1970s Documentary Movies

Somewhat crazy semi-documentary by director Joe D'Amato is a strange series of Burlesque performances from around the globe. Actress and dancer Amanda Lear hosts these mostly musical numbers designed to get people on stage.

Sweet Toronto is a documentary by D.A. Pennebaker of the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival, a one day festival held September 13, 1969 at Varsity Stadium on the campus of the University of Toronto and attended by some 20,000 persons. John Lennon played as part of the Plastic Ono Band, whose members also included Yoko Ono, Klaus Voorman, Alan White, and Eric Clapton. The video also features a selection of other acts: Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and Bo Diddley.

SELECTION documents a KISZ (Hungarian Young Communist League) chapter at an oil refinery that is interested in hiring a musical act as entertainment for young workers. The documentary shows the group discussing their criteria for the band, as well as their interviews with the individual bands. It is quickly apparent that the group isn’t interested in any sort of musical talent or the potential audiences’ interest. Rather, they are focused on ideological or moral issues that may be perceived as negative, such as groupies or outfits that are seen as too trendy. They settle on the musical group that is potentially the easiest to control, the youngest band. SELECTION works as a larger metaphor for what censorship was like in Socialist Hungary and was banned from being publicly screened until 1982.

A documentary about elderly aunt Veronica who wants to accomplish two things in her life: re-cultivate a long-neglected vineyard and visit her son abroad

Shot in 1972, this remarkable documentary was released ten years later and had its first Western film festival screenings last year. "Gyula Gazdag is an outstanding Hungarian talent who seems to specialize in getting into trouble. This film, which he made with Judit Ember, another alert and sensitive director, was banned for ten years. In it, a rural community is in financial trouble and an expert from Budapest is sent to advise and reorganize. He is successful but his manner angers the local committee. Despite their own management failure, they feel his arrogance should be the subject of a reprimand at least. The story is more than just true: so sure was the community of its cause that Gazdag and Ember were invited to film the actual debate, and the reality makes us protagonists in the case. It is a situation that could happen anywhere but seldom has such a subject been treated in so absorbing and striking a way.

In this "fake documentary", a doctor returns to Brazil after his studies in Paris. Setting out to practice Medicine, he becomes an indigenous messiah and, in time, a cannibal.

Documentary about the Italian men that visit Hungary to meet girls and the Hungarian women that fall in love with them.

Documentary on one of Brazil's most controversial personalities: Getúlio Vargas, an ex-president.

A trip into the everyday life of the modern Sami population in Scandinavia.

A documentary about the history of the anarchist-led workers' movement in Brazil. It shows the transformation of immigrants into the first urban workers and chronicles the most important strikes, the successes and defeats of the movement, from the end of the 19th century until 1922.

Commissioned by the Maeght Gallery with the exhibition of Joan Miró, organized by the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs at the Grand Palais, which opened on May 17, 1974 in Paris. This film was shot in six days in Montroig del Camp (at the Miró) and Tarragona during the implementation process, by Josep Royo, a tapestry by Joan Miró. Five people worked for eight months in the realization of this tapestry, using wool 1200kg and 600kg for the warp. The total weight of 3500kg and a half was six meters wide by 11 meters long. They need a purpose built weaving loom. The day of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, the tapestry was placed in the lobby of one of the towers when they were demolished.

Documentary--with reconstituted scenes and interviews--about some of the more than 50 women who were in Cangaço, a phenomenon of social banditry from the Northeastern region of Brazil in the early 20th century.

The documentary-feature film taking place in the seventies is the "development novel" of Cséplő György, the intelligent and ambitious Gypsy boy. Having finished only two terms at school, the eighteen-year-old boy leaves Németfalu with two of his companions to find employment in Budapest and to break out of his miserable existence in the village cottage with the help of his small savings.

A class reunion of the twenty-somethings in the old school. What one remembers, what the individual has new to tell. One of them: Marieluise. Her love, her work, her demands on herself and the world into which she is coming of age.

An intimate cinéma vérité style documentary following french mega star Johnny Hallyday's summer tour.

This student film by the award-winning Helena Třeštíková bears many of the hallmarks of her later work. Made as a graduation piece when she was at the FAMU Film and TV Academy in Prague, we see the director developing the distinctive observational style of filmmaking that she has used so effectively throughout her career. Over the course of several months, she follows a young pregnant woman as she becomes slowly acquainted with the joys and responsibilities of motherhood.

A look on transvestites and transsexuals in early 80's Paris. The documentary focuses on Elisa, a Brazilian transvestite and ends with a filming of a surgical operation male to female.

Anton Walter Smetak, musician, sound researcher and creator of hundreds of instruments and sculptures. Lives in Salvador, Bahia and teaches music in UFBA.

Any given Sunday of 1974 in Spain, soccer games in several stadiums, the sarcastic voice of commentators, the inevitable presence of advertising. Goal! The victors and the defeated.

The history of Portugal since the Republican revolution of 1910 to the revolutionary period following the military coup of April 24, 1974, recounted with a marxist perspective, using historic sound and film documents. The title refers to a trilogy of values proclaimed by Salazar, prime minister of Portugal in 1936.

A series of interviews with Juan Domingo Perón in Madrid, where he was exiled. Filmed between June and October 1971, Perón talks about the current situation of the Justicialist movement and the steps to be taken to win the presidential elections again.

Documentary about the Mexican writer José Revueltas, imprisoned in the Lecumberri prison after the end of the 1968 student-popular movement.

Reconstruction of the life of Wilsinho, who was a dangerous criminal by the time he was 14. After getting arrested multiple times, he finally was killed by the police at the home of his girlfriend Geni.

A powerful Palestinian documentary starring Vanessa Redgrave about the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) and its role in Lebanon, as well as the daily struggles and resistance of the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation. Filmed right after the Tel al-Zaatar massacre, the film highlights the Palestinian fight for identity, dignity, and homeland.

Documentary about João Nogueira, popular singer and composer from Rio de Janeiro

Analysis of the educational revolution in Cuba.

After an extensive immersion work on abandoned childhood, Ciro Durán presents, from his point of view, the life of street children, who have broken all family ties and have regrouped to survive in the concrete jungle.

Short about the disappearance of the body of the political Argentinean writer Rodolfo Walsh after he was shot in an ambush by a special military group in Argentinia on March 25 1977.

No overview available

Documentary about a region in Northeast Brazil, situated in an area subject to severe drought, and the evolution of its economic activities.

Portraits of some Swiss men and women, who fought between 1936 and 1938 in the International Brigades to defend the Spanish Republic against the putsch of General Franco.

Le Quang Vinh, a revolutionary student leader, was arrested in Saigon in August 1961. A show trial and death sentence followed. World-wide protests altered it to “life imprisonment” on Con Son, the Devil’s Island. The humiliating “Tiger-Cages” and the methods of torture are shown.

No overview available

A film in three movements. In the first one, we find a historical synthesis of Brazilian architecture, from the slaves' dwellings to the Ministry of Education Building. In the second segment, architects such as Burle Marx, Lina Bo Bardi, Grigori Warchavchik and Joaquim Cardoso talk about architecture's social function. In the third movement, inhabitants of some Brazilian cities discuss the space they live in.

The film tells the story of the first skyscraper of São Paulo, the Martinelli building, and registers testimonials of its last residents who had to move after São Paulos’ municipality interdiction of the building. It shows the variety of human types and commercial establishments that used to exist inside the traditional building.

Documentary about the Belgian surrealist artist who died in 1967.

The very first documentary about Jane Elliott's educational experiment about discrimination, which was originally produced for ABC News, in which she conducts an unforgettable lesson with her third-grade class in Riceville, Iowa.

A docufiction film about the fall of Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, widely known as Lampião – the mythical bandit leader from the Brazilian northeast who fought the local power and put his name in history.

Painters Painting: The New York Art Scene 1940-1970 is a 1972 documentary directed by Emile de Antonio. It covers American art movements from abstract expressionism to pop art through conversations with artists in their studios. Artists appearing in the film include Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, Frank Stella, Barnett Newman, Hans Hofmann, Jules Olitski, Philip Pavia, Larry Poons, Robert Motherwell, and Kenneth Noland.

A collection of death scenes, ranging from TV material to homemade super 8 movies.