Memories of a Mexican

Satyajit Ray's poetic documentary was commissioned by the Chogyal (King) of Sikkim at a time when he felt the sovereignty of Sikkim was under threat from both China and India. Ray's documentary is about the sovereignty of Sikkim. The film was banned by the government of India when Sikkim merged with India in 1975. The ban was finally lifted by the Ministry of External Affairs in September 2010. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.

Short film about the Manzanar Japanese American internment camp. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2011.

Mixing narrative and documentary, the film retells a 16 year old girl's experience of a date rape.

This short film takes a look at the off-screen personas of screen actors. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

A documentary about four African-American comediennes set in 1984. Restored in 2021 by the Academy Film Archive. 

In 1914, the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa invites studios to shoot his actual battles against Porfírio Diaz army to raise funds for financing guns and ammunition. The Mutual Film Corporation, through producer D.W. Griffith, interests for the proposition and sends the filmmaker Frank Thayer to negotiate a contract with Pancho Villa himself.

This short focuses on the job of the costume designer in the production of motion pictures. The costume designer must design clothing that is correct for the film historically and geographically, and must be appropriate for the mood of the individual scene. We see famed costume designer Edith Head at work on a production. The Costume Designer was part of The Industry Film Project, a twelve-part series produced by the film studios and the Academy. Each series episode was produced to inform the public on a specific facet of the motion picture industry. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

"Whereas SQUARE INCH FIELD was composed largely in the camera, Rimmer's next film, MIGRATION, made full use of rear-projection rephotography, stop-framing, and slow motion. The migration of the title is interpreted as the flight of a ghost bird through aeons of space/time, through the micro-macro universe, through a myriad of complex realities. A seagull is seen flying gracefully in slow motion against a grainy green sky; suddenly the frame stops, warps and burns, as though caught in the gate of the projector. Now begins an alternation of fast and slow sequences in which the bird flies through time-lapse clouds and fog and, in a stroboscopic crescendo, hurtles into the sun's corona. Successive movements of the film develop rhythmic, organic counterpoints in which cosmic transformations send jelly fish into the sky and ocean waves into the sun." - Gene Youngblood. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2014.

A direct-cinema portrait of Indianapolis 500 driver Eddie Sachs, filmed before, during, and after the 1960 race as he competes from pole position. Using pioneering mobile camera and sound techniques, the film captures the psychological intensity of racing and the personal cost of high-speed competition.

The Japanese attack on Midway in June 1942, filmed as it happened. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in partnership with Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, in 2006.

A truly major work, I Don’t Know observes the relationship between a lesbian and a transgender person who prefers to be identified somewhere in between male and female, in an expression of personal ambiguity suggested by the film’s title. This nonfiction film – an unusual, partly staged work of semi-verité – is the first of Spheeris’s films to fully embrace what would become her characteristic documentary style: probing, intimate, uncompromising. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2014.

During the Mexican Agrarian Reform, an engineer travels to a town to distribute the land of the landowners among the peasants.

This Oscar-winning documentary tells the story behind Japanese daredevil Yuichiro Miura's 1970 effort to ski down the world's tallest mountain.

The Amazon rain forest, 1979. The crew of Fitzcarraldo (1982), a film directed by German director Werner Herzog, soon finds itself with problems related to casting, tribal struggles and accidents, among many other setbacks; but nothing compared to dragging a huge steamboat up a mountain, while Herzog embraces the path of a certain madness to make his vision come true.

The filmed depiction of a program where convicts tell troubled kids about the horrors of prison life. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.

Fascinating underwater documentary filmed with hand-held cameras by frogmen and mostly filmed in deep-water seas from within a special designed batiscaff, by the Cousteau family of sea explorers. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2010.

Robert Drew shows the sights and sounds from the funeral of President John F. Kennedy in November, 1963. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2002.

Documentary short detailing the American soldier's part in preserving the fundamental ideals of this nation. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

A look inside the Will Vinton Studio, with specializes in stop-motion animations with clay. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.

Directors Werner Herzog and Errol Morris make a bet which results in Herzog living up to his promise that he would eat his shoe if Errol Morris ever completed the film Gates of Heaven.