The Real Dirt on Farmer John (2005), The Swimmer (1968), 20,000 Days on Earth (2014), McKellen: Playing the Part (2017), My Architect (2003), Shirkers (2018), Love and Saucers (2017), Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang (2016) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Personal Journey movies.
Storyline: Filmmaker Taggart Siegel captures two turbulent decades in the life of John Peterson, an Illinois farmer who not only tends the land but also delves into writing and performance art. A man who would as soon work the fields in a feather boa as in a pair of jeans, Peterson rises out of the bankruptcy and depression plaguing Midwest farm communities in the 1980s and saves his livelihood through organic agriculture.
Plot Keywords: documentary, biography, agriculture, rural life, independent film, community, tradition ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Neddy Merrill has been away for most of the Summer. He reappears at a friend's pool. As they talk, someone notices that there are pools spanning the entire valley. He decided to jog from pool to pool to swim across the whole valley. As he stops in each pool his interactions tell his life story.—John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net>
Plot Keywords: psychological thriller, existential, midlife crisis, suburban life, social satire, identity crisis, american dream ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Drama and reality combine in a fictitious 24 hours in the life of musician and international cultural icon Nick Cave. With startlingly frank insights and an intimate portrayal of the artistic process, the film examines what makes us who we are, and celebrates the transformative power of the creative spirit.—Pulse Films
Plot Keywords: documentary, music, biography, artistic, creative process, musician, performance ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Feature documentary on the life and work of Sir Ian McKellen.
Plot Keywords: biography, documentary, actor, shakespeare, career, lgbtq+, uk ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: World-famous architect Louis Kahn (Exeter Library, Salk Institute, Bangladeshi Capitol Building) had two illegitimate children with two different women outside of his marriage. Son Nathaniel always hoped that someday his father would come and live with him and his mother, but Kahn never left his wife. Instead, Kahn was found dead in a men's room in Penn Station when Nathaniel was only 11. Nathaniel travels the world visitng his father's buildings and haunts in this film, meeting his father's contemporaries, colleagues, students, wives, and children.—Martin Lewison <dr@martinlewison.com>
Plot Keywords: documentary, architecture, biography, father-son relationship, art, family secrets, legacy ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In 1992, teenager Sandi Tan and her friends Sophie and Jasmine shot Singapore's first indie-a road movie called "Shirkers"-with their enigmatic American mentor, Georges Cardona. Sandi wrote the script and played the lead, a killer named S. After shooting wrapped, Georges vanished with all the footage! 20 years later, the 16mm cans are recovered in New Orleans, sending Sandi-now a novelist in Los Angeles-on a new personal odyssey across two continents and many media: 16mm, digital, Hi8, Super8, slides, animation and handwritten letters. A kaleidoscopic punk rock ghost story!
Plot Keywords: documentary, autobiographical, independent film, filmmaking, mystery, personal journey, creative process ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: The story of David Huggins, an unassuming 72 year-old who claims to have had a lifetime of encounters with otherworldly beings - including an inter-species romance with an E.T. woman (with whom he lost his virginity to), and chronicled it all in surreal impressionist paintings. Are his experiences dream, hallucination, or could they be reality?—Brad Abrahams
Plot Keywords: documentary, aliens, love, art, painter, paranormal, interview ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Trace the rise of contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang from childhood in Mao's China to global art world superstar, and join his quest to realize his lifelong obsession: Sky Ladder.
Plot Keywords: documentary, art, biography, visual art, creativity, family, legacy ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A 15-year-old girl's transformation from conservative Southern Baptist to liberal Christian and ardent feminist parallels her fight for sex education and gay rights in Lubbock, Texas.
Plot Keywords: documentary, lgbtq+, sex education, activism, teenager, religion, coming of age ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Part documentary, part narrative fiction, part home movie, and part acid trip. A psychedelic whirlwind of snapshots, Super-8 home movies, old answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, snippets of '80s pop culture, and dramatic reenactments to create an epic portrait of an American family travesty. The story begins in 2003 when Jonathan learns that his schizophrenic mother, Renee, has overdosed on her lithium medication. He is catapulted back into his real and horrifying family legacy of rape, abandonment, promiscuity, drug addiction, child abuse, and psychosis. As he grows up on camera, he finds the escapist balm of musical theater and B horror flicks and reconnects to life through a queer chosen family. Then a look into the future shows Jonathan as he confronts the symbiotic and almost unbearable love he shares with his beautiful and tragically damaged mother.—Sujit R. Varma
Plot Keywords: documentary, autobiographical, experimental, lgbtq+, mental health, personal journey, low budget ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: North Carolina produces more tobacco than any other state in America. Bright Leaves describes a journey taken across the social, economic, and psychological tobacco terrain of North Carolina by a native Carolinian, Ross McElwee, whose great-grandfather created the famous brand of tobacco known as Bull Durham. The comedic chronicle is a subjective, autobiographical meditation on the allure of cigarettes and their troubling legacy for the state of North Carolina. It's also a film about family history, addiction, denial, and filmmaking--as McElwee, noted director of Sherman's March, grapples with the legacy of an obscure Hollywood melodrama that is purportedly based on this curious man that was his great-grandfather.—Sujit R. Varma
Plot Keywords: documentary, autobiographical, memory, legacy, addiction, health, capitalism ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Chris Rock, a man with two daughters, asks about good hair, as defined by Black Americans, mostly Black women. He visits Bronner Brothers' annual hair convention in Atlanta. He tells us about sodium hydroxide, a toxin used to relax hair. He looks at weaves, and he travels to India where tonsure ceremonies produce much of the hair sold in America. A weave is expensive: he asks who makes the money. We visit salons and barbershops, central to the Black community. Rock asks men if they can touch their mates' hair - no, it's decoration. Various talking heads (many of them women with good hair) comment. It's about self image. Maya Angelou and Tracie Thoms provide perspective.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: documentary, comedy, african american, culture, beauty, identity, society ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Dina is an eccentric and outspoken woman who invites her fiance, Scott, to move in with her. The couple face many challenges as Dina copes with a mental disability, and Scott lives with Asperger's syndrome.
Plot Keywords: documentary, romance, independent film, disability, autism, love story, emotional ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: This past May, Neil Young brought his solo tour to Toronto's Massey Hall, an iconic venue in the city of his birth. Jonathan Demme was on hand to capture the two nights, which highlighted new songs from the album Le Noise, produced by Daniel Lanois, mixed with classics like "Ohio" and "I Believe in You." At sixty-five, Young retains a youthful vitality and musical curiosity that balances his wisdom and experience. It's no wonder he's been an inspiration to the likes of Pearl Jam and Sonic Youth. In Neil Young Journeys, Demme intersperses the Massey Hall concert footage with brief scenes from a road trip through Ontario. Driving a 1956 Ford Crown Victoria, Young visits the rural town of Omemee, where he spent a key part of his formative years, and reminisces about his former neighbors and their daughters. As he drives past bulldozers transforming the landscape, he remarks, 'It's all gone... it's still in my head.'—TIFF
Plot Keywords: music documentary, concert film, rock music, live performance, independent film, music history, personal journey ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: "If you don't take risks, you'll have a wasted soul." - Drew Barrymore. Ever since the second grade when he first saw her in E.T. The Extraterrestrial, Brian Herzlinger has had a crush on Drew Barrymore. Now, 20 years later he's decided to try to fulfill his lifelong dream by asking her for a date. There's one small problem: She's Drew Barrymore and he's, well, Brian Herzlinger, a broke 27-year-old aspiring filmmaker from New Jersey. But that doesn't stop Brian and his film school pals from doing everything they can think of to convince Barrymore to go out with him - and documenting their quest along the way. Equipped with a video camera they have to return to Circuit City in 30 days and the $1,100 Brian won on a game show (where the winning answer was, prophetically, "Drew Barrymore"), they've got one month to accomplish their mission. To succeed, they'll need to negotiate an army of publicists, agents, producers and assistants who surround the star so Brian can pop the question. My Date with Drew is the award-winning, inspirational story of an ordinary guy who, despite incredibly long odds, puts everything on the line to pursue his lifelong dream. It's also an astute and often hilarious look at contemporary dating rituals, the culture of celebrity and the power of passion.—Andrew Hindes
Plot Keywords: documentary, romance, comedy, independent film, celebrity, fan culture, los angeles ...
Movie Details Click Here !