On the Bowery (1956), The Devil's Miner (2005), Darwin's Nightmare (2004), The Salt of the Earth (2014), Waste Land (2010), Gimme Shelter (1970), Which Way Home (2009), Nanook of the North (1922) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Social Documentary movies.
Storyline: Filmmaker Lionel Rogosin turns his camera on the homeless "bums" who frequent New York City's Bowery area.
Plot Keywords: documentary, new york, alcoholism, social realism, black and white, independent film, street life ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Filmmakers Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani profile Basilio, a 14-year-old Bolivian who supports his family by working in a silver mine. Like his fellow workers, the boy looks to Satan for protection from the daily hazards he encounters in the bowels of the Earth.
Plot Keywords: documentary, poverty, survival, social issues, family, traditional culture, exploitation ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Hubert Sauper's Oscar-nominated documentary about the Nile perch, a species introduced into Lake Victoria as an experiment in the sixties. Since then, the fish has not only wiped out the lake's other marine life, but also has a tendency to consume its own young. Unfortunately, the Nile perch is also the region's most profitable export. Everyone with a stake in the market downplays the ecological disaster.
Plot Keywords: documentary, globalization, africa, poverty, social injustice, capitalism, colonialism ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: For the last 40 years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed some of the major events of our recent history; international conflicts, starvation and exodus. He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of wild fauna and flora, and of grandiose landscapes as part of a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet's beauty.—Anonymous
Plot Keywords: documentary, photography, nature, social issues, war, migration, poverty ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: An uplifting feature documentary highlighting the transformative power of art and the beauty of the human spirit. Top-selling contemporary artist Vik Muniz takes us on an emotional journey from Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, to the heights of international art stardom. Vik collaborates with the brilliant catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, true Shakespearean characters who live and work in the garbage quoting Machiavelli and showing us how to recycle ourselves.—Anonymous
Plot Keywords: documentary, art, social issues, environmental protection, poverty, social change, artist ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A documentary on the Rolling Stones' 1969 US tour and the tragic events that concluded it. We see footage of their concerts and of them making the Sticky Fingers album in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. However, the main focus of the film is on one concert - Altamont Speedway, outside San Francisco, 6 December 1969. A free concert, it is the Stones' idea and it was meant to be the Woodstock of the West (Woodstock having occurred four months earlier). Other bands performing included Jefferson Airplane, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Ike and Tina Turner, Crosby Stills Nash and Young and Santana. However, it is far from being the peace and love of Woodstock. Part of the problem is that the Stones hired the Hells Angels as security. The other problem was that a large portion of the crowd were high on drugs. Friction ensues. During the Stones' set, Meredith Hunter, high on methamphetamine and armed with a gun, makes a lunge for the stage and is stabbed to death by the Hells Angels. The peace and love era of the 60s was over.—grantss
Plot Keywords: documentary, music, concert, 1960s, rock, violence, tragedy ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: "Which Way Home" is a feature documentary film that follows unaccompanied child migrants, on their journey through Mexico, as they try to reach the United States. We follow children like Olga and Freddy, nine-year old Hondurans, who are desperately trying to reach their parents in the US.; children like Jose, a ten-year old El Salvadoran, who has been abandoned by smugglers and ends up alone in a Mexican detention center; and Kevin, a canny, streetwise fourteen-year old Honduran, whose mother hopes that he will reach the U.S. and send money back to her. These are stories of hope and courage, disappointment and sorrow. They are the children you never hear about; the invisible ones.—Anonymous
Plot Keywords: documentary, immigration, children, latin america, mexico, poverty, family separation ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Documents one year in the life of Nanook, an Eskimo (Inuit), and his family. Describes the trading, hunting, fishing and migrations of a group barely touched by industrial technology. Nanook of the North was widely shown and praised as the first full-length, anthropological documentary in cinematographic history.—<xaviermartin@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: documentary, silent film, arctic, expedition, survival, nature, hunting ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: This examination of cultural and economic globalization follows the life-cycle of Mardi Gras beads from a small factory in Fuzhou, China, to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and to art galleries in New York City.
Plot Keywords: globalization, labor rights, consumerism, cultural differences, documentary, american culture, social justice ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In 2001, the Taliban government of Afghanistan destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan, the world's tallest stone sculptures. By the summer of 2002, after the fall of the Taliban, more than 250 Afghans, most of them Hazara refugees, were living in caves beside the rubble. This film, organized chronologically over four seasons, follows a refugee family living there, including Mir, a smiling lad of eight. The landscape is stark, the winter is harsh, the refugees' stories are harrowing, Mir's school is crowded and ill equipped, helicopters move across the sky, and the roads carry mostly military vehicles, yet Mir's family hopes for a house and a bright future.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: documentary, poverty, cultural heritage, refugees, social issues, survival, education ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: On the Caribbean island of the Dominican Republic, tourists flock to pristine beaches, with little knowledge that a few miles away thousands of dispossessed Haitians are under armed guard on plantations harvesting sugarcane, most of which ends up in US kitchens. Cutting cane by machete, they work 14 hour days, 7 days a week, frequently without access to decent housing, electricity, clean water, education, healthcare or adequate nutrition. The Price of Sugar follows a charismatic Spanish priest, Father Christopher Hartley, as he organizes some of this hemisphere's poorest people, challenging the powerful interests profiting from their work. This film raises key questions about where the products we consume originate, at what human cost they are produced and ultimately, where our responsibility lies.—Louise Rosen Ltd.
Plot Keywords: documentary, social justice, human rights, exploitation, poverty, inequality, globalization ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In this blend of documentary and fictional narrative from pioneering filmmaker Robert Flaherty, the everyday trials of life on Ireland's unforgiving Aran Islands are captured with attention to naturalistic beauty and historical detail.
Plot Keywords: documentary, ireland, 1930s, black and white, survival, nature, silent film ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A trio wanders the cliffs of an Outer Hebridean island and encounters a gravestone at the edge of a precipice; it reads, "Peter Manson ... gone over." One man in the trio knows the story of the gravestone and tells it to the others... It is ten years earlier, and the way of life on the island is dying; steam trawlers from the mainland threaten its survival as a fishing port. Peter Manson, one of the community's leaders, resists evacuating to the mainland, though his son Robbie is about to leave the island himself. Meanwhile, Robbie's twin sister plans to marry his best friend, Andrew Gray. Andrew and Robbie argue over evacuation and decide to settle the matter by racing to the top of a cliff. Ruth is terrified: she may lose them both. The race ends in tragedy, which tears apart the families of Manson and Gray. Times passes and Ruth reveals she is pregnant with an illegitimate child. This promises to bring the two families back together, but not before desperation hits the islanders. Evacuation is inevitable. And so is one last tragedy.—sspurli
Plot Keywords: adventure, drama, history, british film, black and white, 1930s, scotland ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: The Decline of Western Civilization III is a 1998 documentary film that follows the gutter punk lifestyle of homeless teenagers.
Plot Keywords: documentary, music, punk, los angeles, underground culture, social outcasts, teenagers ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Crotchety old Mrs. Bransom hires a charming young man named Danny as a live-in companion. Less charmed by Danny is Mrs. Bransom's niece, Olivia, a repressed young woman who suspects Danny of foul play. When news of a local murder is revealed, Olivia suspects Danny. Although repulsed by the thought he may have committed the crime, Olivia also finds herself becoming increasingly attracted to him at the same time.—Daniel Bubbeo <dbubbeo@cmp.com>
Plot Keywords: documentary, british film, 1930s, black and white, realism, social documentary, industry ...
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