Poetic Documentary Movies

A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan,...

A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of...

Carefully picked scenes of nature and civilization are viewed at high speed using time-lapse cinematography in an effort to demonstrate the history...

A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting...

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem...

Filmed over nearly five years in twenty-five countries on five continents, and shot on seventy-millimetre film, Samsara transports us to the varied...

An exploration of technologically developing nations and the effect the transition to Western-style modernization has had on them.

Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form....

A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.

May Pang lovingly recounts her life in rock & roll and the whirlwind 18 months spent as friend, lover, and confidante to one of the towering figures...

A documentary shot by filmmakers all over the world that serves as a time capsule to show future generations what it was like to be alive on the 24th...

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions...

Shot under extreme conditions and inspired by Mayan creation theory, the film contemplates the illusion of reality and the possibility of capturing...

Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form....

Morning reveals New York harbor, the wharves, the Brooklyn Bridge. A ferry boat docks, disgorging its huddled mass. People move briskly along Wall...

What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Côte d'Azur, especially its...

This short documentary, shot in the glass factories of Leerdam and Schiedam, demonstrates how glass blowers do their work. But thanks to the superbly...

Bondi Icebergs is the most photographed pool in the world. This is where generations of children have learnt to swim, where the diehard have braved...

Featuring a commentary by Noël Burch (in nonsense French), Recreation's rapid-fire montage of single-frame images of incredible density and...

This short experimental film tells the story of a man who comes to Hollywood to become a star, only to fail and be dehumanized. He is identified by...