Framing Reality

Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi’s doco celebrates 50 years of cultural and political debate in the pages of The New York Review of Books with octogenarian editor Robert Silvers, its tireless champion of intellectual freedom.

This artful and moving exploration of outsider art documents the unusual collection of artworks that were made at an English psychiatric hospital in an innovative art therapy studio led by Edward Adamson.

Can a robot establish a ‘human’ relationship with someone? In this account of a Dutch pilot study, we see three elderly women become attached, with varying degrees of resistance, to a caredroid named Alice.

Dutch director Heddy Honigmann’s beautiful documentary follows Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra to Russia, Argentina and Soweto, subtly exploring the depth of feeling music stirs in both players and listeners.

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) is known as the ‘Father of Yoga in the West’. In this fascinating documentary, produced by the Self-Realization Fellowship who continues his work, we learn about his extraordinary life.

Documenting the frenzy of adulation and controversy that erupted during street artist Banksy’s month-long ‘residency’ in New York, Chris Moukarbel energetically examines issues of art and ownership within the public space.

Astounded by the vibrant music and dance he encountered working in refugee camps in south Sudan, Sudanese filmmaker Hajooj Kuka captures an abundance of fiercely articulated cultural identity in this inspiring documentary.

Loaded with footage of his legendary stunts, and packed with anecdotes almost as hair-raising, this warts-and-all portrait of 70s motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel upholds his primacy in the extreme sports pantheon.

Anticipating the punch-counterpunch set-up of today’s TV punditry, but so much more incisive, the 1968 TV debates between liberal Gore Vidal and conservative William F. Buckley Jr resound again in this terrific documentary.

“Matthew Heineman’s troubling documentary about vigilante groups on both sides of the border in the porous region between Mexico and the Southwestern US – an area increasingly taken over by drug cartels – is explosive stuff.” — New York

This testimony of shattered young veterans of Israel’s 1967 Six-Day War was taped at the time in a project headed by author Amos Oz – and immediately suppressed in the interests of national morale by the Israeli army.

With remarkable access, Chinese documentary filmmaker Zhou Hao shadows the mayor of the most polluted city in China and his problematic plan to rehabilitate its image, relocating half a million people to create a historic heritage park.

This affectionate portrait of Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold is also a love letter to the culinary and cultural wonders of Los Angeles, from Beverly Hills fine dining to strip mall noodle joints and taco carts.

“The quasi-Kafkaesque administration holding Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe’s corrupt dictatorship in place finally gets the first-hand scrutiny it merits in Camilla Nielsson’s riveting documentary.” — Guy Lodge, Variety

Filmmaker Kim Longinotto accompanies the irrepressible ex-hooker Brenda Myers-Powell as she storms the streets, prisons and high schools of Chicago to inspire young women caught in the cycle of abuse with the story of her escape.

The creators of BBC’s Deep Blue and Earth take us on a spellbinding journey through seven realms of Africa to reveal a natural world more magical and mystical than anything we could imagine.

Archival footage and interviews are used to stirring effect in this doco that shows how Britain’s striking miners in 1984 were ill-equipped to face an overwhelming, lengthy and ‘carefully orchestrated state crackdown’.

Alex Gibney’s documentary sensation, based on Lawrence Wright’s best-selling history of Scientology and its apostates, gets the big screen treatment it deserves.

This rousing history of the ideals and origins of Greenpeace makes lavish use of video archives of early action – and examines the far-reaching conflicts that arose as the founders clashed about tactics and priorities.

Tracing the emigrations of his family over more than half a century, expatriate Iraqi Samir pays homage to the frustrated democratic dreams of a people successively plagued by dictatorship, war and foreign occupation.

Veteran documentary maestro Albert Maysles’ Iris is a captivating salute to a proud flag-bearer of the vanishing quality of fashion individuality, the legendary New York clotheshorse and design darling Iris Apfel.

Joshua Oppenheimer follows his extraordinary The Act of Killing with an equally revelatory documentary in which boastful perpetrators of Indonesia’s 1965 massacres are confronted by the brother of one of their victims.

The life, music and passionate commitment of the irresistible Mavis Staples are lovingly chronicled in this spirited doco – with help from fans Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, Chuck D, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Prince.

Scoring its points through clearly stated arguments and pithy humour, Merchants of Doubt examines the methods corporations use to stymie political actions that would be good for public health, but bad for their bottom lines.

A new summit in mountain sports documentary – with characters and a plot to rival many a feature, Meru captures the sheer physical extremity of two attempts to make the first ascent of a precipitous Himalayan peak.

Present-day art world stars pay tribute in a lavishly illustrated profile of the arts patron extraordinaire who transformed a modest fortune and adventurous taste into one of the premier collections of 20th-century art.

In this challenging yet open-minded doco by a young Swedish-Danish couple, Florida sex offenders preparing to re-enter society talk about their guilt and the barriers to rehabilitation. Special Jury Award winner at Sundance.

This unsettling look into indoctrination within the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is another essential work from one of the world’s finest documentary filmmakers. Music and narration by Nick Cave.

A historic wooden Chinese sailing junk that crossed the Pacific in 1955 makes an even more improbable return journey after the family of its original sailors campaign to save it from the scrapheap and bring it home.

The Sundance Grand Jury prizewinner for World Cinema Documentary is a scarier-than-fiction investigation of the Chernobyl disaster, headed up by an eccentric young artist, and abetted by the fearless filmmakers.

Ethan Hawke’s music-laden documentary ushers us into the company of octogenarian former concert pianist and tireless teacher Seymour Bernstein, and invites us to share his humour, vitality and penetrating wisdom.

All the anger, joy and turmoil of the 60s–70s feminist explosion comes alive in a vivid documentary, blending the recollections of key US campaigners with archival action likely to astound anyone who wasn’t there.

New Zealand-born Margot Nash scrutinises the memories and mementoes of her childhood to understand the unhappiness of her parents, and the corrosive instability of the household from which she fled as a young woman in the early 70s.

Acclaimed London artist and designer Yolanda Sonnabend is obliged to share the grand family home she’s made so flamboyantly her own with her scientist brother in this new doco from This Way of Life director Thomas Burstyn.

Winner of the Panorama Audience Award in Berlin, Tell Spring Not to Come This Year takes us into the dark heart of the forgotten ‘War on Terror’ as Afghani forces struggle to fight on after foreign forces have evacuated.

A tiny North Dakota town wakes to a nightmare when a notorious white supremacist moves in and tries to take over in this gripping portrait of conflicting notions of freedom in a community under siege.

Raised a child of ‘White Australia’, photographer and performer William Yang traces his genealogy as born-again Chinese in this charming documentary tribute to the sustaining power of family ties.

In this stranger-than-fiction doco, we meet six brothers who have spent their entire lives locked by their father into their Manhattan apartment – where they watch movies obsessively and film their own ingenious re-enactments.

Gillian Armstrong’s doco celebrates the colourful Orry-Kelly, the Australian-born designer who dressed Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca, Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot and Bette Davis in many of her greatest roles.

With a soundtrack you can sing along to, this spirited doco celebrates the hitherto anonymous LA session musicians who enlivened hit LPs by The Byrds, Cher, Nancy and Frank Sinatra, The Beach Boys, The Monkees and many more.