Africa in Pieces: The Tragedy of the Great Lakes (2000)

Djembefola

African drummer leaves village, makes it big in the world. Great drumming!!

When We Were Kings

It's 1974. Muhammad Ali is 32 and thought by many to be past his prime. George Foreman is ten years younger and the heavyweight champion of the world. Promoter Don King wants to make a name for himself and offers both fighters five million dollars apiece to fight one another, and when they accept, King has only to come up with the money. He finds a willing backer in Mobutu Sese Suko, the dictator of Zaire, and the "Rumble in the Jungle" is set, including a musical festival featuring some of America's top black performers, like James Brown and B.B. King.

The Devil Came on Horseback

While serving with the African Union, former Marine Capt. Brian Steidle documents the brutal ethnic cleansing occuring in Darfur. Determined that the Western public should know about the atrocities he is witnessing, Steidle contacts New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof, who publishes some of Steidle's photographic evidence.

Trophy

This in-depth look into the powerhouse industries of big-game hunting, breeding and wildlife conservation in the U.S. and Africa unravels the complex consequences of treating animals as commodities.

500 Years

From a historic genocide trial to the overthrow of a president, the sweeping story of mounting resistance played out in Guatemala’s recent history is told through the actions and perspectives of the majority indigenous Mayan population, who now stand poised to reimagine their society.

The Look of Silence

An optician grapples with the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-1966, during which his older brother was exterminated.

God Grew Tired of Us

Filmmaker Christopher Quinn observes the ordeal of three Sudanese refugees -- Jon Bul Dau, Daniel Abul Pach and Panther Bior -- as they try to come to terms with the horrors they experienced in their homeland, while adjusting to their new lives in the United States.

Ôrí

A look at the Brazilian black movement between 1977 and 1988, going by the relationship between Brazil and Africa.

Lakota Nation vs. United States

Poet Layli Long Soldier crafts a searing portrait of her Oyate’s connection to the Black Hills, through first contact and broken treaties to the promise of the Land Back movement, in this lyrical testament to resilience of a nation.

The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey

Many geneticists and archaeologists have long surmised that human life began in Africa. Dr. Spencer Wells, one of a group of scientists studying the origin of human life, offers evidence and theories to support such a thesis in this PBS special. He claims that Africa was populated by only a few thousand people that some deserted their homeland in a conquest that has resulted in global domination.

Africa, Blood & Beauty

This film speaks of archaic peoples, their customs and mores, in an attempt to make the last snapshots of their traditional lifestyles before they are gone for good.

The Great Green Wall

An epic journey along Africa's Great Green Wall — an ambitious vision to grow a wall of trees stretching across the entire continent to fight against increasing drought, desertification and climate change.

Adwa

In 1896, Ethiopia, an African nation, largely armed with spears and knives, defeats a well-equipped and organized Italian military bent on colonization.

Radical Evil

Das radikal Böse is a German-Austrian documentary that attempted to explore psychological processes and individual decision latitude "normal young men" in the German Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and SD, which in 1941 during the Second World War as part of the Holocaust two million Jewish civilians shot dead in Eastern Europe.

Dawn of the Damned

This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures, massacres and executions of Algerians. The real death of children, passers-by, resistance fighters, one after the other, becomes unbearable. Rather than be blatant propaganda, the film convinces entirely by its visual evidence, constituting an object lesson for revolutionary cinema.

The Crimson Wing: Mystery of the Flamingos

In the remote and forgotten wilderness of Lake Natron, in northern Tanzania, one of nature's last great mysteries unfolds: the birth, life and death of a million crimson-winged flamingos.

Broken Rainbow

Documentary chronicling the government relocation of 10,000 Navajo Indians in Arizona.

Africa Addio

A documentary about the end of the colonial era in Africa, portraying acts of animal poaching, violence, executions, and tribal slaughter.

African Cats

African Cats captures the real-life love, humor and determination of the majestic kings of the savanna. The story features Mara, an endearing lion cub who strives to grow up with her mother’s strength, spirit and wisdom; Sita, a fearless cheetah and single mother of five mischievous newborns; and Fang, a proud leader of the pride who must defend his family from a once banished lion.

Mariner of the Mountains

Using his personal background, Brazilian Karim Aïnous invites the audience to follow/discover an incredible journey through space and time, with an original and usually unknown prism/aspect : The strong bound between Algeria and Brazil, two countries with political and revolutionary strikes that mould their evolution.

Statues Also Die

Short documentary commissioned by the magazine Présence Africaine. From the question "Why is the African in the anthropology museum while Greek or Egyptian art are in the Louvre?", the directors expose and criticize the lack of consideration for African art. The film was censored in France for eight years because of its anti-colonial perspective.

Wodaabe: Herdsmen of the Sun

Herzog's documentary of the Wodaabe people of the Sahara/Sahel region. Particular attention is given to the tribe's spectacular courtship rituals and 'beauty pageants', where eligible young men strive to outshine each other and attract mates by means of lavish makeup, posturing and facial movements.

Walled Off

A secret museum in an art hotel sparks intrigue when it's revealed to be a creation of controversial artist, Banksy. Using art as a form of political resistance, the hotel highlights the reality of life under Israeli military occupation. The film journeys through the hotel, Palestine, and a relevant past to dismantle the mainstream media's bias towards the Palestinian struggle for freedom and equality.

Liyana

A talented group of orphaned children in Swaziland create a fictional heroine and send her on a dangerous quest.

Jane

Drawing from never-before-seen footage that has been tucked away in the National Geographic archives, director Brett Morgen tells the story of Jane Goodall, a woman whose chimpanzee research revolutionized our understanding of the natural world.

The Pearl Button

The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds all the voices of the earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of two mysterious buttons which were found on its ocean floor. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline and the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian Indigenous people, the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.

Iwájú: A Day Ahead

Filmed across three continents, this documentary shares the story of the founders of the Pan-African comic book company, Kugali, who made their dream a reality creating an original animation series with Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Ethiopiques Magnetic Suite

Dazzled by the surrealist movement, Francis Falceto decided at the age of 17 to live an extraordinary life. In the 1980s, co-created l'Oreille est Hardie and Le Confort Moderne in Poitiers, leaving his mark on French underground culture. A record he discovered by chance opened another important chapter in his life: Ethiopian music, of which he became a great champion. "Ethiopiques Magnetic Suite" is the portrait of a discreet and essential man, a plunge into the counterculture, an invitation to live his his life.

The Sahel Cuisine: Fura Da Nono

A documentary film about the art and process of making Fura Da Nono - a type of food that is originated from West Africa's Sahel region, one of the many unique traditions of the Fulani people which has been preserved for centuries.

Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable

This cinematic journey into the waters off East Africa chronicles the story behind artist Damien Hirst's massive exhibition of oceanic treasures.

The Queen of Trees

In Africa, the giant fig tree and the tiny fig wasp differ in size a billion times over, but neither could exist without the other. Their extraordinary relationship is a marvel of co-evolution, a marriage which has lasted for millennia. It forms the basis of a complex web of dependency that supports entire ecosystems, providing food for thousands of creatures, from elephants, giraffes, and fruit bats, to forest hornbills, monkeys, insects, and fish.

Where to Invade Next

To understand firsthand what the United States of America can learn from other nations, Michael Moore playfully “invades” some to see what they have to offer.

Silverback

Feature-length documentary following award-winning wildlife cameraman Vianet Djenguet as he documents a gruelling but vital mission to ‘habituate’ a notoriously protective 450lb silverback, in a last-ditch effort to save the critically endangered eastern lowland gorillas from extinction.

The Armenian Genocide

Explores the Ottoman Empire killings of more than one million Armenians during World War I. The film describes not only what happened before, during and since World War I, but also takes a direct look at the genocide denial maintained by Turkey to the present day.

Motion Pictures are Your Best Entertainment

Television was invented as a result of scientific and technical research. Its power as a medium of news and entertainment altered all preceding media of news and entertainment

Absent

For over a hundred years, Mărculești was a vibrant Jewish agricultural and mercantile community in Bessarabia (now present-day Moldova). In July 1941, the village was the site of an unimaginable atrocity. Seventy-three years later, few speak honestly or completely about what happened. ABSENT is a cinematic portrait of the ghost village of Mărculești, its current inhabitants, and their very complex relationship to their own history. Filmed entirely on location, the film documents one of Europe's poorest, most remote, and least-visited places.

Downstream to Kinshasa

For two decades, the victims of the Six-Day War have been fighting in Kisangani for the recognition of this bloody conflict and demanding compensation. Tired of unsuccessful pleas, they have finally decided to voice their claims in Kinshasa, after a long journey on the Congo River.

Another Day of Life

In 1975, Ryszard Kapuściński, a veteran Polish journalist, embarked on a seemingly suicidal road trip into the heart of the Angola's civil war. There, he witnessed once again the dirty reality of war and discovered a sense of helplessness previously unknown to him. Angola changed him forever: it was a reporter who left Poland, but it was a writer who returned…

After Auschwitz

For six female Holocaust survivors, liberation from the camps marked the beginning of a lifelong struggle.