Sermons and Sacred Pictures(1989)
"An experimental documentary on Reverend L.O. Taylor, a black Baptist minister from Memphis, Tennessee who was also an inspired filmmaker with an overwhelming interest in preserving the social and cultural fabric of his own community in the 1930′s and 40s. I combine his films and music recordings with my own images of Memphis neighborhoods and religious gatherings" -Sachs
Movie: Sermons and Sacred Pictures
Recommendations Movies
6.1Naqoyqatsi(en)
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
6.5Downloaded(en)
A documentary that explores the downloading revolution; the kids that created it, the bands and the businesses that were affected by it, and its impact on the world at large.
6.7The U.S. vs. John Lennon(en)
A documentary on the life of John Lennon, with a focus on the time in his life when he transformed from a musician into an antiwar activist.
6.5Heart of a Dog(en)
Lyrical and powerfully personal essay film that reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother, her beloved dog, and such diverse subjects as family memories, surveillance, and Buddhist teachings.
7.6As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty(en)
A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.
7.6A Plastic Ocean(en)
A documentary focused on plastic pollution in the world's oceans.
6.2Seduced and Abandoned(en)
SEDUCED AND ABANDONED combines acting legend Alec Baldwin with director James Toback as they lead us on a troublesome and often hilarious journey of raising financing for their next feature film. Moving from director to financier to star actor, the two players provide us with a unique look behind the curtain at the world's biggest and most glamourous film festival, shining a light on the bitter-sweet relationship filmmakers have with Cannes and the film business. Featuring insights from directors Martin Scorsese, 'Bernando Bertolucci' and Roman Polanski; actors Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain and a host of film distribution luminaries.
7.0The Curious Birth of Benjamin Button(en)
A documentary about the making of David Fincher's 2008 film THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON. Virtually every element in the evolution of the Fincher's film is documented here, from the project's attachment to numerous other directors during the 1990s, to its shoot in 2006 and 2007 in New Orleans, to its complex, CGI-intensive postproduction process.
6.4Ex Libris: The New York Public Library(en)
A documentary about how a dominant cultural and demographic institution both sustains their traditional activities and adapts to the digital revolution.
7.5McQueen(en)
Alexander McQueen's rags-to-riches story is a modern-day fairy tale, laced with the gothic. Mirroring the savage beauty, boldness and vivacity of his design, this documentary is an intimate revelation of McQueen's own world, both tortured and inspired, which celebrates a radical and mesmerizing genius of profound influence.
7.4More Brains! A Return to the Living Dead(en)
Retrospective documentary about the making of the horror cult classic "The Return of the Living Dead."
6.8We Live in Public(en)
In 1999, Internet entrepreneur Josh Harris recruits dozens of young men and women who agree to live in underground apartments for weeks at a time while their every movement is broadcast online. Soon, Harris and his girlfriend embark on their own subterranean adventure, with cameras streaming live footage of their meals, arguments, bedroom activities, and bathroom habits. This documentary explores the role of technology in our lives, as it charts the fragile nature of dot-com economy.
7.9John Candy: I Like Me(en)
Those who knew iconic funnyman John Candy best share his story, in their own words, through never-before-seen archival footage, imagery, and interviews.
7.5Listen to Me Marlon(en)
With exclusive access to his extraordinary unseen and unheard personal archive including hundreds of hours of audio recorded over the course of his life, this is the definitive Marlon Brando cinema documentary. Charting his exceptional career as an actor and his extraordinary life away from the stage and screen with Brando himself as your guide, the film will fully explore the complexities of the man by telling the story uniquely from Marlon's perspective, entirely in his own voice. No talking heads, no interviewees, just Brando on Brando and life.
6.9Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction(en)
An impressionistic portrait of the iconic actor Harry Dean Stanton comprised of intimate moments, film clips from some of his 250 films and his renditions of American folk songs.
7.0Drew: The Man Behind the Poster(en)
A documentary on legendary movie-poster artist Drew Struzan.
6.4Tabloid(en)
A documentary on a former Miss Wyoming who is charged with abducting and imprisoning a young Mormon Missionary.
6.6Champs(en)
A documentary about the sport of boxing, as seen through the eyes of champions Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield and Bernard Hopkins.
6.0Trainwreck: The Real Project X(en)
A night of drunken chaos rocks a quiet Dutch town in this shocking documentary about a teen's birthday invite that accidentally went viral on Facebook.
Similar Movies
0.0Black Waters(es)
“Aguas Negras” is an experimental documentary about the Cuautitlán River. The film examines the passage of time and the pollution of the river by focusing on conversations with multiple generations of women in the filmmaker's family that have grown up by the river in a municipality identified as having the highest perception of insecurity in the State of Mexico.
6.2Women & the Wind(en)
Shot over the course of 30 days at sea, filmmaker Alizé Jireh documents the group’s voyage across the North Atlantic—from moments of stillness and calm to the chaos of storms and setbacks. With an observational approach and an eye for the emotional and physical rhythms of life at sea, Jireh captures not just the external landscape, but the internal shifts that come with navigating the vast unknown.
6.6The Last Angel of History(en)
An examination of the hitherto unexplored relationships between Pan-African culture, science fiction, intergalactic travel, and rapidly progressing computer technology.
0.0Tiger Balm(en)
"After two years of massive didacticism in black-and-white [Hapax Legomena (1971-72)], I am surprised by Tiger Balm, lyrical, in color, a celebration of generative humors and principles, in homage to the green of England, the light of my dooryard… and consecutive matters." - HF
0.0You will never see the shadow(es)
A frenetic Santiago gives me space to reflect on depression, loneliness and home in an attempt to piece together my past. Pandemic revelations and crises of youth appear as fragments. The liveliness I find in the crowd connects me with its movement.
Carta a Boris(es)
Writing late becomes usual, we are always too late. Boris was my alter ego and I was his alter ego. Now that he is no longer here, I can be honest.
0.0Private Chronicles: Monologue(ru)
The collective life of the generation born as Jurij Gagarin became the first man in space. Vitaly Mansky has woven together a fictional biography – taken from over 5.000 hours of film material, and 20.000 still pictures made for home use. A moving document of the fictional, but nonetheless true life of the generation who grew up in this time of huge change and upheaval.
6.9Letter in Motion to Gilles Jacob and Thierry Fremaux(fr)
Rather than writing a simple letter to explain his absence from the press conference for his latest Cannes entry, "Goodbye to Language," at the Cannes Film Festival, instead, legendary filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard created a video "Letter in motion to (Cannes president) Gilles Jacob and (artistic director) Thierry Fremaux." The video intercuts from Godard speaking cryptically about his "path" to key scenes from Godard classics such as "Alphaville" and "King Lear" with Burgess Meredith and Molly Ringwald, and quotes poet Jacques Prevert and philosopher Hannah Arendt.
0.0Rumstick Road(en)
A video reconstruction of the 1977 Wooster Group production Rumstick Road, an experimental theater performance created by Spalding Gray and Elizabeth LeCompte after the suicide of Gray's mother. Archival recordings are combined with photographs, slides, and other materials to recreate the original production.
6.2Heartbreakers Beach Party(en)
Documentary that captures Tom Petty and the band in 1982-1983 as they finish, promote, and tour around the “Long After Dark” album (their final with legendary producer Jimmy Iovine). It aired only once on MTV in 1983. After the long lost 16mm reels were finally found, a restored version with 19 minutes of extra footage was released in 2024.
4.2Men Boxing(xx)
Experimental film fragment made with the Edison-Dickson-Heise experimental horizontal-feed kinetograph camera and viewer, using 3/4-inch wide film.
10.0Drug Porn(en)
An experimental documentary about the spectacle of substance abuse on social media. More than 45 hours of footage, hundreds of pages of blog posts and interviews were distilled and remixed using glitch and cut-up techniques to insure anonymity, transcend the shock factor and unfold this complex, singular and stratified use of social media.
10.0welcome_home.exe(en)
As technology accelerates, our species' collective imagination of the future grows ever more kaleidoscopic. We are all haunted by temporal distortion, perhaps no more than when we attempt to remember what the future looked like to our younger selves. As the mist of time devours our memories, the future recedes; each of us burdened by the gaping mouth of entropy. Yet, emerging technology provides a glimmer of hope; transhumanism promises a future free from mortality, disease and pain. Does our salvation lie in digital simulacra? We're here to sell you the answer to that question, for the low, low price of four hundred and seventy seconds.
0.0A Messenger from the Shadows (Notes on Film 06 A/Monologue 01)(de)
Thanks to his myriad film roles, Lon Chaney is known as “the man of a thousand faces,” and you could say that the early horror era never beheld a figure more intriguing. Yet because of his numerous transformations, his face never became as iconic as that of, say, Boris Karloff. Accompanied by a soundtrack from Bernhard Lang, this “re-imagination of shots” taken from Chaney´s forty-six surviving films offers a beguiling excursion into the history of film. The director reveals surprising associations, while highlighting the enduring magic of works which are now more or less forgotten.
0.0Puenting (Leap of Faith)(es)
A first feature based on sexual events. An actress undertakes her desire of directing her first movie, without a budget or any production company funding her project. She gathers a group of professional actors and actresses, and proposes a project based on a very particular experience: stepping on their fears through a metaphorical 'leap of faith'. As the project advances, individual conflicts will arise affecting the shoot, making the movie crew wonder whether or not they should go on. Will they take the leap of faith with all its consequences?
5.4Thot-Fal'N(en)
This film describes a psychological state "kin to moonstruck, its images emblems (not quite symbols) of suspension-of-self within consciousness and then that feeling of falling away from conscious thought. The film can only be said to describe or be emblematic of this state because I cannot imagine symbolizing or otherwise representing an equivalent of thoughtlessness itself. Thus the actors in the film, Jane Brakhage, Tom and Gloria Bartek, Williams Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Olovsky and Phillip Whalen are figments of this 'Thought-Fallen Process', as are their images in the film to find themselves being photographed."
10.0El color del amor(en)
This short documentary explores the intimate and unconventional life of my grandmother and her relationship with magic and with the love of her life. With nearly 40 years between them and a union that never reached the altar, the story unfolds in a time when social norms and life expectations collided with their own desires and decisions. The documentary follows my grandmother’s life from her early youth to her maturity, through the responsibilities of motherhood, her craft, and love in its most unexpected forms. Through interviews, family memories, personal belongings, and the narration of key moments in their life together, this portrait seeks to explore the nuances of love and the complexities of building a family outside traditional structures.
6.0Machete Gillette... Mama(en)
"With characteristic wit and rigor, experimental filmmaker Larry Gottheim here applies his impressionistic editing style to footage collected during his travels in the Dominican Republic. Gottheim’s formal emphasis on repetition and fissures between sound and image resonates here as a mode of sociological reflection (with the fragmentary montage mirroring elements of ritual while also destabilizing the ethnographic gaze). A largely overlooked antecedent to the contemporary blending of avant-garde and ethnographic filmmaking, MACHETTE GILLETTE… MAMA still poses a potent challenge to documentary convention." - Max Goldberg



