Note: Many of these documentaries are available through the ISUComm Resource Lending Library.
Artists
aug 29 War Photographer. Christian Frei, director.
This film explores the art and dedication of famed war photographer James Nachtwey and how he captures humanity, misery, and tranquility in the midst of the cruelest of human settings.
sep 5 Stone Reader. Mark Moskowitz, director.
This film documents the quest for a novelist, Dow Mossman, who found literary success in 1972, then disappeared. The search leads eventually to Iowa, along the way examining the phenomenon of one-work authors and the causes of literary obscurity.
sep 12 Thomas Hart Benton. Ken Burns, director.
Benton was a painter who loved alcohol and art politics as much painting. In and out of fashion during his lifetime, he experienced remarkable success yet spawned a score of critics.
Architects
Sept. 19 Frank Lloyd Wright. Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, directors
This idiosyncratic yet immensely influential American architect built a monumental career by the sheer force of his personality, ambition, and ideas, all the while coping with personal scandal and family tragedy.
Sept. 26 Maya Lin. Freida Lee Mock, director.
This nineteen-year-old Chinese-American woman created a firestorm of controversy when she won the opportunity to design the Vietnam War Memorial, but ultimately created one of the most moving monuments in our nation’s history.
Oct. 3 My Architect: A Son’s Journey. Nathaniel Kahn, director.
Louis Kahn died somewhat strangely in Penn Station in 1974, alone, bankrupt, when his son Nathaniel was only eleven. Now in this film, the son goes in search of his father, trying to reconcile the famous architect with the man who had illegitimate children by two different women outside of his marriage.
Science and Technology
Oct. 10 Fast, Cheap, & Out of Control. Errol Morris, director.
This film brings together an unlikely group: an aged topiary gardener, a man obsessed with mole rats, a leading robotics expert, and an ex–lion tamer. In the process, the human and the scientific crisscross in a provocative and entertaining way.
Oct. 17 The Red Stuff: The True Story of the Russian Race for Space. Leo De Boer, director.
Using special archival footage, this film traces the remarkable series of firsts in space that the Russians achieved between 1957 and 1965, examining how such achievements emerged from the political climate of cold war Russia. Oddly enough, the film fails to mention the first woman in space, Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova.
Oct. 24 The Language of Music. Mark Moormann, director.
Tom Dowd created a remarkable career as a recording engineer and a music album producer. An almost mythic figure, his life intertwines rock, soul, and jazz with technology as varied as the slider and eight-track recording.
Sports
Oct. 31 Riding Giants. Stacy Peralta, director.
This film traces the history of surfing and surf culture to its current state as big business, exploring the mythology of the sport and its quite real dangers in search of the ultimate wave.
Nov. 7 Touching the Void. Kevin Macdonald, director.
In the 1980s, two mountain climbers in Peru try to return from the summit of Siula Grande after one breaks his leg. Eventually at a critical moment of decision, one climber cuts the rope, letting the other climber fall into a crevice. Left for dead, the fallen climber nonetheless survives in this film’s dramatics story.
Nov. 14 When We Were Kings. Leon Gast, director.
The famous 1974 Rumble in the Jungle pits a past-prime Mohammed Ali against a younger George Forman and the promotional excesses of Don King in a heavyweight fight that brings together in an engaging way the black cultures of American and Africa.