Errol Mark Morris is an American film director known for documentaries that interrogate the epistemology of their subjects, and the invention of the Interrotron. In 2003, his documentary film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. His film The Thin Blue Line placed fifth on a Sight & Sound poll of the greatest documentaries ever made. Morris is known for making films about unusual subjects; Fast, Cheap & Out of Control interweaves the stories of an animal trainer, a topiary gardener, a robot scientist and a naked mole rat specialist.
Werner Herzog is a German filmmaker, actor, opera director, and author. Regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema, his films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with unusual talents in obscure fields, or individuals in conflict with nature. His style involves avoiding storyboards, emphasizing improvisation, and placing his cast and crew into real situations mirroring those in the film they are working on.
Nagisa Ōshima was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, actor, writer, documentary filmmaker and left-wing activist. One of the foremost directors within the Japanese New Wave, his films include In the Realm of the Senses (1976), a sexually explicit film set in 1930s Japan, and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), about World War II prisoners of war held by the Japanese.
Kenneth Anger was an American underground experimental filmmaker, actor, and writer. Working exclusively in short films, he produced almost 40 works beginning in 1937, nine of which have been grouped together as the "Magick Lantern Cycle". Anger's films variously merge surrealism with homoeroticism and the occult, and have been described as containing "elements of erotica, documentary, psychodrama, and spectacle". He has been called "one of America's first openly gay filmmakers", with several films released before homosexuality was legalized in the U.S. Anger also explored occult themes in many of his films; he was fascinated by the English occultist Aleister Crowley and an adherent of Thelema, the religion Crowley founded.
Flatliners is a 1990 American science fiction psychological horror film directed by Joel Schumacher, produced by Michael Douglas and Rick Bieber, and written by Peter Filardi. It stars Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, William Baldwin, Oliver Platt, and Kevin Bacon. The film is about five medical students who attempt to find out what lies beyond death by conducting clandestine experiments that produce near-death experiences. The film was shot on the campus of Loyola University Chicago between October 1989 and January 1990, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Sound Editing in 1990. The film was theatrically released on August 10, 1990, by Columbia Pictures. It grossed $61 million at the box office.
Harmony Korine is an American filmmaker, actor, photographer, artist, and author. His methods feature an erratic, loose and transgressive aesthetic, exploring taboo themes and incorporating experimental techniques, and works with art, music, fashion and advertising.
Abel Ferrara is an American filmmaker, known for the provocative and often controversial content in his movies and his use and redefinition of neo-noir imagery. A long-time independent filmmaker, some of his best known movies include the New York-set, gritty crime thrillers The Driller Killer (1979), Ms .45 (1981), King of New York (1990), Bad Lieutenant (1992) and The Funeral (1996), chronicling violent crime in urban settings with spiritual overtones.
Grizzly Man is a 2005 American documentary film by German director Werner Herzog. It chronicles the life and death of bear enthusiast and conservationist Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard at Katmai National Park, Alaska. The film includes some of Treadwell's own footage of his interactions with brown bears before 2003, and of interviews with people who knew or were involved with Treadwell, in addition to professionals who deal with wild bears.
La Soufrière – Warten auf eine unausweichliche Katastrophe is a 1977 documentary film in which German director Werner Herzog visits an evacuated town on the island of Guadeloupe, where the volcano La Grande Soufrière is predicted to erupt.
Lucifer Rising is a short film by director Kenneth Anger. Although virtually completed in 1972, the film was only widely distributed in 1980, after Bobby Beausoleil delivered the finished soundtrack master.
Stanley Earl Nelson Jr. is an American documentary filmmaker and a MacArthur Fellow known as a director, writer and producer of documentaries examining African-American history and experiences. He is a recipient of the 2013 National Humanities Medal from President Obama. He has won three Primetime Emmy Awards.
Into the Abyss is a 2011 documentary film written and directed by Werner Herzog. It is about capital punishment, and focuses on a triple homicide that occurred in Montgomery County, Texas, in 2001. In the film, Herzog interviews the two young men convicted of the crime, Michael Perry and Jason Burkett, as well as family members and acquaintances of the victims and criminals, and individuals who have taken part in executions in Texas. The primary focus of the film is not the details of the case or the question of Michael and Jason's guilt or innocence, and, although Herzog's voice can be heard as he conducts the interviews, there is a minimal amount of narration, and he never appears onscreen, unlike in many of his films.
On Death Row is a television mini-series written and directed by Werner Herzog about capital punishment in the United States. The series grew out of the same project which produced Herzog's documentary film Into the Abyss. The series first aired in the United Kingdom on March 22, 2012, on Channel 4.
Destin Yori Daniel Cretton is an American filmmaker. He is best known for his films Short Term 12 (2013), The Glass Castle (2017), Just Mercy (2019) and the Marvel Studios film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021).
Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World is a 2016 American documentary film directed by Werner Herzog. In it, Herzog ponders the existential impact of such things as the Internet, robotics, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of things on modern human life. The leaders in the field of technology who are interviewed in the film include Leonard Kleinrock, Bob Kahn, Ted Nelson, Sebastian Thrun, and Elon Musk. The film, which was sponsored by the company NetScout, premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.
Diane Paragas is a Filipino-American documentary and narrative film and commercial director. She is best known for writing, directing and producing the 2020 film Yellow Rose. Yellow Rose was Paragas' debut narrative feature. The film was selected as the Opening Night Film of the 2019 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. Yellow Rose won Grand Jury Prizes at LAAPFF, Bentonville Film Festival, CAAMFEST37, and Urbanworld where it also took the Audience Award. The film also won the Audience Award at the Hawaii International Film Festival.
Erik Nelson is an American documentary film director and television producer. Nelson has produced and directed several films, television specials and television programs such as Ripley's Believe It or Not!, Mega Disasters, When Good Times Go Bad, What Were You Thinking?, Unsolved History, Prehistoric Predators and More than Human.
The Cold Blue is a 2018 documentary composed from 90 hours of "lost" footage director William Wyler used for his 1944 documentary The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress.
Werner Herzog is a German filmmaker whose films often feature ambitious or deranged protagonists with impossible dreams. Herzog's works span myriad genres and mediums, but he is particularly well known for his documentary films, which he typically narrates.
Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds is a 2020 documentary film directed by Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer. The film explores the cultural, spiritual, and scientific impact of meteorites, and the craters they create around the globe.
