Featured Documentaries

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession

Xan Cassavetes' film explores the euphoric rise and tragic descent of Z Channel, Los Angeles’ first pay cable service and its virtuosic film programmer Jerry Harvey. Launched in 1974, Z Channel quickly became required viewing for Hollywood bigwigs and cinephiles alike. Harvey programmed old films, euro films, lost films as well as genre flicks, Hollywood blockbuster...Read More

Atari: Game Over

This enthralling documentary chronicles the fall of the Atari Corporation and investigates one of the biggest mysteries of all time, dubbed “The Great Video Game Burial of 1983.” In the early 1980s, Atari supposedly buried nearly a million copies of “E.T. the Extra Terrestrial” -- one of the company’s biggest commercial failures and often cited as one of the worst g...Read More

Style Wars

When director Tony Silver and co-producer Henry Chalfant delivered the broadcast version of their prize-winning film to PBS in 1983, the world received its first full immersion in the phenomenon that had taken over New York City. The urban landscape was physically transformed by graffiti artists who invented a new visual language to express both their individuality,...Read More

Children Of Dracula (1994)

“Are you a Vampire? Vampire’s victim? Have fantasies about Vampires?” That's the ad circulated in major Los Angeles and Dallas newspapers back in 1994. The film producers behind the ad in question received hundreds of responses, and likely cashing in on “Interview With A Vampire" fever from that year, Children of Dracula was born. Vampsploitation if you will. From D...Read More

Sex and Broadcasting: A Film About WFMU

Sex and Broadcasting is a human, and humorous, look at New Jersey’s WFMU, a radio station that refuses any programming boundaries. Most of its disc jockeys are unpaid volunteers, working for their love of surprising, spontaneous radio. They play everything from flat-out uncategorizable strangeness to every form of rock and roll, experimental music, jazz, psychedelia...Read More

Brainiac - Transmissions After Zero

In the mid 90's the Dayton, OH music scene became a hot spot generating worldwide buzz from the influential indie rock being produced there (The Breeders, Guided by Voices). Arguably the most innovative of them all was the band Brainiac, led by musical genius and insanely charismatic front man Tim Taylor. The band was opening for Beck and slated to sign a major labe...Read More

The Search For Weng Weng

The Smallest Movie Star in Cinema History! The bizarre history of Filipino B-films, as told through filmmaker Andrew Leavold's personal quest to find the truth behind its dwarf James Bond superstar Weng Weng, who took the movie world by storm in the 1970s, and who has since become a viral internet sensation.

Nightclubbing: The Birth Of Punk Rock In NYC

Nightclubbing is the first ever documentary about the renowned New York City nightclub Max's Kansas City (1965-1981) which had an indelible impact on the world of music, fashion, art, culture and the creation of the New York City Punk Rock scene.

We Were Famous, You Don't Remember: The Embarrassment

Ignited by punk’s invasion of the Great Plains, America’s gawkiest and greatest lost rock band battles conformity in Reagan-era Kansas. The Embarrassment played Chicago, D.C., and New York, drawing the attention of influential figures like Allen Ginsberg, John Cale, and Jonathan Demme — but their independence and refusal to sell out sparked tension within the group ...Read More

The Weird World of Blowfly

This film explores both sides of this hilarious and controversial artist, providing a rare, inside peek at the infamous linguist's daily life. Now 69-years-old, with a gold-spangled superhero costume and a catalog of the world's raunchiest tunes, Blowfly tours the world, still struggling for success and recognition after 50 years of making music.

X: The Unheard Music

X: The Unheard Music takes long, detailed, and often funny look at the LA music scene of the late 70s and 80s and focuses on the group that critics had singled out as the leader of the underground pack. The Unheard Music is a documentary that combines live footage of the band and interviews with the four members (as well as their friends and families) with surreal m...Read More

New York Doll

Arthur "Killer" Kane, of the glam-punk rock band the New York Dolls, disappeared from the music scene after the band's break-up and found new life as a Mormon. Thirty years later, musician Morrissey offers the Dolls a chance to reunite. For Arthur, the reunion is a decades-long dream that, as it turns out, comes not a moment too soon.

Joy Division - Under Review

This 70-minute documentary covers the entire career of Joy Division, one of Manchester and Post-Punks most respected bands. It charts the entire short lifespan of the group, from their origins in their days as Warsaw to the more well known incarnation of Joy Division. Features include rare musical performances, obscure footage of rare interviews and rarely seen ph...Read More

Mean Man: The Story Of Chris Holmes

The story of an iconic guitar player who has lived a life of extreme highs and lows. After losing the publishing rights of his own songs and combatting dangerous addictions, the legendary W.A.S.P. guitarist is shown starting over from scratch while living at his mother-in-law's in Cannes, France. He is now ready to take on Europe with his new band. As we follow him ...Read More

Kraftwerk and The Electronic Revolution

As innovative as they are influential, Kraftwerk's contribution to the development of electronic music since their formation in 1970 remains unsurpassed. Having inspired everyone from Bowie to Coldplay, Siouxsie to Radiohead, this bizarre collective have also proven partly responsible for entire genres to develop - electronica, techno and synth-pop to name but three...Read More

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child

In his short career, Jean-Michel Basquiat was a phenomenon. His dense, bebop-influenced neoexpressionist work emerged in the 1980s while minimalist art was the fad and as a successful black artist, he was constantly confronted by racism and misconceptions.  In this documentary portrait of the renowned artist, Basquiat's friend and filmmaker Tamra Davis shines the sp...Read More

Life On The V: The Story Of V66

In the early 1980s, Massachusetts radio personality John Garabedian came up with a plan to launch a TV channel to function as music television for the Boston-based college crowd. His goal was to take the Music Video TV concept and make it live (real time) and local (catering to Boston's interests). On February 12, 1985, V66 (on WVJV-TV channel 66) went live on the a...Read More

Desolation Center

Desolation Center is the previously untold story of a series of early 80s guerrilla music and art performance happenings in Southern California that are recognized to have inspired Burning Man, Lollapalooza and Coachella, collective experiences that have become key elements of popular culture in the 21st century. The feature documentary splices interviews and rare p...Read More

American Hardcore: The History of Punk Rock 1980-1986

Fueled by a ferocious soundtrack, director Paul Rachman's American Hardcore gives fans an all-access pass to the rise and fall of the U.S. punk scene, an explosive musical and cultural phenomenon that shaped everything from the grunge movement to the emo and pop/punk music currently riding the charts. Set against the conservative early '80s political landscape, Amer...Read More

D.O.A.: A Right Of Passage

D.O.A.: A RIGHT OF PASSAGE is the ground-breaking classic "rockumentary" about the origin of punk rock. Centered around the Sex Pistols 1978 tour of the United States which ended with the group breaking up, the tour was the only one the Pistols played in the United States. Director Lech Kowalski (East of Paradise) followed the band with handheld cameras through the ...Read More

Soaked In Bleach

Reveals the events behind Kurt Cobain's death as seen through the eyes of Tom Grant, the private investigator that was hired by Courtney Love in 1994 to track down her missing husband (Kurt Cobain) only days before his deceased body was found at their Seattle home. Cobain's death was ruled a suicide by the police (a reported self-inflicted gunshot wound), but doubts...Read More

Sad Vacation: The Last Days Of Sid And Nancy

Sad Vacation is an up close and personal account of the tumultuous and stormy relationship between Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen and how it ended in Room 100 of the Chelsea Hotel. Directed by Danny Garcia (The Rise and Fall of The Clash, Looking for Johnny), this films pulls no punches and reveals the facts through personal friends, insiders and witnesses. Includes ...Read More

The Upsetter: The Life and Music of Lee Scratch Perry

The Upsetter tells the wild, weed-fueled story of Lee “Scratch” Perry — a visionary Jamaican musician, artist and all around madman — who burst upon the Kingston scene in the ‘50s with a brand new sound, inventing a genre of music that would come to be called Reggae. He went on to discover a young Bob Marley and gained international recognition as a solo artist and ...Read More

Salad Days: A Decade Of Punk In Washington, DC (1980-90)

"Salad Days: A Decade of Punk in Washington, DC (1980-90)" examines the early DIY punk scene in the Nation's Capital. It was a decade when seminal bands like Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Government Issue, Scream, Void, Faith, Rites of Spring, Marginal Man, Fugazi, and others released their own records and booked their own shows-without major record label constraints or...Read More

I Think We're Alone Now

"I Think We're Alone Now" is a documentary that focuses on two individuals, Jeff and Kelly, who claim to be in love with the 80's pop singer Tiffany. Jeff Turner, a 52-year-old man from Santa Cruz, California has attended Tiffany concerts since 1988. Diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, Jeff lives alone off of government checks and has never had a girlfriend. Jeff sp...Read More

Disinformation TV - Episode 1 (Joe Coleman)

"Punk Rock 60 Minutes" – Wired Magazine. Lost treasures from Dangerous Minds creator Richard Metzger's never-aired alternative docu-series. Featuring a studio visit with artist Joe Coleman, CIA Sex Slaves, outsider music expert Irwin Chusid, and metaphysicist/podiatrist Brother Theodore.

Blank Generation

Classic punk rock movie from 1980 starring Richard Hell, illustrating the end of the first wave of New York City punk rock better than other films. Nada (Carole Bouquet), a beautiful French journalist on assignment in New York, records the life and work of up and coming punk rock star, Billy (Richard Hell). Featuring members of the Voidoids and the Ramones. A time c...Read More

Betty Davis - They Say I'm Different

Funk Queen Betty Davis changed the landscape for female artists in America. She "was the first..." as former husband Miles Davis said. "Madonna before Madonna, Prince before Prince". An aspiring songwriter from a small steel town, Betty arrived on the 70's scene to break boundaries for women with her daring personality, iconic fashion and outrageous funk music. She ...Read More