Hitsville: The Making of Motown
★ 7.6 · 2019 · 113m · Documentary · Music
The remarkable story of the legendary Motown Records is told through exclusive interviews with the label’s visionary founder, Berry Gordy, and many of its superstar artists and creative figures, as well as rare performances and behind-the-scenes footage unearthed from Motown’s vaults and Gordy’s personal archives.
More Like This
Show!
2013
A surprisingly intimate portrait of how the dream of running one’s own business can take on monstrous contours. Managed by the father of one of the singers, over the course of five years the girl band 5Angels had reached the gates of pop fame. But it is a path paved not only with the songs of Michal David, but also with the dogged determination of a man who loses any notion of where his role as manager ends and his role as parent begins. An emotionally moved Karel Gott, five angelic girls, and one overly involved father, thanks to whom the behind-the-scenes pre-Christmas atmosphere melts away just as rapidly as the fat should disappear from the belly. “A singer can’t be a lard bucket!”
More info →
BadPuss: A Popumentary
2014
An Honest and hilarious look at the music industry through the eyes of an all girl rock band.
More info →
Elvis
2022 · ★ 7.5
The life story of Elvis Presley as seen through the complicated relationship with his enigmatic manager, Colonel Tom Parker.
More info →
Rockin' at the Red Dog: The Dawn of Psychedelic Rock
2005
This documentary pays tribute to the contributions and importance of the title watering hole in the creation of the psychedelic dancehalls that littered the West during the late '60s and helped launch such super groups as The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and The Quicksilver Messenger Service. Music by Big Brother and the Holding Company, and the Charlatans is also featured. The Red Dog Saloon had its genesis in 1964 when a group of free-thinking, LSD-enhanced Northern California students and young folks had a party and began thinking about starting up a saloon that would evoke the old West. They decided to build their saloon in Virginia City, Nevada, a once prosperous town that was by then nearly empty. The ambience of the saloon blended Old West sensibilities with modern psychedelia, go-go girls and plenty of illegal drugs. The film is comprised of interviews with surviving founders, actual archival footage, and even a performance of some of the musicians who appeared there.
More info →
Dreamgirls
2006 · ★ 6.7
A trio of female soul singers cross over to the pop charts in the early 1960s, facing their own personal struggles along the way.
More info →
Sparkle
1976 · ★ 7.5
Three sisters start out singing in their church choir in Harlem in the late 1950s and become a successful girl group in the 1960s.
More info →
Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee
2009 · ★ 6
An improvised comedy, shot over five days by Shane Meadows, devised with and starring Paddy Considine. Rock roadie and failed musician, Le Donk has lived, loved and learned. Along the way he's lost a girlfriend but he has found a new sidekick in up-and-coming rap prodigy Scor-zay-zee. With Meadows' fly-on-the-wall crew in tow, Donk sets out to make Scor-zay-zee a star...
More info →
Sharon Osbourne Presents Rock 'n' Roll's Dodgiest Deals
2017 · ★ 9
Sharon Osbourne presents the story of pop deals through the decades. She looks at some memorably bad and good deals offered to a range of musicians from Little Richard to NWA.
More info →
Northern Soul: Living for the Weekend
2014 · ★ 7
The northern soul phenomenon was the most exciting underground British club movement of the 1970s. At its highpoint, thousands of disenchanted white working class youths across the north of England danced to obscure, mid-60s Motown-inspired sounds until the sun rose. A dynamic culture of fashions, dance moves, vinyl obsession and much more grew up around this - all fuelled by the love of rare black American soul music with an express-train beat.
More info →
American Pop
1981 · ★ 6.9
The history of American popular music runs parallel with the history of a Russian Jewish immigrant family, with each male descendant possessing different musical abilities.
More info →
Standing in the Shadows of Motown
2002 · ★ 7
In 1959, Berry Gordy Jr. gathered the best musicians from Detroit's thriving jazz and blues scene to begin cutting songs for his new record company. Over a fourteen year period they were the heartbeat on every hit from Motown's Detroit era. By the end of their phenomenal run, this unheralded group of musicians had played on more number ones hits than the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, Elvis and the Beatles combined - which makes them the greatest hit machine in the history of popular music. They called themselves the Funk Brothers. Forty-one years after they played their first note on a Motown record and three decades since they were all together, the Funk Brothers reunited back in Detroit to play their music and tell their unforgettable story, with the help of archival footage, still photos, narration, interviews, re-creation scenes, 20 Motown master tracks, and twelve new live performances of Motown classics with the Brothers backing up contemporary performers.
More info →
Heaven Tonight
1990 · ★ 4.3
The film covers the conflict between a father and his son both being musicians. The father is the leader of a band making rock-music from the 60s but his son becomes a star of techno-pop music.
More info →