Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story

2008 · ★ 8.5

Jack L. Warner, Harry Warner, Albert Warner and Sam Warner were siblings who were born in Poland and emigrated to Canada near the turn of the century. In 1903, the brothers entered the budding motion picture business. In time, the Warner Brothers moved into film production and would open their own studio in 1923.

Soul of a People: Writing America's Story

2009

In the grip of the Great Depression, unemployed men and women joined an unlikely WPA program to document America in guidebooks and interviews. With the Federal Writers' Project, the government pitted young, untested talents against the problems of everyday Americans. From that experience, some of America's great writers found their own voices, and discovered the Soul of a People. — Spark Media

A Brief History of Gay and Lesbian Cinema

2017

In this FilmStruck Original, film critic and What the Flick?! host Alonso Duralde discusses the evolution and progression of gay and lesbian cinema.

The Money Masters

1996 · ★ 7.3

A documentary that traces the origins of the political power structure that rules our nation and the world today. The modern political power structure has its roots in the hidden manipulation and accumulation of gold and other forms of money.

Painting with Light

2001

An examination of the great advances in cinematography achieved by Jack Cardiff.

Riding the Rails

1997 · ★ 6

Riding the Rails offers a visionary perspective on the presumed romanticism of the road and cautionary legacy of the Great Depression. The filmmakers relay the experiences and painful recollections of these now-elderly survivors of the rails. Forced to travel more by economic necessity than the spirit of adventure, the film's subjects dispel romantic myths of a hobo existence and its corresponding veneer of freedom. Riding the Rails recounts the hoboes' trade secrets for survival and accounts of dank miseries, loneliness, imprisonment, death, and dispossession. Sixty years later, the filmmakers transport their subjects back to the tracks, where the surging impact of sound and movement resuscitates memories of a shattered adolescence and devastating rite of passage.

Phar Lap

1983 · ★ 6.9

Phar Lap, the big bold chestnut reigned as the king of the turf in the depression that gripped Australia of the 1930s. From his humble beginnings the New Zealand bred horse raced on to become the hero of a nation.

Woody Guthrie: Ain't Got No Home

2006

Every American who has listened to the radio knows Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land." The music of the folk singer/songwriter has been recorded by everyone from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to U2. Originally blowing out of the Dust Bowl in Depression-era America, he blended vernacular, rural music and populism to give voice to millions of downtrodden citizens. Guthrie's music was politically leftist, uniquely patriotic and always inspirational.

King of the Hill

1993 · ★ 6.8

Based on the Depression-era bildungsroman memoir of writer A. E. Hotchner, the film follows the story of a boy struggling to survive on his own in a hotel in St. Louis after his mother is committed to a sanatorium with tuberculosis. His father, a German immigrant and traveling salesman working for the Hamilton Watch Company, is off on long trips from which the boy cannot be certain he will return.

12 Mighty Orphans

2021 · ★ 7.2

Haunted by his mysterious past, a devoted high school football coach leads a scrawny team of orphans to the state championship during the Great Depression and inspires a broken nation along the way.

THE WHOLE SHEBANG

2019

Black and white evokes nostalgia for The Great Depression. Things were so cheap, including lives. We see daredevils (desperate people) compete for money prizes. Baby prepares for WW2. [Originally a 70mm projection-performance, 1982, by Ken and Flo Jacobs. From THRILLS AND CHILLS (Castle Films, c. 1930)].

A Ribbon In The Sky

A documentary covering the planning, construction, and legacy of the Blue Ridge Parkway.