Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
★ 6.3 · 1975 · 107m · Documentary · History
Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression.
More Like This
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)].
More info →
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.
More info →
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.
More info →
Seabiscuit
2003 · ★ 7.1
True story of the undersized Depression-era racehorse whose victories lifted not only the spirits of the team behind it but also those of their nation.
More info →
São Paulo, Cinemacity
1994
Mixing new images to existing São Paulo movies takes, the documentary presents the city from the perspective of five main attributes: transformation, anonymity, crowd, precariousness and dimension.
More info →
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.
More info →
Videosyncracy
2010 · ★ 6.5
As the dissociated convenience of the Internet and globalized corporate culture continue to shut down brick-and-mortar video stores, what will happen to the longstanding, local hangouts with their rugged individuals known as clerks and the communities who love them? Videosyncracy follows three very different video rental stores as they negotiate their survival in three distinct Los Angeles neighborhoods: Old Bank DVD in the Downtown arts district, Vidiots in sunny seaside Santa Monica, and Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee in bustling North Hollywood. Their stories chronicle not only the birth and twilight of a particular kind of corner store, but also decades of personal lives intertwined with those of their communities, the new challenges and facilities of a rapidly changing world, and an enduring love of the movies, a slice of Americana on the brink of disappearance yet defiant to the end.
More info →
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
More info →
Phar Lap
1983 · ★ 7.2
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.
More info →
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.
More info →
Painting with Light
2001
An examination of the great advances in cinematography achieved by Jack Cardiff.
More info →
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.
More info →