Movies: American culture

This is not a film about gun control. It is a film about the fearful heart and soul of the United States, and the 280 million Americans lucky enough to have the right to a constitutionally protected Uzi. From a look at the Columbine High School secur...

Venerable newscaster Norm Archer reports the latest news in politics, health, culture and entertainment - such as an automotive recall of decapitation-inducing "Neckbelts" and a study finding that "depression hits losers hardest". This compilation of...

Mr. Chu is an elderly widower who teaches tai chi chuan in Beijing. He moves to America to live with his son's family, but finds the cultural adjustment difficult. Since his daughter-in-law is a white woman who does not speak Chinese, Mr. Chu's son, ...

In a small supermarket in a blue collar town, a black man smiles at a 10 year old white boy across the checkout aisle. This innocuous moment sends two gangs into a ruthless war that ends with a shocking backlash....

An 8-year journey into divided America, The American Question examines the insidious roots of polarization and distrust through past the past and present, revealing how communities can restore trust in each other to unite our country....

Salvia Divinorum is an often misunderstood and powerful psychedelic plant used by the Mazatec shamans in southern Mexico for centuries. This entheogen's mysteries are thoroughly explored, by Director Erin Wyche, from an American view point....

In 2007, 11 years after one of the most influential American punk bands, Jawbreaker, called it quits, the three members, Blake Schwarzenbach, Chris Bauermeister, and Adam Pfahler reconnect in a San Francisco recording studio to listen back to their a...

Award-winning filmmaker Byron Hurt explores what it means to be a Black man in America. Traveling to more than fifteen cities and towns across the country, Hurt gathers reflections on Black masculinity from men and women of a variety of socioeconomic...

The life and times of The Carter Family, one of the earliest and most-influential group in American country and roots music....

An anti-western propaganda film about the influences of American visual and consumption culture on the rest of the world, as told from a North Korean perspective....

This documentary about serial killers and FBI Behavioral Sciences profilers features interviews with Ed Kemper and Ted Bundy as well as crime victims and law enforcement officials. The film includes some dramatic recreations....

In 1979, Louis Malle films the thriving lives of a Minnesota farming community, but returns six years later to document its drastic economic decline, offering a poignant look at the impact of political changes....

Legendary short story writer Lucia Berlin (1936-2004) captured moments of grace in the cafeterias and laundromats of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers and...

A colorful and provocative survey of anarchism in America, the film attempts to dispel popular misconceptions and trace the historical development of the movement. The film explores the movement both as a native American philosophy stemming from 19th...

A parodic music video that re-envisions the Horatio Alger myth of the American Dream via 1950s-style cultural cliches, advertising and Reagan-era media propaganda. Smith's 'regular guy' Mike embodies a series of all-American male stereotypes, from th...

Philip Roth, arguably America’s greatest living novelist, turns 80 on March 19. In 1959, his collection of short stories, Goodbye, Columbus, put him on the map, and 10 years later his hilarious, ribald best-seller, Portnoy’s Complaint, gave rise to t...

Humorist Roy Blount Jr. takes viewers on a journey down the Mississippi River, showcasing everything from areas with spectacularly beautiful scenery to ugly and dangerously polluted stretches bordered by industrial development....

Legendary short story writer Lucia Berlin (1936-2004) captured moments of grace in the cafeterias and laundromats of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers and...

Documentary - A harrowing exploration of the rapid rise of American religious fanaticism after 9/11. This film explores an emerging ultra Right Wing mass movement seeking dominion over all aspects of contemporary American society. The film weaves arc...

The Police Tapes is a 1977 documentary about a New York City police precinct in the South Bronx. The original ran ninety minutes and was produced for public television; a one-hour version later aired on ABC. Filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond spent th...