Directed by David L. Lewis • Documentary • With Nat Hentoff, Amiri Baraka, Karen Durbin • 2013 • 86 minutes

Nat Hentoff was one of the enduring voices of the last 65 years, a writer who championed jazz as an art form and was present at the creation of ‘alternative’ journalism in America. This un...

Directed by Bennett Miller • Documentary • With Timothy "Speed" Levitch • 1998 • 76 minutes

Sailing the streets of Manhattan atop a double-decker bus, Timothy "Speed" Levitch waxes philosophical as the city's most eccentric tour guide. Speed's bombastic and psychedelic poetry is captured in the ...

Directed by Marc Singer • Documentary • 2000 • 82 minutes

For years, a homeless community took root in a train tunnel beneath New York City, braving dangerous conditions and perpetual night. DARK DAYS explores this surprisingly domestic subterranean world, unearthing a way of life unimaginable t...

Directed by Selina Miles • Documentary • With Martha Cooper, Os Gemeos, Shepard Fairey • 2019 • 81 minutes

In 1970s New York, photographer Martha Cooper captured some of the first images of graffiti at a time when the city had declared war on it. Decades later, Cooper has become influential to t...

Directed by Jody Lee Lipes & Henry Joost • Documentary • 2010 • 60 minutes

In 1958, Jerome Robbins’ “ballet in sneakers,” NY Export: Opus Jazz, became a smash hit when it was broadcast on The Ed Sullivan Show and toured around the world. Set to an evocative jazz score by Robert Prince, the dance...

Directed by Gerald Fox • Documentary • With Robert Frank, June Leaf • 2019 • 86 minutes

Completed in 2004, Leaving Home, Coming Home: A Portrait of Robert Frank was the first ever feature-length documentary about the legendary Swiss-American photographer and filmmaker. Originally deemed too pers...

Directed by Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss • Documentary • 2023 • 74 minutes

THE FIVE DEMANDS is a riveting story about the student strike that changed the face of higher education forever. In April 1969, a small group of Black and Puerto Rican students shut down the City College of New York, a...

Directed by Tamra Davis • Documentary • With Jean-Michel Basquiat • 2010 • 88 minutes

Centered on a rare interview that director and friend Tamra Davis shot with Jean-Michel Basquiat more than 20 years ago, this film chronicles the meteoric rise and fall of the young artist. In the crime-ridden ...

Directed by Ryan Douglass and Sara Leavitt • Documentary • 2015 • 75 minutes

For over 30 years, Martin Bisi has recorded music from his studio in Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood. After a chance New York encounter, the studio was founded with money from Brian Eno, who subsequently worked on the a...

Directed by Puloma Basu, Rob Hatch-Miller • Documentary • With Tunde Adebimpe (TV On the Radio), William Basinski (composer), Panda Bear, Avey Tare & Geologist (Animal Collective),
Matt Berninger (The National), Stuart Braithwaite (Mogwai), James Chance (The Contortions), Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Y...

Directed by Jeremy Workman • Documentary • With Matt Green • 2018 • 95 minutes

There are 8,000 miles of sidewalks, paths and roads in New York City and for the past six years Matt Green has been walking them all--every street, block, pedestrian overpass and park lane. A five borough journey that...

Directed by Manfred Kirchheimer • Documentary • 1981 • 46 minutes

Stations of the Elevated (1981) is a 45-minute city symphony directed, produced and edited by Manfred Kirchheimer. Shot on lush 16mm color reversal stock, the film weaves together vivid images of graffiti- covered elevated subway ...

Directed by Jon Alpert • Documentary • 1980 • 60 minutes

This Emmy Award-winning documentary tells the stories of six "ordinary" people who live or work along New York City's Third Avenue, which runs for sixteen miles through Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, cutting through the complex social...

Directed by Shirley Clarke • Documentary • 1967 • 108 minutes

On the night of December 2, 1966, Clarke and a tiny crew convened in her apartment at the Hotel Chelsea to make a film. There, for twelve straight hours they filmed the one-and-only Jason Holliday as he spun tales, sang, donned costum...

Directed by Aaron Rose, Joshua Leonard • Documentary • With Thomas Campbell, Harmony Korine, Shepard Fairy, Jo Jackson, Chris Johanson, Mike Mills, Steve Espo Powers • 2009 • 90 minutes

BEAUTIFUL LOSERS celebrates the spirit behind one of the most influential cultural moments of a generation. In...

Directed by Nina Rosenblum, Jon Alpert • Documentary • 1994 • 75 minutes

If you’re arrested in New York City and can’t make bail, you’ll be sent to Rikers Island—a mammoth holding facility for 17,000 men and women awaiting trial. Jon Alpert spent ten months filming there, coming away with a grap...

Directed by Diego Echeverria • Documentary • 1984 • 57 minutes

Diego Echeverria’s LOS SURES probes the residents of the Southside of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, pre-gentrification. Poverty, drugs, gang violence, crime, abandoned real estate, racial
tension, single-parent homes, and inadequate local ...

Directed by Nora Claire Miller, Peter Miller & Amy Linton • Documentary • 2020 • 15 minutes

EGG CREAM is a short film about the enduring meaning of a beloved chocolate soda drink born on the Jewish Lower East Side. The egg cream contained neither eggs nor cream – it was a product of necessity an...

Directed by Steven Fischler, Joel Sucher, Howard Blatt and Francis Freedland • Documentary • 1972 • 45 minutes

An investigative (but frequently humorous) documentary on the surveillance activities of the New York City Police Department's Bureau of Special Services, known as the Red Squad.

Directed by James Gaffney, Martin Lucas, and Jonathan Miller • Documentary • 1980 • 48 minutes

Focusing on the 1970s fiscal crises in New York City and in Cleveland, Ohio, TIGHTEN YOUR BELTS, BITE THE BULLET looks at the root causes of fiscal crises in American cities, and the political response...

Directed by Stephen Wilkes • Documentary • With Jay Maisel • 2019 • 79 minutes

JAY MYSELF documents the monumental move of renowned photographer and artist, Jay Maisel, who, in February 2015 after forty-eight years, begrudgingly sold his home—the 36,000 square-foot, 100-year-old landmark buildin...

Directed by Andrew Rossi • Documentary • With Daniel Boulud, Sirio Maccioni, Keith McNally, Danny Meyer, Drew Nieporent, Ruth Reichl, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Tim Zagat • 2004 • 85 minutes

Featuring culinary luminaries Daniel Boulud, Sirio Maccioni, Keith McNally, Drew Nieporent, Jean-Georges ...

Directed by Lionel Rogosin • Documentary • With Ray Salyer, Gorman Hendricks, Frank Matthews • 1956 • 65 minutes

On the Bowery chronicles three days in the drinking life of Ray Salyer, a part-time railroad worker adrift on New York’s skid row. When the film first opened in 1956, it exploded on t...

Directed by Roger Paradiso • Documentary • 2018 • 90 minutes

The Lost Village is a devastating expose of how Greenwich Village, the epicenter of the counterculture in the 1960s and '70s, is being turned into a wasteland of chain stores, banks and multi-million dollar condos.

This award-winning ...