documentaries

  • More Music Documentaries, Please!

    More Music Documentaries, Please!

    Let’s continue our dive into music documentaries, snapshots of musical process and lasting impact from notable musicians. On deck today: Little Richard and 90s band Morphine. Little Richard: I amEverything is well-titled. Gay. Black. Visionary. Check. Check. Check. But was Richard the king of rock? More on that later. The film explores his career chronologically… Continue reading

  • The Story of Film Part 15: Cinema Today an Tomorrow

    The Story of Film Part 15: Cinema Today an Tomorrow

    We’ve now come to the end of our journey through Mark Cousins’ The Story of Film, following cinema’s early beginnings to the advent of the digital age. But before we ring down the curtain, we have a few more stops on our tour of cinema history.                As digital effects began to strip the “realness” from mainstream… Continue reading

  • Three on a Theme: Music Documentaries on Kanopy

    The library has always had great resources for music buffs, but lesser known among these are the many documentaries about music, musicians, and musical history that are available on our video streaming services. Often, these include both great insights into the works of famous musicians or hidden gems that tell a particular story about music… Continue reading

  • Documentaries for Pride

    Even though Pride events and in-person festivities are cancelled this year, it is still possible to celebrate LGBTQ resilience from the comfort of your home – and the Library can help with that! Aside from going out to protests and engaging with written content by queer authors, there are also lots of video resources available… Continue reading

  • Now Showing: Artists and Their Works on Screen

    We get it: you’re stuck. Your productivity levels are low, imagination exhausted, and creativity, well, not entirely there. Everybody has those days! Yes, even the great and genius creators of art in their prime. So take a seat, and watch their trials and successes unfold in these biopics available on Kanopy and Hoopla with your… Continue reading

  • Films to inspire you to change the world: Recommended picks from Seattle’s Social Justice Film Festival

    Our guest post today is thanks to Michelle Dillon, librarian for Seattle’s groundbreaking and award-winning Books to Prisoners, a non-profit organization that puts thousands of books into the hands of incarcerated individuals each year. Learn more about the importance of this work in promoting literacy and reducing recidivism in this recent article from The Guardian, and learn about how you… Continue reading

  • Mary Ellen Mark: Eyeing Life

    Follow us throughout the fall for posts which highlight library resources and information that support the Tiny: Streetwise Revisited exhibit at the Central Library and its community programming. The undiffused difference between the placid suburb of her youth and the rough-edged city that surrounded it became quickly apparent. In she went with her lens widening as… Continue reading

  • Movie Mondays: A Dozen Documentaries to Devour

    ~posted by Frank It’s fall, and the days are getting shorter and darker. For those of you who are underwhelmed with feature films and unable to commit to another TV series, I offer you a list of a dozen recent documentaries to fill the void. Continue reading

  • Movie Mondays: Movies about Movies

    Last week, we looked at pictures about pictures — films about art and artists —  and this week we look at movies about movies – documentaries about individual films. These four documentaries — two about classic films and two about films that were never made — are required viewing for cinephiles. Continue reading

  • A tribute to director Errol Morris

    By Daniel S. Errol Morris is one of America’s leading documentary filmmakers with a long career of thoughtful and provocative features. Morris combines dramatic reenactments, probing interviews and a kaleidoscope of thematically linked images to create films that push the boundaries of nonfiction narrative. His signature invention is a special camera rig he calls the Interrotron,… Continue reading

  • Struck By Lightning!

    Were you mesmerized by the recent news story about the motorcyclist who survived a lightning strike on I-5 during our severe weather last week? His hair was singed and an ear blackened, but other than being a little dazed, he lived to tell the tale. Although the odds of being struck by lightning in the… Continue reading

  • Movie Mondays: Punk’s Not Dead!

    Well, not at SIFF anyways. I always look forward to the festival’s music documentaries (which are conveniently grouped together by mood—“Face the Music” in this year’s event guide), and this year I noticed a common theme in the films that caught my eye: they’re all about PUNK in some shape or form. If you love… Continue reading

  • Documentaries from SIFFs gone by

    As I pore over the hundreds of screenings at the Seattle International Film Festival every year, I find myself focusing on two categories – documentaries and Scandinavian films. Here are some of my favorite documentaries from SIFFs gone by. Every Little Step is about the making of “A Chorus Line” on Broadway. Yes, it’s about actors… Continue reading

  • Bigfoot Sighted at the Library

    Many of us look back at the 70’s with fond embarrassment. Feathered hair, down vests, CB radios. This was the decade in which Clint Eastwood co-starred with an Orangutan, and we liked the idea so much that for three years we tuned in to watch Greg Evigan and a truck-driving chimpanzee in BJ and the Bear, a… Continue reading

  • How to Surf in Washington state: Part 1

    Surfing in Washington state may seem incongruent with the likes of hiking, recumbent bicycling, and extremely short summers, but it’s amazing to discover its hold on a growing contingent. In Seattle alone, there are at least three surf shops that cater to those wishin’ to hang ten or go SUP’ing, also called stand-up paddleboarding. Throughout… Continue reading

  • Library Imitating Art

    As a teenager in the ‘90s, ‘grunge’ was the word. So I was particularly excited to learn about the Seattle Art Museum’s current exhibition, “Kurt,” which features works of art inspired by Kurt Cobain and the Seattle Grunge music movement. But before I throw on my oversized flannel shirt over my baggy jeans and head to the… Continue reading

  • Celebrate Pride with Two Seattle Films

    June is GLBTQ Pride month. Seattle Pride Fest is coming up on June 27th. The Seattle Public Library’s own Bookineers will be marching once again, so look for us there. Looking for other ways to celebrate Pride? Here are two films with ties to Seattle. Alice Wu designed software for Microsoft before she became a director.… Continue reading

  • Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets movie

    Come to the Central Library this Sunday, March 21, from 2-4pm in the Microsoft Auditorium on Level 1 for a film screening of Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets. This film is a memorable and moving portrait of the lives of street kids living in Casablanca’s abandoned lots. Ali, Kouka, Omar and Boubker, four young… Continue reading