Down and Out in America

Dec 1, 1986

0h 57m

★ 6.6

The origins of homelessness.

Overview

The recession of the 1980s split the country into the haves and have-nots, from family farmers to factory workers and homeless people forced to live in decrepit welfare hotels. On the verge of losing everything, courageous Americans discover the power of community organizing to fight injustice.

Genres

Documentary

History

Production Companies

HBO

Joseph Feury Productions

Karmic Release Productions

Hope Runs High Films

Down and Out in America Trailers

Cast

Narrator (voice)

Lee Grant

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time.

6.5

Megacities

Aug 12, 1998

Megacities is a documentary about the slums of five different metropolitan cities.

0.0

Keepers of the Fire

Apr 23, 1994

For half of a millennium, First Nations women have been at the forefront of aboriginal peoples' resistance to cultural assimilation. Today, Native women are still fighting for the survival of their cultures and their peoples--in the rain forest and the city, in the courts and the legislatures, in the Longhouse and the media. Keepers of the Fire profiles Canada's Native 'warrior women' who are protecting and defending their land, their culture and their people in the time-honoured tradition of their foremothers.

6.9

Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations

Apr 21, 1938

Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, Riefenstahl covers twenty-one athletic events in the first half of this two-part love letter to the human body and spirit, culminating with the marathon, where Jesse Owens became the first track and field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympics.

6.7

Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty

Jun 2, 1938

Part two of Leni Riefenstahl's monumental examination of the 1938 Olympic Games, the cameras leave the main stadium and venture into the many halls and fields deployed for such sports as fencing, polo, cycling, and the modern pentathlon, which was won by American Glenn Morris.

0.0

In Free Fall

Jan 2, 2010

The space of the junkyard allows various ‘crash’ narratives to unfold, with the stories of actual crashes and the remnants and afterlife of these machines becoming metaphors for economic decline. This is an investigation of planes as they are parked during the economic downturn, stored and recycled, revealing unexpected connections between economy, violence and spectacle, finding perfect example in the form of the Boeing 4X-JYI, an aircraft first acquired by film director Howard Hughes for TWA, which was subsequently flown by the Israeli Airforce before finding its way to the Californian desert to be blown up for the Hollywood blockbuster Speed. Through intertwined narratives of people, planes and places Steyerl reveals cycles of capitalism incorporating and adapting to the changing status of the commodity, but also points at a horizon beyond this endless repetition.

6.7

Dig!

May 14, 2004

A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.

7.1

In the Realms of the Unreal

Jan 15, 2004

In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.

7.5

Malcolm X

Nov 18, 1992

A tribute to the controversial black activist and leader of the struggle for black liberation. He hit bottom during his imprisonment in the '50s, he became a Black Muslim and then a leader in the Nation of Islam. His assassination in 1965 left a legacy of self-determination and racial pride.

6.7

Marie Antoinette

May 24, 2006

The retelling of France’s iconic but ill-fated queen, Marie Antoinette - from her betrothal and marriage to Louis XVI at fifteen to her reign as queen at nineteen and ultimately the fall of Versailles.

No Image Available

0.0

Heysel 85

Invalid Date

When 39 people are killed prior to the European Cup at the Brussels Heysel stadium in 1985, the mayor's daughter and an Italian journalist are torn between their professional assignments, family, and human nature.

4.5

Manhattan Terminal

Nov 29, 2002

Observations at Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal, which is one of the most fascinating stations for insiders. The documentary takes the completed renovation of the building as an occasion to bring the magnificent architecture to life; at the same time, it focuses on the countless momentary encounters when the paths of commuters and flâneurs cross.

3.4

Kristina Talking Pictures

Nov 2, 1976

Kristina, a self-named Hungarian female lion tamer, arrives in New York to become a dance choreographer. Kristina, now a middle-class NYC artist concerned about the environment, has a sailor lover named Raoul. The film, a collage work, an essay film, a fictional narrative and a documentary all rolled into one, is one of the most important independent American feminists films made during the 1970's.

6.2

O Seasons, O Castles

May 1, 1958

A short documentary on the chateaux of the Loire in France was commissioned by the French Tourist Bureau.

5.6

Fort McCoy

Jan 1, 2014

Unable to serve in World War II because of a heart condition, a barber moves his family adjacent to a Wisconsin army base and prisoner-of-war camp to provide his services. But even in rural America -- far from the frontline -- the war finds victims.

7.8

The Rape of Recy Taylor

May 30, 2019

Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old black mother and sharecropper, was gang raped by six white boys in 1944 Alabama. Common in Jim Crow South, few women spoke up in fear for their lives. Not Recy Taylor, who bravely identified her rapists. The NAACP sent its chief rape investigator Rosa Parks, who rallied support and triggered an unprecedented outcry for justice. The film exposes a legacy of physical abuse of black women and reveals Rosa Parks’ intimate role in Recy Taylor’s story.

5.6

Welcome to São Paulo

Jul 16, 2004

All the feature is given prestige to by the narration in Caetano Veloso's voice, that also signs one of the segments of the project. São Paulo is the largest city of the Southern Hemisphere, with an incessant dynamics of cultural mixtures, with immigrants of all the world and migrants of all parts of Brazil. The gathering of these peculiarities are seen through the 13 film directors's sensibilities and their segments.

5.6

Set Fire to the Stars

Nov 7, 2014

An aspiring poet in 1950s New York has his ordered world shaken when he embarks on a week-long retreat to save his hell raising hero, Dylan Thomas.

5.5

The Anarchist's Wife

Jun 26, 2008

Manuela is left behind when her husband Justo fights for his ideals against Franco's Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. He is deported to a concentration camp, and upon his release, continues the fight against nationalism in the French resistance. Years pass without a word from him, but his wife never gives up hope of seeing him again.

7.7

Cinema Through the Eye of Magnum

Sep 2, 2017

The film tells the story of the intimate and unprecedented encounter between the photojournalists of the Magnum Agency and the world of cinema. The confrontation of two seemingly opposite worlds – fiction and reality. For 70 years their paths crossed: a family of photographers, amongst them the biggest names in photography, and a family of actors and filmmakers who helped write the history of cinema, from John Huston to Marilyn Monroe to Orson Welles, Kate Winslet and Sean Penn.

Down and Out in America

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

Down and Out in America Trailers