Pauline Kael

The portrait of the last cowboy Hollywood legend dives into the 65 years of an extraordinary career in Hollywood, highlighted iconic films like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, as well as Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River and Gran Torino all the way to Cry Macho in 2021. It is no small task to cover more than 60 years of cinema history, especially when it is trying to surveyed with such breadth and diversity: TV star, international star, controversial icon, contested director, filmmaker with a capital F, Eastwood has been through it all, experienced it all, and it is first of all this romantic trajectory, this true American pastoral that the documentary wants to tell with all the passion it possibly can.

The surprising and entertaining life of renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert (1942-2013): his early days as a freewheeling bachelor and Pulitzer Prize winner, his famously contentious partnership with Gene Siskel, his life-altering marriage, and his brave and transcendent battle with cancer.

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) was undoubtedly one of the greatest names in film criticism. A Californian native, she wrote her first review in 1953 and joined ‘The New Yorker’ in 1968. Praised for her highly opinionated and feisty writing style and criticised for her subjective and sometimes ruthless reviews, Kael’s writing was refreshingly and intensely rooted in her experience of watching a film as a member of the audience. Loved and hated in equal measure – loved by other critics for whom she was immensely influential, and hated by filmmakers whose films she trashed - Kael destroyed films that have since become classics such as The Sound of Music and raved about others such as Bonnie and Clyde. She was also aware of the perennial difficulties for women working in the movies and in film criticism, and fiercely fought sexism, both in her reviews and in her media appearances.

A chronicle of the iconoclastic life of gay poet, filmmaker, and spiritual visionary James Broughton, one of the defining voices of the sexual revolution, whose groundbreaking artistic celebrations of sexuality and the body influenced generations of the 1960s and '70s to profoundly embrace life and ‘follow your own weird’.

ED & PAULINE is a portrait of the influential creative collaboration between Pauline Kael and Ed Landberg who through their visionary curation and film writing transformed a small storefront theater into a church for movie lovers.

A look at the life and career of acclaimed independent filmmaker Robert Altman...on his own words. The genius director who shook the cinema industry with countless films examines some of his most important works, along with friends and regular collaborators.

The story of American film criticism.

Documentary looking at Orson Welles and the production of the film CITIZEN KANE fifty years ago, considering the furore that accompanied it and the real life press baron William Randolph Hearst upon whom Kane is based, and his efforts to halt the film, destroy the negative and persecution of people involved with its production and showing. It includes BBC interviews with Welles made in 1960 and 1982, and film historian Robert Carringer looks at the scenes that never made it to the screen. American film critic Pauline Kael also analyses the film's enduring appeal. Extracts from "The RKO Story" (producer: Rosemary Wilton) and "Yesterday's Whitness" (producers: Christopher Cook and Stephen Peet).

Features clips from 21 documentary and animation film classics, interviews with NFB filmmakers past and present, and incisive commentary from film critics and historians on the role and influence of the NFB during its first half century of existence.

Profile of Clint Eastwood.