First Person Documentaries

A gay man seeks to discover what kinship, if any, exists between his white family and the nearby blacks who share the name of Alston.

Mixes documentary interviews of memories of lesbian adolescence with the story of the 12-year-old girl Lou discovering her sexuality in 1960s America.

A documentary about the experiences of black homosexual men living in the United States of America.

Forty year old documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee has a penchant for filming everything around him. Following the announcement of his impending marriage to his film-making partner Marilyn Levine - marriage something that he and his family never thought would happen for him - McElwee turns on the camera to film life as it happens in respect to this new phase in his life. Both in real terms (as it applies to himself and those around him) and philosophical terms, McElwee discusses, through self-narration, life, death, love, family and babies.

Agnès Varda explores her memories, mostly chronologically, with photographs, film clips, interviews, reenactments, and droll, playful contemporary scenes of her narrating her story.

Chris Marker and Pierre Lhomme's LE JOLI MAI (The Lovely Month of May) is a portrait of Paris and Parisians during May 1962, the first springtime of peace after the ceasefire with Algeria and the first time in 23 years that France was not involved in any war.

A woman narrates the contemplative writings of a seasoned world traveler, focusing on contemporary Japan.

Varda films and interviews gleaners in France in all forms, from those picking fields after the harvest to those scouring the dumpsters of Paris.

Documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee sets out to make a movie about Union General Sherman's March to the Sea towards the end of the American Civil War, but keeps getting sidetracked by his own love life.

A portrait of the director's father, searching for the extraordinary in the subject's seemingly normal existence.

A filmmaker documents his bout with insomnia.

Filmmaker Jonathan Caouette's documentary on growing up with his schizophrenic mother -- a mixture of snapshots, Super-8 film, answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, and more - culled from nineteen years of his life.

A documentary about two gay men as they live through their last months of life with AIDS.

An in-depth look at the director James Ronald Whitney's family history of incest spanning at least three generations and the devastating consequences that include drug abuse and alcoholism.

What would happen if a country of 97 million people were taught at a young age that the boogie man was real. In the Philippines for the last 400 years, the 'aswang' has been used as propoganda and social control by Spanish Colonizers, the Catholic Church, the Philippine Administration, and even the CIA.