2022 marked another banner year for documentary cinema. They have inspired us, informed us, and taken us on unforgettable journeys. Documentarians have given us second looks at entertainers we thought we knew. They’ve examined systematic inequalities and looked inward at themselves. They’ve told personal stories that cover vast expanses of the human condition. 

READ MORE: The 25 Best Films Of 2022

This year we at The Playlist have expanded the list to twenty documentaries, from ecological pleas to a reconsideration of the film canon to portraits of artists of singular talent and vision.

Continue reading The Best Documentaries Of 2022 at The Playlist.

The Civil Rights movement is composed of singular heroes: Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Angela Davis, and so forth. Their iconoclastic memory has come to define the entire collective effort during the 1950s, 60s, and 1970s by many organizations. They, of course, do not tell the whole history of the coordinated action that occurred during the era. Geeta Gandbhir and Sam Pollard’s “Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power,” a swift, potent documentary about a town nestled in the heart of Jim Crow Alabama, aims to rectify that misunderstanding. 

Continue reading ‘Lowndes County And The Road To Black Power’: A Potent Doc About A Town In The Heart Of Jim Crow Alabama [Review] at The Playlist.

It’s great to see an acclaimed veteran filmmaker really get their due, especially one in their ’70s. Now, in the documentary world, Sam Pollard is something of a household name. Starting out his career as an editor with Spike Lee, editing many of those classics, Pollard also produced many of Lee’s seminal documentaries and was nominated for an Oscar for 1997’s “Four Little Girls” and won a Peabody Award for Spike’s second Katrina doc “If God Is Willing And The Creek Won’t Rise.

Continue reading ‘Lowndes County And The Road To Black Power’ Trailer: Sam Pollard’s Latest Doc Centers On Black Voting Rights In the 1960s at The Playlist.