Best Documentary Movies of 1974

Animals Are Beautiful People (aka Beautiful People) is a 1974 nature documentary about the wildlife in Southern Africa. It was filmed in the Namib Desert, the Kalahari Desert and the Okavango River and Okavango Delta. It was produced for cinema and has a length of slightly more than 90 minutes.

Various MGM stars from yesterday present their favorite musical moments from the studio's 50 year history.

Filmmaker Martin Scorsese interviews his mother and father about their life in New York and family history back in Sicily.

Irish Tour '74 is a film which captures the artist, his music, the period and the place with perfection. Filmed in January 1974 at Belfast Ulster Hall, Dublin Carlton Cinema and Cork City Hall.

In this made-for-TV production, Vincent Price and his hunchback sidekick (Billy Van) host a pun-filled salute to the horror film genre from its earliest beginnings all the way up to The Exorcist. Featuring clips from classic horror films and interviews with genre greats like Frank Gorshin, John Carradine, John Astin and SFX legend Bill Tuttle, among others.

JERRY'S DELI is a testament to a bygone era when shrieking lunatics could run successful (even popular) businesses. Shot on film-stock leftover from television cameramen, Tom Palazzolo's portrait of Jerry Meyer offsets sequences of the tyrannical deli owner (seen berating his employees and physically dragging customers to the counter) with personal interviews in which a soft-spoken Meyer calmly describes his decorated military service in World War II, his early stand on civil rights and this one time when he stabbed an employee in the arm. - Tom Fritsche

Charged with the electricity of a heavyweight prizefight, The Main Event was filmed live at Madison Square Garden, a venue usually reserved for sporting events and rock 'n' roll concerts.

Released just a few years after her death, this forms a picture of who Janis was through interviews and performance clips.

A rarely seen "rockumentary" made by Paul McCartney and his then band, Wings, at Abbey Road studios in London, in August 1974. The film features the band playing live and also voice overs with each member talking about their musical experiences up to that point. Songs featured include Maybe I'm Amazed, Jet and Live and Let Die.

In 1971, inmates at Attica State Prison seized control of D-yard and took 35 hostages after peaceful efforts for reforms failed. Attica investigates the rebellion and its bloody suppression, revealing institutionalized injustices, sanctioned dishonesty, and abuses of power.

A cartoon film about the whole heterogeneous mixture of Canada and Canadians, and the way the invisible adhesive called federalism makes it all cling together. That the dissenting voices are many is made amply evident, in English and French. But this animated message also shows that Canadians can laugh at themselves and work out their problems objectively.

An NFB crew filmed a group of three families, Cree hunters from Mistassini. Since times predating agriculture, this First Nations people have gone to the bush of the James Bay and Ungava Bay area to hunt. We see the building of the winter camp, the hunting and the rhythms of Cree family life.

This is an educational short released by the Los Angeles Public Library explaining what to expect when you get your first period.

Les Blank's first feature-length documentary captures music and other events at Leon Russell's Oklahoma recording studio during a three-year period (1972-1974).

Architect, engineer, geometrician, cartographer, philosopher, futurist, inventor of the famous geodesic dome and one of the most brilliant thinkers of his time. Fuller was renowned for his comprehensive perspective on the world's problems. For more than five decades he developed pioneering solutions reflecting his commitment to the potential of innovative design to create technology that does "more with less" and thereby improve human lives. He spent much of his life traveling the world lecturing and discussing his ideas with thousands of audiences. Now more relevant than ever, this film captures Fuller's ideas and thinking told in his own words.

The people portrayed in this film are called Hamar. They dwell in the thorny scrubland of southwestern Ethiopia, about one hundred miles north of Lake Rudolph, Africa's great inland sea. They are isolated by some distant choice that now limits their movement and defines their condition. At least until recently, it has resulted in their retaining a highly traditional way of life. Hamar women eagerly accept their ritual whipping when boys come of age. Part of that tradition was the open, even flamboyant, observance of male supremacy. In their isolation, they seemed to have refined this not uncommon principle of social organization into a remarkably pure state. Hamar men are masters and their women are slaves. The film tries to disclose the effect on mood and behavior of lives governed by the idea of sexual inequality.

Photos, animation, and music illustrate the story of the Beatles.

Shocking fire safety 'filler' from the COI.

Filmmaker Bruno Monsaingeon visits piano virtuoso Glenn Gould more than ten years after his self-imposed exile from the stage, which results in a mixture of interview and performance.

Tony Palmer's film, thought lost for almost 40 years, about Leonard Cohen's 1972 European tour, has now been pieced together from almost 3,000 fragments and restored to its former glory. A unique record of a major poet and singer/songwriter at the height of his powers.

Comprised of video shot during the Nazi regime, including propaganda, newsreels, broadcasts and even some of Eva Braun's colorized personal home movies, we explore the way in which the Third Reich infiltrated the lives of the German population, from 1933 to 1945.

Oscar nominated documentary about the largest man-made curtain in the world as "sculpture".

Primate sees realist documentarian Frederick Wiseman hone his lens on the inmates of the Yerkes Primate Research Centre. A representative scientist explains the aims and outcomes of the organisation, describing the mating habits and relationships of the animals.

Australian stuntman Grant Page travels to Hong Kong to find Bruce Lee's successor and looks at the cultural phenomenon that Asian martial arts has become in the West. He talks to actors such as Angela Mao, Stuart Whitman and George Lazenby - who were all making movies in Hong Kong at the time - and fights Carter Wong twice.

Kirby, on the outskirts of Liverpool, England, October 1972. A chronicle of the fourteen-month strike by thousands of tenants to protest against the £1 increase in council house rents due to the Housing Finance Act.

Held in 1972 at 533 N. Mariposa Street, Los Angeles was one of the most important cultural events in the United States: "Womanhouse," a feminist art installation and performance space organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro.

Beautiful documentary by Osvaldur Knudsen about the eruption on Heimaey in the Vestmann Islands in 1973 (South of Iceland). The eruption destroyed some 30% of the town's houses and lasted for more than 5 months. Nice narration like in the old days and some nice sound(track) by Magnus Bl. Johannsson.

Three young ladies perform yoga without clothes in the open air of Cyprus. Another does the same in a studio. These visuals are interspersed with images of Eastern art, processed for "psychedelic" effect. The narrator relates the practice of yoga to Buddhist philosophy.

The Challenge... A Tribute to Modern Art is a 1974 American documentary film directed by Herbert Kline. The film shows footage of great modern artists in their studios creating and commenting on their work, with narration and commentary by Orson Welles. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Penthesilea, the first of six films made by Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, traverses thousands of years to look at the image of the Amazonian woman in myth. It asks, among other questions, is the Amazonian woman a rare strong female image or is she a figure derived from male phantasy? The film explores the complexities of such questions, but does not seek any concrete answers.

This feature-length documentary from 1974 takes viewers inside Fidel Castro's Cuba. A movie-making threesome hope that Fidel himself will star in their film. The unusual crew consists of former Newfoundland premier Joseph Smallwood, radio and TV owner Geoff Stirling and NFB film director Michael Rubbo. What happens while the crew awaits its star shows a good deal of the new Cuba, and also of the three Canadians who chose to film the island. (NFB)

Princeton: A Search for Answers is a 1973 American short documentary film, directed by Julian Krainin and DeWitt Sage, and produced for the Princeton University Undergraduate Admissions Office as a recruiting film. In 1974, it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) at the 46th Academy Awards.

Eureka (1974), which lyrically re-photographs a travelogue shot from a San Francisco streetcar, offers the purest expression of Gehr’s deep love of early cinema as a source of a joyous formal inventiveness-- changing its length from 5 to about 38 minutes.

Time-lapse photography of books, paintings, reflections, and light falling on textures, shot entirely through a glass ashtray.

An Oscar-nominated film with no narration showing the Exploratorium (The Palace of Arts and Science) in San Francisco. It shows many of the exhibits and the reaction of visitors to many of these. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.

"Touches on elemental images; air, water, (and snow), earth and fire (and smoke) all come into it." - MT

An independently produced sports documentary on the career of O.J. Simpson, (#32) the upcoming running back for the Buffalo Bills football team.

We move back and forth between scenes of a family at home and thoughts about the stars and creation. Children hold chickens while an adult clips their wings; we see a forest; a narrator talks about stars and light and eternity. A dog joins the hens and the family, while the narrator explains the heavens. We see a bee up close. The narrator suggests metaphors for heavenly bodies. Scenes fade into a black screen or dim purple; close-ups of family life may be blurry. The words about the heavens, such as "The stars are a flock of hummingbirds," contrast with images and sounds of real children.

In a haunted house, the invisible spirit of plaque - which evidently has the ability to possess rocking chairs - warns children against the dangers of not brushing and flossing.

Documentary - Painstakingly filmed over a five-year period, this intimate view of our country's magnificent landscape will take you on the getaway you can only imagine. Witness the splendor of nature as you've never before seen it. - Arthur Dubs, Rex Allen

The "ceilidh play", as writer John McGrath styled it, is presented in the BBC's 1974 "Play for Today" production to a live audience intercut with filmed reconstructions of the Highland Clearances and the Victorian obsession with hunting stags. Restored in high definition from the original film masters held in the BBC Archives.

Canadian Pacific I is made up of a series of slowly dissolved shots done from the same framing over several months. The camera frames a window with a railway yard in the foreground, a bay in the space behind it, and misty mountains in the extreme distance. Trains occasionally pass by in the foreground. Huge ships move across the bay. Blue mists hover over the mountain heads.

Generally regarded as Australia's finest railway film and winner of many awards the world over, A Steam Train Passes is a nostalgic, imaginative essay on one of the majestic but now retired C38 class steam locomotives.

A study of Spain during the years 1936-1973, focusing on the involvement of the United States in the affairs of that country.

Narrated by Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, this documentary about "Laurel and Hardy", one of the most popular and critically acclaimed comedy double acts of the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema. It features interviews with Jerry Lewis, Dick Van Dyke, Babe London, Marcel Marceau, Lucille Hardy (Ollie's wife), Bob Monkhouse, Hal Roach, Marvin T Hatley, Jack McCabe and many more.

Pastor Estus W. Pirkle preaches about hell, where all non-Christians will suffer eternal torment. He's also visited by two self-professed “Christians” who don't believe in hell.

In this documentary Anais Nin is shown at work, at home, and talking with and about her influences: D.H. Lawrence, Otto Rank, Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, Martha Graham, Noguchi, Kenneth Anger, Maya Daren, Edmund Wilson, Lou Andreas-Salome and others.

B.B. King, Joan Baez and other great artists gather for a show at Sing Sing Prison.

De Nieuwe IJstijd is the third part of the triptych Noord-Zuid (North-South), in which the director focuses on the relationships between rich and poor countries. The film draws a parallel between the living conditions of impoverished Peruvians in a suburb of Lima and a number of young workers at an ice cream factory in the Dutch province of Groningen. (http://doclisboa.org/2014/en/filmes/de-nieuwe-ijstijd/)