Documentary
This feature doc profiles acclaimed writer Alistair MacLeod. Hailed internationally as a master of the short story, MacLeod also wrote a novel, No Great Mischief, which was celebrated around the world. Depicting men and women living out their lives against the haunting landscape that surrounds them, most of MacLeod's work is firmly based in Cape Breton even if his characters stray elsewhere. Focusing on the complexities and abiding mysteries at the heart of human relationships, MacLeod maps the close bonds and impassable chasms that lie between people and invokes memory and myth to celebrate the continuity of the generations. This film portrait explores the life and work of this giant of literature.
MOVIE COMMENTS
SIMILAR MOVIES
Paving The Way
Searching for Lin Zhao's Soul
Vito
Under the Weight of a Waking Dream
Caravaggio: The Soul and the Blood
Cope 2 Kings Destroy
George: The Story of George Maciunas and Fluxus
Black Is the Color: African-American Artists and Segregation
The Net
Adventures in Plymptoons!
Van Gogh: Of Wheat Fields and Clouded Skies
Irvine Welsh: Reality Is Not Enough
Degas: Passion for Perfection
Sk8face
Young Picasso
Advanced Television Production - 5 Days, 2 Scripts, No Sleep
Exergo
Underground and Emigrants
Hungary 2011
Kandinsky
SIMILAR MOVIES
Paving The Way
IMDB 0 | Feb , 2026
Set against the sweeping landscapes of the Flathead Indian Reservation, the film highlights skateboarding’s power to build community, foster confidence, and challenge stereotypes. More than a skateboarding film, it becomes a vibrant portrait of young people who get back up every time they fall.Searching for Lin Zhao's Soul
IMDB 8.7 | Jan , 2004
This landmark documentary reveals the tragic life of a gifted young woman who was executed for speaking out during the height of Chairman Mao’s rule.Vito
IMDB 6.9 | Oct , 2011
In the aftermath of Stonewall, a newly politicized Vito Russo found his voice as a gay activist and critic of LGBTQ+ representation in the media. He went on to write "The Celluloid Closet", the first book to critique Hollywood's portrayals of gays on screen. During the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, Vito became a passionate advocate for justice via the newly formed ACT UP, before his death in 1990.Under the Weight of a Waking Dream
IMDB 8 | Jan , 2025
‘Under the Weight of a Waking Dream’ is Zefier's debut swan song to the ending year. Comprised of poetry and endless enumerations is a diaristic film chronicling the lessons and contradictions found throughout the human experience.Caravaggio: The Soul and the Blood
IMDB 6.7 | May , 2018
An exciting and unsettling cinematic journey through the life, work and torments of Caravaggio.Cope 2 Kings Destroy
IMDB 0 | Jan , 1999
NYC Graffiti Documentary "Kings Destroy" straight from the boogie down Bronx and right into your living room, with guest appearances by KRS-1, FAT JOE, CASE II, SEEN, and many more...George: The Story of George Maciunas and Fluxus
IMDB 7 | Feb , 2018
In 1961 Lithuanian American artist and impresario George Maciunas established the avant-garde art movement Fluxus. George details the rise of Fluxus following a sensationalized tour of “concerts” in Europe in 1962, and continuing in New York for most of the 1960s and ’70s. During this time Maciunas was converting the dying industrial buildings of Soho into a network of artists’ lofts, creating one of the first official real estate co-ops of artist-owned buildings. Maciunas’s life and legacy—as recounted by artists of his generation, including Yoko Ono and Jonas Mekas—ignited debates that remain pivotal to artists working today.Black Is the Color: African-American Artists and Segregation
IMDB 0 | Jul , 2016
Black Is the Color highlights key moments in the history of Black visual art, from Edmonds Lewis’s 1867 sculpture Forever Free, to the work of contemporary artists such as Whitfield Lovell, Kerry James Marshall, Ellen Gallagher, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Art historians and gallery owners place the works in context, setting them against the larger social contexts of Jim Crow, WWI, the civil rights movement and the racism of the Reagan era, while contemporary artists discuss individual works by their forerunners and their ongoing influence.The Net
IMDB 6.3 | Oct , 2003
Explores the incredibly complex backstory of Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber. This exquisitely crafted inquiry into the rationale of this mythic figure situates him within a late 20th century web of technology—a system that he grew to oppose. A marvelously subversive approach to the history of the Internet, this insightful documentary combines speculative travelogue and investigative journalism to trace contrasting countercultural responses to the cybernetic revolution.Adventures in Plymptoons!
IMDB 2 | May , 2011
A documentary film about Oscar-nominated animator Bill Plympton. This is a portrait piece that includes interviews with family, friends, colleagues, critics, and fans.Van Gogh: Of Wheat Fields and Clouded Skies
IMDB 8.1 | Apr , 2018
A new look at Van Gogh, through the legacy of the largest private collector of artworks by the Dutch painter: Helene Kröller-Müller (1869-1939), who, in the early 20th Century, ended up buying nearly 300 of his works, paintings and drawings included.Irvine Welsh: Reality Is Not Enough
IMDB 7 | Sep , 2025
One of the most controversial writers of our times, join Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh as he undergoes a remarkable trip to find new meaning in his work, life and legacy.Degas: Passion for Perfection
IMDB 0 | Apr , 2018
Sometimes frustrated by his own failings, Degas was consumed by obsessive principles and failing eye sight but his determination to capture everyday life was evident in every mark he made. Never fully satisfied, many of Degas’ drawings and sculptures were kept in private during his lifetime but, now through close examination, they can be seen as some of the most beautifully detailed and expressive works in the modern era. Using written accounts by friends and commentators, and the narration of letters written by Degas himself, this film reveals a more complex truth behind one of the most influential French artists of the late 19th-century and serves as an exploration of the complex workings of Degas’ artistic mind.Sk8face
IMDB 8.7 | Jun , 2024
Tells the history of skateboard art and its evolution through the decades, as iconic and rebellious skateboarders and artists give firsthand experiences and stories about their art that challenged the establishment.Young Picasso
IMDB 6.5 | Feb , 2019
Pablo Picasso is one of the greatest artists of all time - and right up until his death in 1973 he was the most prolific of artists. Many films have dealt with these later years - the art, the affairs and the wide circle of friends. But where did this all begin? What made Picasso in the first place? Too long ignored, it is time to look at the early years of Picasso; the upbringing and the learning that led to his extraordinary achievements.Advanced Television Production - 5 Days, 2 Scripts, No Sleep
IMDB 0 | Aug , 2014
The writer's room during the production of the fifth season of Community struggles with time while the show is being filmed. This behind the scenes documentary depicts the writing of episodes 10, 12, and 13; "Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons," "Basic Story," and "Basic Sandwich."Exergo
IMDB 0 | May , 2024
Departing from peripheral details of some paintings of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, a female narrator unravels several stories related to the economic, social and psychological conditions of past and current artists.Underground and Emigrants
IMDB 7 | Oct , 1976
In this film, outspokenly homosexual filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim has documented his encounters with friends in the New York "underground" arts movement, the better-known of whom are William Burroughs (who says nothing for the camera), Andy Warhol (seen in the distance) and Fernando Arrabal (who is interviewed in Spanish). The emigrants named in the title are notable Germans who left the country before World War II, such as Greta Keller and Grete Mosheim. Reviewers at the time of the film's release considered it to have been a sort of paid vacation for the filmmaker rather than a serious effort. (Clarke Fountain, Rovi)Hungary 2011
IMDB 0 | Feb , 2012
Anthology film made as an act of protest against Hungarian government of Viktor Orban.Kandinsky
IMDB 0 | Jan , 1957
The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky claimed, or has been credited with, the 'creation' of abstract art. At the core of this film is a dramatic recreation of Kandinsky's account of returning to his studio one dark evening, and being astonished by an unknown masterpiece of abstract art leaning against the easel - a picture which turned out to be one of his own landscapes fallen on its side. 'Now I knew for certain that the object spoiled my pictures.' While this film's narration does indeed emphasize the notion of an inspired breakthrough to Abstraction, the picture it conveys in more purely filmic ways is a rich and complex one.