The best Gus Van Sant’s documentary movies
We present our ranking of the best Gus Van Sant’s movies. Do you love cinema? Or are you looking for a movie of your favorite actor to watch tonight? Surely you have some to see or that you did not know yet about Gus Van Sant.
Crítico
7.3/10
Seventy critics and filmmakers discuss cinema around the conflict between the artist and the observer, the creator and the critic. Between 1998 and 2007, Kléber Mendonça Filho recorded testimonies about this relationship in Brazil, the United States and Europe, based on his experience as a critic.
The Story of Film: An Odyssey
8.4/10
The story of international cinema told through the history of cinematic innovation. Covering six continents and 12 decades, showing how film-makers are influenced both by the historical events of their times, and by each other.
Here's Looking at You, Boy
6.6/10
Documentary on the history of gay and lesbian film.
Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema
7/10
A chronological look at films by, for, or about gays and lesbians in the United States, from 1947 to 2005, Kenneth Anger's "Fireworks" to "Brokeback Mountain". Talking heads, anchored by critic and scholar B. Ruby Rich, are interspersed with an advancing timeline and with clips from two dozen films. The narrative groups the pictures around various firsts, movements, and triumphs: experimental films, indie films, sex on screen, outlaw culture and bad guys, lesbian lovers, films about AIDS and dying, emergence of romantic comedy, transgender films, films about diversity and various cultures, documentaries and then mainstream Hollywood drama. What might come next?
A Special Day
6.3/10
a film that premiered at the cannes film festival
Strange Parallel
8.1/10
Strange Parallel is a documentary/short film revolving around the American singer/songwriter Elliott Smith. The film features interviews with Elliott himself as well as fans, friends and other acquaintances of his (including Gus Van Sant, Larry Crane, and the members of Quasi). The film also includes snippets of Elliott Smith performing as well as footage of him recording an unreleased song, "Brand New Game". The film sometimes moves out of reality, with acted-out, metaphorical sequences that involve Elliott considering purchasing a mechanical hand (a "robot hand" ) to improve his music.
Red Hot Chili Peppers: Funky Monks
8.1/10
Funky Monks is the title of a 1991 documentary (also the title of a song from the 1991 album Blood Sugar Sex Magik) about the rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers and the recording of their highly successful 1991 Warner Bros. debut Blood Sugar Sex Magik. The album was produced by Rick Rubin and recorded in a supposedly haunted house which Rubin now owns.
The Advocate for Fagdom
6.7/10
The Advocate for Fagdom unites the puzzle pieces one by one. Testimonies are combined with rare archive images. Art galeries present movie extracts that are succeeded by images shot on location. And the other way round. Writers, film makers, art galeries owners, actors and actresses, photographers, producers, friends and loved ones all join in a game of interpretation, analysis or simple anecdotes. John Waters, Bruce Benderson, Harmony Korine, Gus Van Sant, Richard Kern, Rick Castro and others deliver their impressions, theories and confessions. Everything blends into the fascinating portrait of a singular person blessed with singular talents. A complex personality at war not with a system but all systems. The portrait of a man constantly moving between his punk attitude and extreme sensibility.
William S. Burroughs: A Man Within
7.1/10
A riveting and emotional journey into the world of writer William S. Burroughs, a man considered as cold as an iceberg on a winter night.
At the Video Store
7.2/10
Equal parts personal essay, intense rumination, and playful satire, this movie laments the death of the American Video Store while it searches for the missing human element in today's digital landscape.
About Cinema
7.7/10
An abandoned tumbledown theater in the outback of Paraíba state is the initial setting of a film about cinema, which explores the testimonials of the novelist and playwright Ariano Suassuna and other filmmakers such as Ruy Guerra, Julio Bressane, Ken Loach, Andrzej Wajda, Karim Ainouz, José Padilha, Hector Babenco, Vilmos Zsigmond, Béla Tarr, Gus Van Sant and Jia Zhangke. They all respond to two basic questions: why do they make movies and why do they serve the seventh art. The filmmakers share their thoughts about time, narrative, rhythm, light, movement, the meaning of tragedy, the audience‘s desires and the boundaries with other forms of art.
The Making of My Own Private Idaho
Making-of documentary of Gus Van Sant's 'My Own Private Idaho'.
The Making of Last Days
Behind-the-scenes documentary of Gus Van Sant's "Last Days."
Saltlake Van Sant
5.2/10
Behind-the-scenes documentary of one morning on the set of "Gerry" directed by Gus Van Sant.
I Don't Belong Anywhere: The Cinema of Chantal Akerman
7.2/10
I Don’t Belong Anywhere - Le Cinéma de Chantal Akerman, explores some of the Belgian filmmaker’s 40 plus films. From Brussels to Tel-Aviv, from Paris to New-York, this documentary charts the sites of her peregrinations. An experimental filmmaker, a nomad, Chantal Akerman shares her cinematic trajectory, one that has never ceased to interrogate the the meaning of her existence. Thanks in great part to the interventions of her editor, Claire Atherton, she delineates the origins of her film language and her aesthetic stance.
The Making of Drugstore Cowboy
Portland, 1988. Filmmaker Gus Van Sant shoots Drugstore Cowboy, the project that will bring he and his collaborators a formidable burst of mainstream attention. Starring Matt Dillon, Kelly Lynch, and Heather Graham, the film follows a roving quartet of drug addicts — and, consequently, drug thieves, especially from the businesses of the title — who wash up in Portland's then-gritty Pearl District. A death among their own spooks the leader of the pack into trying to clean up, and an encounter with a sepulchral junkie priest does its part to convince him further. Or maybe we should call him a Junkie priest, portrayed as he is by a controversial cameo from writer William S. Burroughs. "I'm going back to the old days," Burroughs says of his role early in the above documentary on the making of Drugstore Cowboy. "The old days when they used to give people morphine in jail. The old days before the methadone programs."
Making Paranoid Park
Behind the scenes documentary of Gus Van Sant's "Paranoid Park." Felix Andrew: director, cinematographer, editor. Dane La Chiusa: titles and original drawings. Joel Shelton, composer. Additional music: "Songs" by Ethan Rose, "Sangue de Bairro" by Chico Science e Nacao Zumbi. Made in 2006. Length: 27 minutes
